Lack of qualified personnel led to regulatory deadlines being threatened

The Issue:

One of the behavioral health companies I worked for had 3 teams of 6 people who were highly specialized mobile crisis teams called “ACT teams” – the Assertive Community Treatment Team. The ACT team is a multidisciplinary team that provides individualized services to each client by going into the community or the client’s home. The ACT team provides 24/7 care and continuity of care with the client’s medical providers. With these specialized teams comes the opportunity for additional billable services and the important work of provided another much-needed crisis lifeline to the community, which means quicker response times to those in need.

The trouble was that because these ACT teams are so highly specialized they had very stringent, very time-sensitive training requirements. They had approximately 20 hours of ACT-specific training that had to be completed within the first 90 days of hire. The supervisors were not qualified to deliver the training, I was the only one in the agency with the qualifications to do so, and I was already filled with other trainings and reporting and analysis duties, strategic planning, and partnership development. Pulling me away from these other duties to train one person at a time was not an efficient use of my time, and yet, the training was a mandate that must be obliged or else the ACT teams would be shut down.

The Solution: 

I was able to take this information and present the material in such a way that the training was now available in an on-demand format, available to any new hire on the ACT team, 24/7 so they were no longer required to meet with me in person.

The Results: 

This allowed me to remain focused on the larger business strategies and allowed the ACT team to meet all of their training deadlines. Each member had a specific follow-up session with their direct supervisors to review questions and demonstrate skills (which was permitted by our regulations). The ACT teams were able to remain operational and each team was responsible for $350,000 in billable services each year – a total combined gross profit of $1,050,000 annually.