For those suffering with addiction who have made the decision that it is time to seek help, the last thing they need is a stumbling block when attempting to find a place to receive treatment, but the unfortunate reality is that this occurs all too often.
Much the same goes for those who have a mental health disorder, as well as those dealing with the pain and emotional fallout from a physical injury.
Various rehabilitation centers offering different kinds of services and treatment plans, are scattered in a wide array of places and many accept only certain kinds of insurance, which can make the process of finding just the right one arduous.
It is with this knowledge in mind that USA Rehab Centers was born and as founder Mitch Berney explained, the goal of the organization is to remove this roadblock by providing a database that allows a person to easily identify which rehabilitation options will best suit their needs.
Berney was given the opportunity to offer an overview of USA Rehab Centers to the community during the Nye County Commission’s Oct. 5 meeting, at which he put out a call to the community for its assistance in ensuring that the organization’s database contains all of the available options in Nye County. To do this, however, those businesses and organizations offering rehab services need to take action by heading to the organization’s website www.USARehabCenters.org to log their company’s details into the online database.
“Thank you for having me here today to present a program that we have built that will improve quality of life outcomes for those afflicted with drug misuse disorders, alcoholism, mental health issues, physical injury and who are suffering from legal consequences from all of those,” Berney stated, noting, “One week from today, I turn 20 in my own personal journey of recovery so this is very, very important and near and dear to my heart and my life.”
Berney said the idea behind USA Rehab Centers all started in 2017 when he was working on a national television show regarding recovery and he came to the realization that there was no robust resource for people to turn to when trying to find rehabilitation options.
Likening this to the concept of online travel resources, where those arranging trips can easily find a huge array of options to fit their travel plans, Berney remarked, “I’m sure that each of us present today could name at least half a dozen different travel sites if I said we were looking for a king bed, non-smoking, pet-friendly, ocean view in Santa Barbara, four-star hotel, we could name half a dozen sites where we could produce results in an instant.
“What troubled me and made me put the television show on pause was, if you were to ask someone, ‘I know a male who has a cocaine addiction, who also has alcoholism, who suffers from depression, Etna is their insurance, they live in Winnemucca and they would consider a medically-assisted treatment program,’, there isn’t a person in here who could name a website where you could perform that kind of a deep-rooted search,” Berney continued. “And that is what we’ve built.”
As detailed in the backup information provided with the agenda item, USA Rehab Centers has launched a first-of-its-kind searchable directory aimed at making it much simpler to find the rehabilitation options that satisfy the needs of those seeking them out. USA Rehab also wants to partner with first responders and others such as social workers, case managers and discharge nurses to build an app that can be used in the field as well.
Berney provided a short, four-minute video with his presentation, outlining statistics surrounding drug misuse, alcoholism and suicide, which were sobering for many. “Let’s put this into perspective,” the video intoned. “The total drug, alcohol and suicide deaths equals 235,511 each year. That’s 645 deaths each day. The Boeing 747 has the capacity to accommodate 416 passengers in a three-class setup. Let this sink in for a moment. Every two days, three 747s full of people die in the U.S. from drug overdose, alcohol and suicide. Imagine seeing that on the news, every two days, three more planes, every week, every month, all year long. We cannot just sit around and look at the problem without taking action. We had to do something. This is why we created USA Rehab Centers.”
Accessibility is a key tool in recovery and Berney said USA Rehab Centers gives people the ability to search the database using all sort of parameters, including by mental health disorder and insurance type.
“One of the biggest barriers for accessing treatment is, do they accept my insurance? And in that we include, will they accept a non-citizen, an immigrant; do they work on a sliding scale; payment assistance programs; self-pay or uninsured; or veterans programs. So when someone is looking for assistance, they can select whatever they have or don’t have. Also, we have youth programs. If I showed you the full database of the information that someone can search for, it’s really, I am humbled. The team I’ve assembled who have helped put this together, have created a resource so deep that we even get into the physical rehabilitation of spinal cord injury and stroke rehabilitation and then legal services to help people fully reintegrate back into society, financial literacy programs, I mean, it’s a very comprehensive resource,” Berney explained.
Most important for area rehabilitation resources is to understand that a listing on USA Rehab Centers will not cost them anything. Berney said all companies and organizations are offered a free listing and no company can pay for better placement on the website. The only charges that apply are if a company wishes to include items such as photography with their listing.
“So what we are here to do today is to call on the community and the board of commissioners to form an alliance, a partnership. We’re looking for the business community to support our program,” Berney explained. He said this was imperative because the online database provides such specific information that those details can only be properly presented by the provider itself.
“Our challenge now is, we’ve completed beta testing, the site is live, we have about 100 facilities on there, we have a handful of them already in Las Vegas, and now we are asking the community of businesses in the drug, alcohol, mental health, physical rehabilitation injury industry, and the legal service providers, to go onto our site and list their facilities so it can be the most comprehensive and robust tool for the community.”
USA Rehab Centers will be back before the Nye County Commission some time in the future, Berney added, when it submits an applications for a grant from the county’s American Rescue Plan Act funding program, which has yet to be established but which commissioners will be addressing in the coming weeks. With COVID-19 resulting in a spike in alcoholism, mental health problems and more, Berney said he felt USA Rehab’s mission fit perfectly into the eligibility requirements for the COVID-19 relief funds.
Anyone interested in learning more about USA Rehab Centers can contact Berney directly at 775-287-0107 or by emailing mitch@usarehabcenters.org
Additional information can also be found at www.USARehabCenters.org where those wanting to lend a hand can make donations as well. Berney noted that 100% of donations will go toward supporting nonprofit organizations on the website.
Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com