Vickie Anenberg, COO of Cottonwood Heights, Utah-based Supplemental Health Care, sat down with Becker's to share projects she is excited about, her top priorities and the future of behavioral health.
Supplemental Health Care is a staffing agency that works with behavioral health organizations.
Question: What are your top priorities today?
Vickie Anenberg: We have a very big database of behavioral healthcare workers. You're not going to find a company with a more robust database of talent who want to focus on behavioral health. So our biggest focus in the next year or two is building the behavioral health footprint of opportunities across the nation.
When you think about how the traditional travel nursing market works, you have healthcare professionals, who say "I'm going to go to California," and then when it's winter, "I'm going to go down to Florida," and then "I'm going to Martha's Vineyard for work." It's a lifestyle. This whole gig economy lifestyle is big and very attractive to healthcare talent.
In behavioral health, there isn't that national market path yet. There's these little regional paths, if you will, like "I can work in North Carolina and there's three other places I can work."
But we're creating this national opportunity for behavioral health workers so that they can experience the gig economy lifestyle and at the same time be fluid enough to move where the needs are for behavioral health. [Behavioral health] needs do not shift seasonally like they often do with the population of the other healthcare settings, they are simply growing rapidly across our country and across multiple settings of care.
Another big priority for us is, because we're so big in schools and behavioral health is a big part of the school's obligation to support children who need extra support, is our upskilling initiative.
SHC has a very large population of nursing assistants who tend to work in long term care hospitals, nursing homes or other settings which can be very challenging work environments. We are investing in an upskilling opportunity to have these nursing assistants be able to work behavioral health in the school setting, [as] paraprofessionals or [registered behavioral technicians]. We make the investment in the talent education for the transition, and they benefit from a new career opportunity.
Our non acute [sector], where we support a lot of long-term care facilities or nursing homes or behavioral health centers for people who need to live outside of the home for their healthcare reasons — a lot of those patients are coming to school. So if you think about how the behavioral health profession works, they're following a group of children through different settings.
It's becoming a bigger challenge for schools because they have an obligation to provide behavioral health support to eligible children, but yet they don't have the staff or any big company in the industry to really lean on, or help them build it.
While SHC is likely the largest behavioral health provider in the travel industry, we’re confident that there is growing need for behavioral services so we’re going to continue to invest and focus on this market.
Q: What projects or initiatives are you most excited by?
VA: I’m thrilled that we have the opportunity to provide more services to mental health hospitals and other behavioral settings. As you can imagine during COVID, some of these other [healthcare] settings were starved for staff a little bit. There was so much money in the acute care setting for healthcare professionals because they were just in dire straits at the bedside, but that's kind of normalizing now.
So for us, it's building that database, building that job footprint. But one of the reasons I get to be so passionate about this is because Supplemental is owned by two private equity companies who are committed to driving an impact mission. Our partners, Vistria of Chicago and Apollo, one of the largest [private equity] firms in the world, both invest in SHC through their impact funds. They are committed to doing good work and making an impact in the world. We have their full support and investment to do this important work by committing to be part of the solution for this national mental health crisis.
Most of our competitors stay in the acute space because it's ripe with opportunity. It's a rich market, but everybody's focusing on a lot of things. This allows us to just zero in and put money into making a contribution to what I consider a mental health crisis in our country.
Q: How do you see behavioral health evolving in the next two to three years?
VA: I hope it evolves to equal access for all, more access for people wherever they are. Not just in a mental health hospital.
I hope to see it evolve because a larger pool of healthcare talent sees this as a very important and meaningful career path going forward. It’s ripe for those who want to make a difference.
I also believe it will grow in the school system, because it starts there. There are generations of people who don't talk about mental health issues. But when you start in the school system, this becomes a way we as a country look at the issue of mental health issues and how we offer people support.