Each week, nearly 100 people contact or walk through the doors of the Phoenix Center to access addiction-treatment services.
In most cases, they’re able to start their treatment — which includes an assessment and could include meeting with peer-to-peer support groups or getting medication-assisted treatment — that day.
Two years ago, however, that wasn’t the case. Walk-ins would be queued into a waitlist, and it took four to six weeks for them to be seen.
But Cynthia Fryer, director of development and mission advancement, said it’s important to “strike while the iron’s hot” when it comes to assisting people with substance-use issues, and making timeliness a top priority caused a shift in strategy that has cut the waitlist down to zero.
Alex Simmons, a Greenville native and a nine-year employee of the Phoenix Center, became the nonprofit’s inaugural navigation manager two years ago.
He’s since built up the navigation team, tasked with guiding patients through their admission process, including ensuring that they attain timely service with ease. Cutting down patient wait times required thinking outside the box, Simmons said, and a mindset shift from “we do it this way because it’s always been done this way” to “these are the needs of the clients, and this is how we can give them the right care.”
“We took the pressure from being just on the counselor to looking at more ways to service our clients outside of the counseling role,” Simmons said. “We have peer-to-peer support, we have the nursing services, we have that medication-assisted treatment as well. We’re really doing it from a holistic approach.”
Missing the window when people are ready and willing to get help, Simmons explained, can be life or death.
“When they’re ready to get the support and the treatment, if you’re not able to get them that support right away, the (likelihood) that they will come back to that next appointment goes down very quickly,” he said. “With the state we’re in with opioids and fentanyl, it could be a (matter of) life or death. If we did not get this time down, people’s lives are at risk.”
If you or someone you know needs help with a substance-use disorder, contact the Phoenix Center at 864-467-3790.
