← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Yerachmiel (Richard) Stern, L.C.S.W., Executive Director of Pesach Tikvah
00:15:00
Loading summary
Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by the brilliant CEO of a leading mental health not for profit that operates out of New York. Thrilled to be joined by Richard Stern. Richard, take a moment and tell us about yourself and the organization.
- [00:21]
B
Okay. No, thank you for having me. Yeah. So our organization has been around 43 years. We started out in 1983, one of the originals of our kind. We kind of saw the mental health need, you know, decades, decades prior. And I personally, my journey has been an interesting one. I began in the organization roughly 18 years ago as a, as a year one, first year intern, social work, internal interning in our, at the time, community residence, mental health facility, a group home, a community residence. And I was a year one intern. From there I went on to be a year two, and from there a therapist. And onward about 11 years ago, we chose to open up two new clinics, you know, and from there I've been a director and proving myself and building the company and making systems more fluid and really building morale is the key, and building relationships and knowing how to nurture relationships eventually landed me the CEO position about a year and a half ago.
- [01:39]
A
Amazing. Yeah. So 18 years into the journey, your CEO, that is a good number. And good luck. And that's fantastic, Richard. And talk to us a little bit about how is the organization grown and what are you most. What trends are you watching in mental health? Seems like mental health in general is somewhat overwhelmed in our country. Talk a little bit about what you see in the mental health side and what you're most focused on.
- [02:10]
B
We're most focused on, I mean, the state, and I think rightfully so, is actually for a change, pushing holistic model. And we're really liking that. Not always, you know, do you get things from, you know, sort of Capitol Hill, if you will, that kind of makes sense on the ground, but every now and again, things actually make sense. So we're, we're going more. Mental health is going more in a holistic, you know, capacity. It's going in that, in that direction. I can explain what that even looks like. But what we're most focused on is we're treating the entire family when needed, whether it's the parents, the couples, just tackling different enclaves of a family, whether it's the child, whether it's parenting, whether it's a couple's engagement, whether it's group therapy. So we're very classic mental health centric, like the good old fashioned psychotherapy style. I mean, we have a Lot of the, you know, innovative, you know, new age modalities, which are basically rebundlings of the old modalities, like everything else in life. But that's our, those are very, those are our key focuses at the moment.
- [03:36]
A
In how much of the, of the business comes through governmental pay versus direct private pay. What does it look like in terms of the mental health sort of the business that you're in, and what are the issues you're seeing the most of?
- [03:52]
B
Well, when you ask issues, you're talking about mental health issues or more from a payment business angle?
- [04:00]
A
We'd love to hear both, quite frankly. Right. What are you seeing mostly from a mental health perspective and what are the big issues you're seeing from a business perspective?
- [04:08]
B
Right, okay. So from a mental health perspective, I think you have people who are struggling. I think as you see the world in like a macro sense, it comes, they come into the clinic. You know, it's quite the microcosm in the clinic. I mean, you have people who really, I mean, they're healthy. They wouldn't strike you as the big misnomer out there is like, oh, you know, this is, this is like not a real thing. You know, people look okay, they look okay and they are okay. But, you know, mental health takes a left turn when people just struggle to feel valued, to feel like there's hope, to feel like there's, there's, there's, there's, there's hope. Not there's something to live for, but there's something and hope to live for, you know, something better on the horizon. What better is relative to that particular family or that particular person. And what I'm seeing is that people are hopeless. They're hopeless for a litany of things. I think some of it is out of a mental health, Mental health clinic's control to resolve that. But there, people are coming in. Now. How does that manifest in different. You're seeing more suicidal ideation these days due to that. You know, if mental health struggles are ignored long enough, they're, you know, psychosis and different things sort of come out of the woodwork when, when, when, when issues aren't addressed in a preventative capacity. I mean, it kind of, as we get to know mental health more keenly, it, it kind of mirrors, you know, classic, you know, the classic medical field in a sense. You know, it's, it, there's a preventative element to it. And if you zone in on that, you're going to prevent things. And if you don't zone in on that, you're dealing with a bigger problem that becomes, I hate to say it, unresolvable. It can be managed and maintained but sometimes it's a chronic issue that's, that's unresolvable. You know, I mean again, it could be, you know, mitigated and you know, sort of muted with medication and whatnot. But so you know, as far that's, that's as far, I mean broad stroke, that's, you know, the mental health, you know, you have a lot of teens that are, you know, just you know, doing the arms reach, comforting mechanism, you know, a lot of vaping, a lot of. And these are again not to knock these things isolatedly but sometimes these things are gateways also. So you know, if you knew, if you can see the future and say this is, this is where it starts and ends, you may sign for that. But when you know that this is just the starting point and this is going to end, you know, beyond. It worries you, it worries you. So you're seeing a lot of that as far as on the business end. I mean people, people rely on their health insurance for mental health. Now it's not a private pay industry by any means. There's no, the concept of going to a private practitioner and paying for it is not something that sells to the masses. So people rely on their health insurance and the health insurances are doing a much better job of accepting this reality. But you know, as a non for profit mental health organization, we accept everybody. Whether you, you could pay the copay, whether you can't, whether you have a managed care plan that covers or it doesn't. You hope and pray that you know, you have those people and you don't turn them away, but that they don't come in droves. I mean if they exist, they should come in droves but, but if they don't exist, you hope and pray that you know, the insurance is right. You know, we'll get calls or we'll get at activists who give us cases and you know, our first answer is we're in, we're taking the case. We, you know, we're here to help. And then we, you know, there's the backroom hope of like, let's hope the insurance pans out. And so I mean, I guess that's like a, like an er, ideology of in a sense and you know, the state may argue correctly that this is a lot, you know, a lot more cost efficient. You know, we're, we're cheaper to, you know, outlay the service than they would be. So but again, that's where the business element plays a role. Now we do get government grants and that helps. But then again these grants ask asks us to do things and those things cost money as well. So the grants don't just, you know, flush us with enough, you know, you know, liquidity to handle these issues. The grants sort of put us to work on other fronts which, that's what they're supposed to do. So again, obviously once, once you have an infusion of funds, you know, you're, you're in a better state. But the grants do, and if you want to do the grants right, they, they almost don't make, they're not a money maker, they're just literally startup money. So you know, that's how the, you know, that's how we're funded. Those are basically the business struggles of eight and yeah, I mean, but you know, so far I think another thing I'd mention if you, if you know, so a little bit of my op ed piece is that I think, and I don't know the answer to this but it's my opinion, mental health, it's a slow cook of knowledge. It's, it's a muscle memory in terms of people who know it and run it. I think today you've had a lot of people jump on this bandwagon because it's the end thing and almost like a piece of real estate and they get into it and they're like new to it and you can tell that yes, you know, they're serving people and hopefully people are being helped. But you really have to be in it many years and see and watch the evolving of it to really know how this, how it really works and how it's successful and how the modern day iterations of it should be applied. And I see today, now it's become the in thing. A lot of new providers come on the scene and they're really like, you can tell it's a, it's a third language to them and it shows, it shows to the clients, it shows across. So just putting, putting that out there. But you know, we're again, we're the slow cook 40 years people.
- [10:50]
A
So yeah, no, I absolutely love that. And just talk for one more second about what advice would you get to somebody give to somebody who's in it, who's leading a not for profit, leading a business. Emerging leaders. What advice would you give to emerging leaders?
- [11:09]
B
You know, I'll give interesting advice. Everything. You know, we have access, you know, if you want to borrow any elements from sports, there's A lot of technology out there, a lot of analytics out there. And I think this seeps into the nonprofit corporate world. And, you know, you can get caught up on surveys and measures and you can just get stuck, you know, sitting in front of a spreadsheet, if you will, and just analyzing everything. And then you meet people and it's just like as much as you think it's primary to the, you know, spreadsheet, but really it's secondary. You're just believing what you're watching on the back of the card, so to speak. I say, you know, these leadership positions are 75% relationship based. And really, whether it's the executive's position or the, or the COO's position, the objective is to really, in this modern day build a customized. Every employee kind of needs their own trimmings of customization. It could fit within a broader, you know, sort of doctrine. But the old way was, it was just, you know, this is our work flow, this is our work schedule. And you know, today, you know, you got the remote stuff and you got all these other enclaves of things that you, you can't just follow like, you know, two, three ideas that used to work. You have to have many other arrangements and really understand, you almost have to understand the person's family dynamic, the person's, you know, married, single, what age bracket they're in. And if you understand that, you'll know what they're asking for, why they're asking for it, and you'll be able to take that into account. But it honestly, it's relationships based. I think a lot of people still miss that. They always view the employee. Oh, they're just, you know, black and white. They're taking advantage or asking it. No, they're not asking. You have to understand what they're asking. You have to understand their life circumstance. And if you create a culture that's not intimidating and not kind of biting, you won't even have jealousy amongst employees. To employees a little bit. Yeah. But for the most part, the jealousy piece is not you being compassionate to someone's needs. The jealousy piece is an overall work environment piece. If you have a very kind, forgiving work environment, the employee themselves will know why that employee has this arrangement and they have that arrangement. They won't even, they may care a drop, but they really won't care on a level that will, you know, sort of erode the morale. So I don't know, you know, that's kind of the, that's how I've been working. And you know, in my job here, really, as director already, which was like 10 years and talking a year and a half now of CEO. This has been and quite frankly, it's brought a lot of optimization. Like, we've optimized things tremendously with this model. And, you know, I'm sure people are doing this around the country, but we've been doing this, we've tapped into this, and, you know, it's created a tremendous work environment.
- [14:29]
A
It's a tremendous take. And, Richard, I want to thank you for joining us today on the Becker Healthcare Podcast. Just a real pleasure to visit with you. Thank you very, very much for joining us.
- [14:41]
B
You're welcome. Take care.