Bridge Counseling Associates a nonprofit agency and certified community behavioral health clinic is based in Las Vegas – in Clark County, Nevada.
Since there was a need to provide services in rural communities where professional behavioral health services are virtually unavailable, Bridge provided services through telehealth.
Bridge analyzed a few HIPAA-compliant telehealth programs. It found Zoom’s the best and most cost-effective for the agency’s purposes.
Two years back, Bridge was called to provide temporary behavioral health services in Elko County, Nevada, which is a rural, frontier county. It has a population of less than 53,000 located in the northernmost region of the state.
Bridge had its eight clinicians provide telehealth technology for a limited period when the agency was aware that its future plans included expansion of telehealth services in the entire state.
This work in Elko County was successful and prepared Bridge for the COVID-19 pandemic.
David Robeck, president and CEO of Bridge Counseling Associates mentioned that when they began providing telehealth solutions, the primary concern was to assure that the telemedicine technology should be simple to use along with HIPAA compliance.
This work is sensitive since clinicians deal with personal lives and thoughts of vulnerable people so that they can screen, assess, diagnose, give patient-centered and evidence-based treatment.
They have 50 dual-licensed clinicians and extend services in different languages like, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, German, French and Urdu.
Thus, the chosen telehealth program had to be language-friendly and culturally sensitive.
Majority of Bridge’s clients are socioeconomically challenged. Also, they have minimal experience in using computers and practically none with any two-way video technology.
Infact, most of its clinicians had minimal or no experience working with two-way video technology either.
While only one or two had experience in doing assessments or providing treatment online.
Working with another nonprofit agency in Elko County, Bridge Counseling could schedule and engage clients where each one had privacy and appropriate technology. Instead of choosing to have one clinician to become expert at providing telehealth, Bridge chose to have eight clinicians to share the work and learn to provide telehealth services.
The agency selected senior clinicians who had Nevada mental health licenses, including marriage and family therapists, licensed clinical social workers and clinical professional counselors too. Each clinician was a licensed alcohol and drug counselor.
Bridge Counseling Associates was awarded $91,460 for laptops, cameras, software licenses, internet service and telehealth equipment earlier this year.
This was meant for expanding telehealth capabilities during the COVID-19 emergency and to continue providing mental health and substance abuse treatment, medical wellness services and psychiatric care including for those who currently have, or are recovering from, COVID-19.