Counseling Group Pivots

Thank you to our Lending Partner on this Project:

Brightways Counseling Group was founded in August of 2017 by Kevin & Angie Shaw. Brightways is Central Oregon’s premiere counseling group offering whole person care. Their counselors work with people suffering from a variety of different mental health issues such as depression, addiction and substance abuse, anxiety, family issues, among many others. They focus on whole person care, sometimes working in connection with a client’s primary care provider in order to help people be the best version of themselves. 

While it is common for mental health counselors to experience an increase in referrals during crises, when the pandemic started, they experienced a substantial decrease because people were no longer seeing their primary care doctor, which is where the referrals come from. Once primary care shifted to telehealth, the referrals returned however, they had to transform their whole organization to support 100% of the counseling sessions by video. With this pivot, they also had to overcome another big obstacle, that the clients weren’t comfortable doing therapy by video. The clients needed to be assured that they could still achieve their goals in therapy by video.

To do this, Brightways transformed their entire approach to make it as easy and realistic of an experience as possible. They first purchased a client friendly online video interface so it would be easy for the clients to login to video sessions. They also purchased security software to protect the content and documentation of the sessions to alleviate their clients concern about confidentiality. Furthermore, to support clients that didn’t have Wi-Fi, they purchased a hot spot at one of their offices so the clients could drive to the office parking lot and connect to the hot spot using the Wi-Fi on their cell phone. As the quality of the virtual sessions went up, so did the referrals. People were no longer leaving therapy and completed their treatment.

Utilizing the 504 Program:

Brightways rapidly grew and as they received more referrals and clients, they hired several more therapists and staff members to keep up with their growth. Brightways worked with Summit Bank and NWBDA to obtain SBA 504 financing to purchase two of the facilities they had been leasing in Redmond and Madras Oregon. By utilizing the 504 program, Brightways was able to stabilize and lower their occupancy expense as well as provide them with additional space that they can grow into over time without having to relocate.

With their costs under control, Brightways Counseling can turn their focus to expanding their fast growing clinic and helping more people be the best version of themselves.

Visit their website: https://brightwayscounseling.com/