(upbeat music) - Welcome to Business Forward, I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, it's gonna be a good one everybody, Ted Bender.

Ted is the President of UnityPoint Health - UnityPlace.

Welcome, Ted.

- Thank you for having me, Matt.

- Let's start off with you.

You're a clinical psychologist.

We are just talking, you've lived all over.

You've got your MBA, but obviously the job brought you to Central Illinois.

It's, I'm just gonna say it again.

I said it the last few shows.

It's refreshing to see people come to Central Illinois and wanting to move to our region.

- Absolutely, I was working in Dallas at the time when the job of president of UnityPlace came across my desk.

And I was really attracted to the opportunity for a few reasons, but the main reason was the coming together of three great storied franchises here in Peoria.

The Human Service Center, the Tazwood Center for Wellness, and the Methodist UnityPoint Behavioral Health Division.

I really saw just a fantastic opportunity here to really work on what I think is one of the bigger problems in mental health, the fractured nature of mental health delivery in this country.

And, I hadn't been in the North for quite some time as I was telling you, but me and my family have just absolutely loved living in Peoria, and it's just a great place to settle down with a family.

- Yeah, and we talk a lot about how Central Illinois was a major manufacturing, and still is, but really it's turning into not just ag, not just manufacturing, but healthcare.

The healthcare is big right now.

UnityPoint's a player.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- And you've got a good leader.

- We do, we do, Dr. Knepp has been incredible throughout this 2020 pandemic and into 2021.

I'm very grateful for his leadership.

- Yeah, what exactly is UnityPlace?

- So thanks for asking.

So again, it's the merger of three just fantastic companies here in Central Illinois that have been working in the mental health and substance use disorder field for decades.

And the merger brought together a really grand opportunity.

It brought together all levels of care.

So we can take a patient on his worst day and someone who has been admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit, we can work to help stabilize them, begin therapy process, and then transition them into outpatient care once they leave that facility and continue that treatment maybe long-term or depending on the patient's needs.

And I really believe that that gap between inpatient and outpatient, is where we lose the most amount of people.

And I believe that that is the area of focus that is much needed right now.

And with UnityPlace, we have all of those, all of those levels of care under one umbrella.

It's a unique opportunity.

- I think what's interesting, and you said the coming together of other groups too is really, that's true collaboration when you talk about it.

'Cause people talk about collaboration all the time, but they, I always say that people really don't even know what that means.

- Yeah, I think that the wisdom and the leadership of these three different companies they saw, they saw the future.

I think that they saw the unique opportunity and the chance to make a real difference here in Central Illinois.

And that's really what drove them all together.

Now it's all about integration and execution.

- Alright, okay, so with the three, is that mainly adult services or are all encompassing?

- Yeah, we're all encompassing.

I mean, we have services for children and adolescents, lots of adult services that we even, we service geriatric patients, 65 and older for serious mental health disorders as well.

- Yeah, I wanna talk, I'm gonna get to the gaps in a minute because I've got a lot of questions about that, and lack of beds, and lack of psychiatrists.

I'm gonna get to that in a second.

But I heard you say, this was a quote of yours, "One of the things in my career that I've always thought was lacking, is that there's just pieces of the continuum of treatment that was missing."

That's what you're saying.

Those gaps, how many gaps are there?

Like multiple?

- Yeah, I read a study recently.

45,000 patients who went through in-patient level psychiatric lockdown type services, nationwide 45,000.

And you can imagine the different scenarios that bring people to that level of care.

If you're going to lockdown inpatient psychiatric facility, you're not having a good day.

Most of the time it's because of imminent suicide risk, a suicide attempt, homicidality, or inactive psychotic behaviors.

And the study showed that out of all people, out of all the 45,000 people in this scenario, only 30% of them ever show up to their first outpatient appointment.

So you're losing 70% of those patients in that gap.

And we need to do a much better job of ensuring that they normally get to that first appointment but they continue their treatment, because let's face it.

An inpatient stay for five to seven days, it's not gonna cure the problem.

- Right, I was reading something recently.

Take for example, somebody that's got a major drug addiction.

I mean, that isn't a 30-day plan.

- [Ted] No.

- I mean, you're talking a year or more.

- Easily.

- Easily.

- The statistics and the research back that up completely.

Most of the extant literature shows a very clear line of a minimum of 90 days for a severe substance use disorder, minimum.

But like you just said, the real real benefit is gonna be a year to a year and a half in a solid program of recovery.

Now that doesn't mean all inpatient care.

It's outpatient, it's groups, it's therapy, it's support groups, medication assisted therapy, whatever the case may be for that patient.

But you're right a year to a year and a half.

- So, so let's say you take somebody that's on heroin or something like that, and they want, they know they need help.

And you said a lot of them don't show up for that first appointment.

How do you get them there?

- That's a great question.

And that's something that we're working on right now.

I have this, this vision of creating a kind of care coordination model where we have a large group of individual employees working as a unit to do nothing but that fix that gap.

So an example would be, let's say I have 20 people doing this job.

They're on the inpatient units constantly, scurrying back and forth, working with therapists and doctors on discharge planning.

Then they're getting ready for discharge, day of discharge.

We're following up to make sure that they get to that appointment.

They don't go, they don't show up.

We call, they don't answer.

We call family if they have consent, they don't answer.

We go to their house and we knock on their door.

They answer, I couldn't get a ride.

No problem, I'll drive you here right now.

That kind of tenacious follow through, I think is what's gonna be needed to make a big difference.

- So there's a lot of talk.

I'm just not even really looking at my questions right now because I think this conversation could go a million different directions but, and I wanna tie it back into business towards the end but I'm struggling with, if you take homelessness as an example, and there's a lot of mental health issues or drug issues, whatever it may be, how do you identify the people that don't even know what the next steps are?

- Yeah, and mentioning homelessness as a key part of it you can have the best aftercare plan in the world laid out.

But if they don't have their absolute bottom of the pyramid needs met, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, homelessness, or a residence or a safe place to go, what can you really expect them to do beyond that?

So part of that, that goal or that mission I was talking about would be to help them find stable housing.

I mean, that would be step one in my mind.

- Yeah, and you used a word that I think gets thrown to the side a lot, is safe.

That safety piece people are thinking of and in non-profit worlds that safety is number one and everything that we do, so, alright.

So UnityPoint Health, it's a system, is this a Peoria led effort or is this a systemwide effort?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

And all of the different regions within UnityPoint have their own behavioral health and substance use disorders division, some bigger, some smaller.

We're definitely one of the larger ones in the system.

So we all have some of those services available.

And lately we have created a system based model for putting together consistency of care best practices and things like that.

That initiative just got started.

- Yeah, and the reason why I say it is because I'm thinking of Central Illinois but a lot of what we're talking about is just nationwide or even worldwide.

- [Ted] Absolutely.

- But I'm thinking of the State of Illinois, there's just a lot of issues here.

An interesting stat just in children that are in the system, so to speak, there's 23,500 kids in the system.

Now think about that.

And, and you're thrown out 45,000 on a study and it's just tough.

So all of the groups that merged together and now they're one, you've obviously got a strategic plan in place and you're sitting here and implementing that plan, it looks like that you came here a couple of years ago.

Where are you at in the process right now?

- Yeah, so, earlier, I got here January 2nd, 2020.

And I definitely came in with a strong plan and what I was gonna do, and it's like Mike Tyson famously says, "Everyone has got a plan until you get punched in the mouth."

And that's really what it felt like.

I know probably for you as well.

And we had to adjust, obviously.

And for many people, for many different systems early on in COVID, we know it was very reactionary.

We didn't know what we were handling.

We were all novices in the COVID war.

I think we're all grizzled veterans at this point.

But we had to make a lot of adjustments on the flight.

So I had to change a lot of my plans.

It's a recent merger, so we had, my plan was focused very much on continued integration through 2020.

Some of those plans had to go by the wayside.

We had to cut back in certain areas.

But I tell my team all the time, if guys, if we did nothing else in 2020, but keep the doors open, that would be an incredibly successful year.

We did a lot more than keep the doors open, but, and I commend my team and all the people working in any place for the work they do.

- Yeah, and like you said, that strong team and the issues are always gonna be there.

- Yes.

- So let's talk about some of these core issues that I'm just gonna say are statewide because from the business I am in at children's home, we're lacking psychiatrist, but that's just not an issue at where I'm at, it's issues everywhere.

- Yeah, and regarding children, I haven't confirmed this, but I did read recently where they showed the need of child psychiatrist in this nation per 100,000 children.

So just children not adults.

Per 100,000 children, they identified the need of 40 child psychiatrists per 100,000 in the United States, which seems reasonable.

The actual number is four to 100,000 right now.

- [Matt] Wow.

- I know you're feeling it.

- And we're feeling it- - Yeah, and I think in this region we're definitely feeling it.

And we definitely have backups, in the child psychiatry region.

It's a very difficult recruit and we need a tremendously, a tremendous increase in child psychiatry, but also with adults as well.

- It's everywhere.

So how do you recruit them?

I mean, it's not just money.

How do you get them to come to Illinois?

- When I first got here, I met a lot of people and I was going around town, I was meeting people, neighbors, colleagues.

And the first question that always came to my mind, or people's tongues were, "Oh, why would you move to this weather?

Why would you move to this winter?

All of the winters are terrible."

I think sometimes pure Koreans.

And here we gotta get out of our own way a little bit.

I love living here.

I think it's a great place to live.

I think it's a great place to raise kids.

I think the schools are good, the people are great.

It's a fun, friendly atmosphere.

And once everything gets back open and running again, when I first got here I was going to hockey games and basketball games every weekend, it was great.

I was having a blast, but I think that part of what you're asking is how do we recruit to this region?

Is we gotta start talking about PR in a very positive way.

- That's exactly right.

That pessimistic attitude drives me nuts, but it's there.

And every group that I'm a part of here in Central Illinois, it's brought up talking about bringing people to the region.

And healthcare is one of these driving forces that is going to continue to bring people.

But this lack of psychiatry is really critical.

- I Agree.

- So we need to fix that.

So let's do it together.

- [Ted] Yeah.

- That's what we need to do.

So let's apply all of these mental health issues and apply it to this pandemic.

Because you've got businesses that are now forming, you've got businesses closing, you've got people that are positive because the vaccinations are out, where from a mental health standpoint is our communities?

- I think about this topic and talk about this all the time.

And when I first started talking on this subject I wanted to know if there was any research on past pandemics that we could draw from.

I think I know where we're going here and what's gonna happen, and the SARS pandemic from the early 2000s is a really good example of what was experienced then in other parts of the world.

And what did they find?

A significant increase in post-traumatic stress disorder.

Especially frontline workers and people who worked on SARS units.

And it got worse if you worked on the SARS unit, and also if you contracted SARS working on those units.

Higher levels of PTSD, anxiety, depression, increases in suicide in people 65 and older, 30% increase.

So we have some knowledge of what's coming.

And I would argue that this is gonna be way more impactful than SARS was.

So as much as I to say it, I feel like there is a giant tsunami of a mental health crisis that's already here and it's rushing towards us at a thousand miles an hour and it will be here for years to come.

- Yeah, and that really from a business standpoint, from a leadership standpoint really changes how CEOs and directors and you name it, presidents of companies handle their employees, right?

And, yeah, go ahead.

- I think if there's any positives, I mean, it's really hard to find any positives of this.

But if one thing comes from this that companies, not just mental health or medical or whatever, if companies start paying attention not only to their employees' physical health, but just as importantly, their mental health, that will be one positive that comes from this.

- Yeah, so what can a business do when they know they have an employee struggling?

Because, or let's just say an addiction.

Let's, 10 years ago you'd sit there and you'd have a drug test and say, "There's the door".

- Yeah, pretty much and it's still similar in most companies these days.

- But that can't continue.

- I agree of course, I worked my first 10 years of my career in nothing but addiction and there's that bias around people who suffer from addiction.

They're all bad people who made bad choices.

But I can tell you much more the norm than the exception that a lot of people who suffer from severe SUD or substance use disorders had very abusive childhoods.

They were physically, emotionally, sexually abused, they witnessed significant amounts of trauma, they saw their family members using constantly.

And then what do we do?

They grow up, they now have an addictive problem, surprised, and what do we do?

We blame the victim.

It's never made much sense to me.

It's going back to your question about, in the workplace if someone is discovered, if someone has severe depression and they reach out at work, we're gonna plug them into EAP services or whatever's going on.

And it really should be the very similar process with addiction.

- Yeah, and I think about it the older I get, and the more I'm in my position, I think about it more.

And I think that compassion piece has to be there more often.

And I don't think it's there.

- [Ted] No, I don't either.

- So what can businesses do to get more educated in this space?

- Well, I think first they have to have a desire to do so.

Once they have the desire to really take on this challenge, then learning about it, bringing in consulting teams, bringing in experts in the field and then setting up directives within the company, I think that's probably a little bit easier.

But I think we just have to get over the stigma piece first.

- Yeah, I just think it's hard because it's almost like you wait until it slaps you in your face.

You're not proactive as a boss taking care of this issue.

And I think you've heard more about mental health issues in the past three years than you did the previous 15?

- [Ted] Yep.

- [Matt] But how can we educate people more?

And I think what you're saying you're gonna be doing at UnityPlace.

- Yeah, and also I don't think we spend nearly enough time on preventative education either.

And that starts again in the kids.

I don't see nearly enough of that.

We spend so much time reacting to something that's already happened.

Whereas we also need to put as just as much effort into preventing it from happening in the first place.

- I'm glad you brought that up because this is a pet peeve reminder and with nonprofits, especially for youth, is, these kids are already behind the eight ball.

And then you take a crisis or death of parents or they get thrown into a system, and really you're just sitting here.

And even though each individual child should be his or her own case, so it's a lot of times they're just lumped together.

And it bothers me as someone that's in the business.

It's always bothered me.

But I don't know if there's an answer to it either.

- Yeah.

I can't pretend I know the answer either at this point.

I mean, it usually boils down to a lack of resources, funding sources, I know you can speak to this much better than I can.

- Yeah, well, you mentioned something earlier about transportation.

I mean, I hear that on a daily basis.

Transportation right now and we had, I'm gonna give you an example.

I want your opinion on it, from a medical opinion on it.

So let's say you have a program like Foster Care and your caseworkers are in those homes, they check on the child, they make sure the child's safe, they make sure the family is safe, the safety plans are put into place and then all of a sudden the pandemic hits and you're not allowed to go into the home.

So have you seen an uptick of violence or an uptick of abuse coming through the hospital system because of what's happened?

- We know that domestic violence increased a lot during the pandemic.

Interestingly enough, we saw a decrease in childhood domestic violence or children being abused.

On the surface, you think, oh, great news.

But really what was going on was they weren't in school and schools are where they get reported quite a bit.

And the teachers and the staff notice bruises or whatever.

And so the reporting went down because they were stuck at home more.

So yeah, we saw an increase in domestic violence, significant increases in substance use disorders.

And whether or not we can record it or not I'm assuming there's probably a significant increase in childhood abuse as well.

- Yeah, and just like with Peoria public schools, the kids just got back full-time this past week.

So you're probably gonna see a shift like you said.

- I would not be surprised, I even predicted.

- Alright, so what other highlights of UnityPlaces?

I mean go more into what else you do?

- Yeah, so we have a ton of different services.

And I'm really excited about what we're doing and where we're headed.

It's the first chance that I've had really to kind of formulate the different things I've always dreamed of doing in this space.

We're gonna continue to integrate, continue to improve efficiency, all of the things you normally do.

And can increase capacity significantly because I see the demand continuing to rise for some time.

But we're also gonna be doing other cool things.

I've already created a grant department.

We had some grants and it was kind of scattered but now we have a significant department led by Stephanie Germack, and she is incredible, just going after everything that's coming our way.

That is gonna also morph into a research department.

So I spent a lot of my early career doing research, suicide research, with the Military and the VA, as a Civilian Liaison, and the Military Suicide Research Consortium.

And I wanna bring that level of scientific advancement here to Central Illinois as well.

I mean, we have a ton of patients and a lot of people will be willing to volunteer for different types of studies.

And I really wanna get into the research space to advance the science.

- Go back to grants for a minute.

Have you seen an uptick of grant availability because of mental health is the hot topic right now?

- It certainly seems that way.

I'd have to really go back to see if it's actually more or less but it seems like grant opportunities keep coming across my desk very frequently.

And I continue to forward it onto the grant department and we're kind of picking and choosing which ones we're going after, but it certainly feels that way.

- Yeah, and so from a recruiting standpoint what types of people would you need to come in as you look at your strategic initiative?

- Yeah, we actually have a ton of opportunity right now.

Of course in this region we're always looking for nurses.

Nurses are a tough hire for everybody right now.

And if you look across the nation nurses are leaving the profession at record rates.

So that's a little bit scary.

We're also looking for licensed master's level clinicians and therapists, but we're also looking for bachelor's level case managers, and people without bachelor's degrees to do other certain kinds of jobs, especially around some of these big grants that we're gonna be going after.

- Yeah, and you talk about nurses.

It's, I talk all the time about getting young people to understand the mission piece of it, because anybody can go out and go do whatever they wanna do but once you see the work that a lot of us do on a daily basis, and you say, I always say I have 500 good stories and 500 average stories.

And those stories really just kind of tell a story of the potential of getting more young people in our business.

And I think that's a, that needs to be a focus of hospitals, nonprofits, and so on.

So lastly, what I do as a business owner to be more compassionate and be more understanding of someone's, I guess crisis in their own.

- Yeah, I think this is something that I took from our leader, Dr. Knepp, very early on in this.

And he said a phrase that I'll probably butcher it here.

But it was something like, default to grace in this scenario.

We were all going through this in our own ways.

Everybody is dealing with their own kinds of stressors.

A lot of people have lost loved ones to this pandemic.

It's not just, it's stressful and hard.

People are dying, half a million people in this country alone.

So that's always the model that I'm trying to default to right now.

People are going through this in different ways.

I'm just kind of defaulting to giving grace.

But to your other point of your question, it's all about awareness.

If you're running a company right now and you're at the top and you're not really informed on mental health care and mental health issues, especially with your own people or what they might be going through, or you don't have any resources available to them especially now, that's where I would start.

It really is your responsibility to get educated and then implement these types of programs.

- Yeah, I think awareness is key.

And I think I talk about all the time about having the passion for your job but the compassion for each other, because you don't know what's going on in your household or the person next to you.

And you have a lot of employees and a great team there.

So we appreciate you coming on the show.

I mean, this was awesome.

It's something that I want to continue talking about because this topic is not going away.

- No, I agree.

- And we need to all work together.

And one other thing, Debbie Simon, who was the former CEO, she kind of took this and ran with it and Dr. Knepp hired you, and you're a good man and welcome to Central Illinois.

So we appreciate it.

- Thank you very much.

- And we are going to work together to make sure that we make an impact for all these kids, because kids become adults.

- [Ted] It's gonna take all of us to do it.

- It is.

Well, it has been a good show, another edition of Business Forward.

I'm Matt George, and we'll see you next time.

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