Last week, Crossroads was pleased to host Nzinga A. Harrison, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at California based Anka Behavioral Health, INC. Dr. Harrison is a well sought after practitioner and speaker who has been published extensively in a variety of academic publications and professional journals. She is Board certified in both General Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine and currently serves as a Clinical Adjunct Faculty member of the Medical and Nursing schools at Emory University and Morehouse School of Medicine. While at Crossroads Dr. Harrison conducted over ten hours of clinical training for clinicians which encompassed person-centred care, assessment, and treatment planning. The training sessions were informative and thought provoking as we were able to discuss our perspectives not only on the specific training, but also in relationship to the question “why do we do what we do, the way that we do it?” This is a dialogue that naturally occurs in healthy organizations, and is perhaps even more critical in healthcare programs.
We know that recovery from addiction is all about change. As service providers our goal is to help create an environment of change for our clients and their families. We support this change in many ways: we offer information, we offer support, we provide clinical and medical expertise, and we help clients and families prepare for the next stage in the recovery process. It really should come as no surprise then, that as agents of change, we as a treatment organization, have our own change process that is continually unfolding.
At Crossroads we are presently in the initial stages of preparation for accreditation with CARF, The Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities. This is one of our strategic goals and we have prioritized it as our focus for this next year. One of the strengths of the CARF accreditation is that it mirrors what we model to clients. It helps us to assess a situation, develop a plan, evaluate the results, and make adjustments as necessary. Sounds a lot like what happens in treatment doesn’t it? CARF also comes from a strong philosophy of truly being client- centred. In other words, how can we improve our services and the client experience at Crossroads? This means that we need to continually ask ourselves and ask our stakeholders how we can improve. Thankfully, this is something we already enjoy doing at Crossroads. Our small size allows us to survey our clients and provide them with a private exit interview with our Senior Leadership prior to their departure. Over the years, this has given us regular feedback on developing new program services as well as making improvements to our internal systems.
Dr. Harrison’s training this past week also gave us valuable information on how we can further enhance the quality of our client services and strengthen our client centred approach. These elements are important to our entire organization which is why every member of our leadership team participated with our clinicians in this dynamic training. As I participated, I was struck by what an awesome opportunity we have to improve the lives of our clients by making improvements to our service delivery and what we learned from each other will only help to support continued positive change throughout Crossroads. We welcome your feedback and look forward to reporting on our CARF process over the next year period.
Click here to view Dr. Harrison’s website.