2022 Annual Report

MENTAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING FOR ALL

MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT & CEO AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Dear Community Stakeholder,

Fiscal Year 2022 was a year marked by the continued challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Staff are feeling change fatigue and burnout, and the mental and behavioral health demand continues to be substantial in our service areas. Despite these challenges, we had a year full of significant victories and improvements for our organization.

We were awarded grant funds from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which supported re-establishing the Unity House clubhouse and peer support services and expanding or establishing several areas within the organization including care coordination, improving telehealth services, and supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives that benefit both staff and clients.

We continued to build upon the Diversus Health brand, diving into our tagline of Mental Health and Well-Being for All by identifying the strategic focus area of access to quality, culturally and linguistically appropriate care through the introduction of Envision: You LGBTQ+ trainings, establishing linguistic services, and improving the Crisis Walk-in Center, as well as the transition of the Colorado Spirit team to the Outreach Program.

Our staff are resilient, but are still experiencing burnout from the compounding challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased demand for mental and behavioral health care. Our Wellness Program has hit the ground running, working to address and alleviate the stress our staff members have been experiencing.

We take pride in the accomplishments of Fiscal Year 2022 and will use the momentum to propel us into Fiscal Year 2023 to continue our efforts to provide quality, exceptional care to each person in the community.

Addressing the mental and behavioral health needs in the communities we serve is a task too great for any one entity to take on alone. We are grateful for you and your continued partnership and support throughout our over 145 years as an organization.

Skiles, CPA, MBA, MT Chairman of the Board Diversus Health

Adam C. Roberts, MBA President & CEO Diversus Health

Cathy

WHAT WE DO

OUR MISSION

OUR VISION

CLIENT EXPERIENCE AND VOICE

This has been the best mental health, counseling, psychiatry, and resource place I’ve ever gone to. Before becoming a patient with Diversus I had a couple negative experiences and was skeptical about receiving treatment but have had the best experience ever here!

C.H. Google Review Jet Wing

ADDICTION

At Diversus Health, we offer addiction services for both adults and teens. Our programs provide trauma informed comprehensive services to individuals and families through a personalized treatment approach. We match settings, interventions, and services with each patient’s needs. Additionally, our medication assisted treatment provides a whole-patient approach to sustain recovery.

CRISIS

We offer a 24-hour Walk-in Center that is staffed 365 days a year. Individuals experiencing a mental health crisis can walkin and be seen immediately, providing a less expensive and more behavioral health centric option than an Emergency Department. We also offer a 16-patient Acute Treatment Unit that is a short-term facility for patients and mobile crisis evaluations.

OUR SERVICES

COUNSELING

We provide patient-focused, goal-driven, and evidence-based treatments to achieve immediate results and long-term recovery. Our counseling services include individual, group, and family therapy as well as many specialized modalities. Diversus Health’s Counseling Services are provided to children, teens, and adults of all ages and are provided in an outpatient setting.

PSYCHIATRIC

We have the unique ability to offer counseling services in conjunction with a psychiatrist and/or nurse prescriber, if medications are needed. Our therapists and prescribers provide cohesive, collaborative care in a supportive team environment to assist patient recovery and optimum outcomes.

FINANCIALS

Fiscal Year 2022 was again a year of opportunities and challenges, as new variants prolonged the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the staffing shortage persisted, we increased in-person services, and received key grant funding. We have a resilient staff, and they continue to adapt to the ever changing mental health landscape.

We are continuing to operate in the hybrid model, with increased in-person services as we re-opened the Woodland Park location in Q3 and the Moreno location in Q4.

In September 2021, we received a $3.7 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This grant is for Fiscal Year 2022 and Fiscal Year 2023, and benefits many areas of the organization, including care coordination, establishing high quality telehealth services and peer support services, and re-opening the Unity House clubhouse.

We were also awarded $1.3 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act for Fiscal Year 2022. CARES Act funds were used to offset operating losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic and allowed us to maintain access to care despite another challenging year.

As we head into Fiscal Year 2023, we will continue to focus on hiring and retaining staff, improving access to the community and long-term sustainability.

CLIENT EXPERIENCE AND VOICE

The psychiatric/mental health clinician who I have is consistently kind, understanding & supportive while providing helpful guidance for my daily life including my various problems I am continuing to work on.

C.C. Google Review Moreno

STRATEGIC PRIORITIES

Over the past year, each leader of Diversus Health has played a role in the execution of the projects of our Fiscal Year 2022 Strategic Operations Plan. Our Operations plan consisted of 34 projects in five focus areas. In preparation for success, each Officer, Vice President, and Director attended a two-day Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training led by President and CEO, Adam Roberts and Vice President of Performance Improvement, Andrea Campbell. This training provided foundational project management principles that delivered practical, hands-on training concepts and techniques for leaders to utilize within their projects.

Moving into Fiscal Year 2023, we have identified 31 strategic projects within the five focus areas. Each project owner will participate in the two-day Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training and closely adhere to the project management principles learned to ensure the success of each project.

SERVICE AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

The work within the Service and Program Development focus area for Fiscal Year 2022 was directed at aligning Diversus Health’s delivery model with its vision, goals, and overall strategy to best meet community needs. Strategic initiatives focused on continuing to increase access to communities we serve by implementing a new Standby Lobby to cover no-show appointments and fill open appointments, creating a “digital-first” roadmap and strategy, and developing and implementing new Care Coordination and Peer Support structures.

For Fiscal Year 2023, we will continue our emphasis on access to care that is in alignment with consumer and payer needs, focusing this year on integrated physical, behavioral, and social services that are also efficient.

QUALITY OUTCOMES AND VALUE

A focal point for Diversus Health over the past Fiscal Year has been fostering a data driven and value-based measurement culture. Key outcomes for the strategic initiatives within this focus area include the creation of an automated process for referrals to Case Management, Primary Care Provider tracking for the organization increasing to 70% of clients, and training over 84% of our leaders on trauma-informed care practices.

As we move into Fiscal Year 2023, we will continue to build on these improvements by developing key performance indicators, technology infrastructure, and operating processes that use data to drive quality outcomes.

BRANDING AND IDENTITY

As we moved forward from the development of a new brand and identity, initiatives included clarifying the brand to support the vision and strategy, and earn buy-in and support from staff, patients, and the community. Key outcomes included measuring and demonstrating a positive return-on-investment (ROI), more focused and strategically planned internal communications, and mechanisms built to capture the voice of the customer.

As we continue to build off of the brand development, we will expand marketing initiatives to create opportunities for development of new services and value-based contracts.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Our strategic work around financial management is focused on being strong financial stewards of the resources we have been entrusted with to support its longterm mission of meeting the community’s behavioral health needs. Key findings included detection of systemic issues that inhibited an increase of the number of clients served, identification of system capacity for all core services, and not being afraid to uncover “negative” data and utilizing Lean methodologies to improve it.

Moving into Fiscal Year 2023, we will continue to focus on long-term financial sustainability by growing revenues through increasing value of service and diversifying income.

OUR PEOPLE

The services that Diversus Health provides to our community would not be possible without the people who provide them. Our Fiscal Year 2022 focus included data-driven processes to attract and retain outstanding team members. Key outcomes include processes to collect data around turnover and retention. We also completed changes in our information systems to begin to capture diversity data of our clients and employees.

For Fiscal Year 2023, we will focus on building a workforce that exercises the highest standards of corporate citizenship, reflects the growing needs of Diversus Health, and is measured by high employee engagement, satisfaction, retention, and community involvement.

CLIENT EXPERIENCE AND VOICE

My therapist Sarah is amazing and has helped me in the darkest days of the last few years. My psych doctor is amazing too. I have helped myself so much by voluntarily seeking help from this clinic.

J.W. Google Review Moreno

HIGHLIGHTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ADMINISTRATION (SAMHSA) GRANT

Diversus Health was awarded a $3,716,992 Community Mental Health Centers grant from SAMHSA. The two-year award for COVID Recovery and Resilience began in September, 2021. The funds are being used to reinstate the Unity House Clubhouse program, add additional RN care managers, establish a more robust care coordination program that includes peer support services, support mobile crisis response to local area schools, establish high-quality telehealth services, and support our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts across the organization. In the first year of the grant project:

Clients served through the grant program

Adults Children

MEDICAL TRAINING

This significantly exceeded our goals of serving 340 adults and 85 children.

Over the last year, the medical team has focused on partnering with educational entities to help support and train the new workforce. We have partnered with University of Colorado Medical School and Rocky Vista University to support psychiatry education for their medical students. The University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, Grand Canyon University, and University of Colorado Anschutz support Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner students and Nursing Students to complete the required clinical time. The team also began working with PIMA Medical School to support Medical Assistant rotations.

The medical team welcomed several new Physician Assistants to the team who were recent graduates of their programs. Over the last year, the psychiatric providers worked to support them in learning psychiatry and in taking on their own patients.

SAMHSA GRANT CONTINUED

UNITY HOUSE CLUBHOUSE

The clubhouse model of care aims to create an environment of support, inclusion, and engagement for those with mental illness. Extensive effort has been made to reimplement clubhouse services with true clubhouse standards and structure in place. The clubhouse is a focus for the SAMSHA grant with the goal of 45 unique clients per month by the end of grant year two. At the end of year one—September 2022—the clubhouse already served 32 unique clients, with 143 services, and continues to grow in lives served.

CARE COORDINATION

Peer programming and care coordination have also been a main focus for the SAMSHA grant. While we continue to work with our community partner, Springs Recovery Connection, in the implementation and development of our peer programming across various departments at Diversus Heath, there has been consistent peer service presence and service delivery with our Substance Use Disorder (SUD) programming. The addition of peer services to SUD has resulted in an option for community-based support and advocacy that was not present prior to implementing peer services, as well as individual and group interventions through the peer lens. Peers enhance the recovery-oriented services and options already offered by the Diversus Health SUD program.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

As the population of our region is growing more diverse, we realize how important it is to address social identity-based disparities in mental health and healthcare access. We have taken on the challenge to improve our cultural and linguistic practices to meet the needs of our diverse community.

We have partnered with AMN Healthcare Language Services to bridge the communication gaps between patients and medical professionals. This partnership will be a significant step torward improving our commitment to language-based equity of care. Interpretation will be available to any provider on demand in many world languages, including those that are spoken by minoritized populations experiencing the most dramatic challenges in access.

To improve how we serve our LGBTQ+ clients, we have partnered with Envision: You, improving LGBTQ+ mental health in Colorado. With funding support from SAMHSA, we have trained over 400 employees to understand and serve our LGBTQ+ community in their mental health and well-being needs.

HEROES IN MENTAL HEALTH

G LF Tournament

The Diversus Health Heroes in Mental Health Golf Tournament was a success! We had a great turnout of over 130 golfers and we received positive feedback from the players.

We were ultimately able to raise $10,000 for each of our three beneficiaries: Springs Recovery Connection, NAMI Colorado Springs, and Pikes Peak Suicide Prevention Partnership.

We are proud to partner with these organizations to continue to address the ever growing mental and behavioral health needs in our community.

ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

MOVE. FUEL. CONNECT.

Wellness has been active, with no plans on slowing down! The Wellness Program drove home our three pillars of health - Move. Fuel. Connect. - through a variety of activities, tools, and events. A few wellness highlights from the Fiscal Year 2022 include the addition of Wellness in New Employee Orientation, the launch of the Wellness Ambassador Program, and 53 staff participating in the first “Know Your Numbers” Campaign (Biometric Screening with Quest Diagnostics). Wellness also held its first ever “Cigna Movement Challenge,” which had 133 participants and garnered positive feedback from staff who participated. Throughout Fiscal Year 2022, Wellness represented Diversus Health at several conferences, clinics, and events hosted by our community partners. The later portion of the year was spent laying a foundation for projects to come in Fiscal Year 2023, including LaDonna Reed, Wellness Coordinator, getting certified in the InBody Scanner, the purchase and delivery of a massage chair for Lighthouse, and a partnership with HyperIce and purchase of massage tools to benefit staff. We had many wins for wellness, and we will continue to build off this momentum in Fiscal Year 2023.

Diversus Health’s Chief Clinical Officer, Katie Blickenderfer, bringing her “A” game.

Diversus Health’s President & CEO, Adam Roberts, wishing the golfers a good round.

Diversus Health Wellness Ambassadors

Lynn Shull, LaDonna Reed and Karen Morgan manningthe Diversus Health boothatthe2022Women’sExpo.

COLORADO SPIRIT TRANSITIONS TO OUTREACH PROGRAM

ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

The Outreach Program completed the Colorado Spirit grant in March 2022 and immediately moved into executing the transition from a crisis-based response to a comprehensive long-term prevention and early intervention strategy. There have been 46 warmline calls, 54 individual encounters, 79 groups, and 10 events held. The outreach team has made 217 contacts with unique partners in El Paso, Teller, and Park counties to adults and seniors, youth and schools, military, and other community resource groups. We have seen 459 people at events such as resource fairs, crisis responses, farmer’s markets, and back to school and other school events. We provided 9 evidence-based trainings on mental health and suicide prevention (Mental Health First Aid, Question Persuade Refer, Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) to 113 individuals between April and June alone, while other trainings touched 1,985 people by teaching resiliency skills to other businesses and non-profits, higher education, and local government staff.

CHILD & FAMILY PROGRAMMING SUCCESS

The Incredible Years® (IY) is a suite of prevention programs designed to increase a child’s success at school and at home by promoting positive parent, teacher, and child relationships. The program components have been shown to improve school performance, reduce child behavior problems, promote positive and consistent discipline, and support caregivers through a holistic approach involving children, parents, and teachers.

Dinosaur School is a series of interlocking, evidence-based programs for parents, children, and teachers, supported by over 30 years of research. The goal is to prevent and treat young children’s behavior problems and promote their social, emotional, and academic competence. Dinosaur School includes 60 lessons delivered 2-3 times per week. Trained teachers co-lead the lessons using life-size puppets, engaging activities, games, and video vignettes. The lessons focus on how to solve problems, control one’s anger, self-monitor one’s emotions, succeed in school, and make friends.

The average Social Competence Scale-Teacher edition total score and the average score for all subscales showed statistically significant, positive changes from pre to post-test for Dinosaur School students supported by Diversus Health during the 2021-2022 school year.

ADDITIONAL

ATU & CRISIS CENTER REFLOW

In Fiscal Year 2022, we addressed several client flow inefficiencies. Our leadership team, along with our Organizational Psychologist met for a productive Kaizen event to discuss ideas around redesigning the Lighthouse location to reduce waste in the client flow and improve trauma-informed care standards for our crisis system. The Lighthouse location layout and flow were adjusted to move clients through the process more efficiently, as well as create a more welcoming and inviting environment from the moment they step through the Lighthouse doors. We received excellent feedback from the Behavioral Health Administration, stating our facility was one of the nicest they have seen in the state of Colorado.

CLIENT EXPERIENCE AND VOICE

I think Diversus Health is absolutely amazing. They help anyway they can and I think it’s a blessing having people like this around.

J.D. Google Review Ruskin

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The work of the Board is to serve as trustees for the people of El Paso, Park and Teller Counties in guiding organizational performance. The Board governs with a style that emphasizes outward vision rather than an internal preoccupation, encouragement of diversity in viewpoints, strategic leadership more than administrative detail, clear distinction of Board and CEO roles, collective rather than individual decisions, future rather than past or present, and being proactive rather than reactive.

Steve Everson

Board Member

Shawn Raintree Vice-Chairman of the Board

Matthew Hudson Board Member

Dawna Haynes

Board Member

Geoff Wright Board Member

Cathy Skiles Chairman of the Board

Adam Roberts President & CEO

Brian Burns Board Member

Lisa Noble Board Member

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