Taking our Mental Health & Substance Use Urgent Care virtual and 24/7

we opened uh virtual urgent care after the covered 19 pandemic in march because we wanted to provide virtual services to our community that was obviously very panicked and worried we felt that would be the the quickest way and it's proven to be a very effective way we were aware that the epidemic was starting to rage in new york city and we knew we had to be prepared in orange county so our transition from on-site traditional services to off-site telephone and video-based services and behavioral health was literally an overnight transformation our therapist took to it like fish to water it's quite an accomplishment to go from seeing 5000 people in an office-based setting to then overnight literally next day seeing 5 000 people virtually the benefits of adding virtual services to behavioral health services in general is it gives people the opportunity to get a taste of what therapy may look like we've had people that would you know didn't feel comfortable at first and after calling in for a while they found the service to be quite useful they continued to come and that was in the beginning in march and here we are four months later and they're still making their weekly appointments you know sometimes they call in just to say hello and i say thank you and it's kind of cool it really is uh just immediate access like picking up the phone and calling and i think for many individuals who have not wanted to come in person or fail anxiety literally is receiving services from their own home so the therapists are all working out of dining rooms and spare bedrooms they work sometimes using their own computers their own phones it was a very generous action on the part of our staff this has opened up a whole new avenue to getting more people that need mental health services mental health services we've not only been able to attend to the needs of our community but we've also seen an increase in

patients remaining in treatment with us the retention rate has definitely increased and that's been pretty great to see this has been a real godsend because what used to be a crisis that would escalate over the course of a week is now something that we're catching that same day and working with somebody on so virtual services has been an amazing thing for us in the community to come out of this crisis