WARWICK – The future of a Thrive Behavioral Health facility that offers Rhode Island's only "clubhouse" rehabilitation model is in jeopardy after state changes have left the center without a funding stream.
The nonprofit's Hillsgrove House lost its usual financial source when the R.I. Office of Health and Human Services implemented a change that prevents the organization from billing Medicaid, said Dawn Allen, president and CEO of Thrive.
Thrive is now requesting $500,000 from the state to keep the facility open. Allen spoke on the proposal last night at a R.I. House of Representatives Finance Committee Meeting.
Allen told Providence Business News that Thrive learned about the funding loss when the state health department abruptly shut down the billing code on Jan. 11.
“They didn’t give us much explanation,” Allen said, noting that the problem seems to stem from an administrative problem. “They gave us no notice, and they haven’t given us an alternative means of funding.”
Hillsgrove opened 35 years ago, and Thrive has billed Medicaid for more than a decade, Allen said.
The internationally recognized clubhouse model provides adults with serious mental health illnesses with a non-residential, community-centered approach to rehabilitation. Participants enroll as “members,” rather than patients or clients, and work alongside staff to run the facility.
"There's no area in the cubhouse that says 'staff only,'" Allen said.
The clubhouse provides social support and opportunities for members to acclimate or reacclimate to the workforce. Some members work within the clubhouse, doing jobs such as running social media or working in the facility’s full kitchen. Others take full or part-time jobs with a variety of different businesses that partner with Thrive.
“It gives (members) the opportunity to really be more educated about their mental illness and take control of their recovery through access to various opportunities,” Allen said of the model.
The clubhouse program also "allows people to see that they’re not alone in their mental illness, and that there are other peers that also have the same challenges that they do,” she added, "and recognizes that you can move through recovery and be productive, and that’s why it’s focused on recovery and employment – getting people back to work, but at their own pace.”
Hillsgrove currently has 170 members and is experiencing growing demand from throughout the state, Allen said.
“To lose the only clubhouse in Rhode Island would be devastating to the people who depend on it,” Allen said. “We were looking to expand the clubhouse, because we do see a need.”
While Thrive operates the only clubhouse facility in the state, Rhode Island is a regional anomaly in that regard. Massachusetts has 36 clubhouse facilities, while Connecticut has 24.
Without Hillsgrove, "170 people won’t have anywhere to go" in the Ocean State, Allen said.
"A lot of them will tell you that before they found the clubhouse, they were socially isolated, they didn’t really leave their house, and they didn’t know there were other people who have the same symptoms and were suffering in the same way," Allen continued, "so it really makes a huge difference and impact in people's lives."
The billing code change didn’t impact other types of behavioral health facilities in Rhode Island, Allen said, but it’s had ripple effects on other behavioral health providers who serve Hillsgrove members in different capacities.
The $500,000 that Thrive is requesting from the R.I. General Assembly would serve as "a band-aid" for the facility, Allen said. In the longer term, Allen says that the federal and state governments need to find a way to turn the billing code back on to secure the facility's survival.
Allen says she’s hopeful the state health department will turn the code back on, but progress has been slow and lacking in communication.
“We were notified in January that the code was off,” Allen said, “so I would have at least expected to hear that it was moving forward or would be resolved by now.”
(UPDATE: Corrects federal from state throughout story.)
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
