Pinnacle Treatment Centers commits to every community in which we open a treatment center. We commit to working with local leaders. Our teams forge relationships with mayors, city council members, and state representatives. We talk to high school principals and work with school counselors and neighborhood parents. We’re not afraid to ride along with police officers and learn how we can do our part – and help them do their part – to protect people from the dangers of addiction and serve them when they need help the most. We create partnerships with local hospitals, EMTs, and paramedics. We’ll teach anyone who wants to learn how to administer the lifesaving overdose prevention drug Narcan.
The most important people we connect to, though, are the people in our communities who need treatment for alcohol or drug addiction.
Meeting Patients Where They Are: Any Door is the Right Door
We find them and open a dialogue – and the first thing we do is listen. We listen to anyone who wants to talk about their experience with addiction – if that’s what they want to talk about. If they don’t want to talk about the challenges they face with drug or alcohol addiction, we listen anyway. If they want to them talk about their family, their job, their hopes for the future or the hardships in their past, we listen. We listen for any sign they’re ready for treatment. If we hear it, then we talk about what we can do to remove any barriers to treatment and give them access to care they think may have been out of reach, for whatever reason.
Then, if and when they decide to take that step, we help them get treatment they need – whether it’s at a Pinnacle Treatment Center or somewhere else.
You may wonder who has the time to do all that community outreach. Who has the time to talk to walk through forgotten urban neighborhoods or drive to under-resourced rural towns where we know the opioid crisis has hit the hardest? Who makes it their business to go where people are at increased risk of addiction, overdose, and death? Whose job is it to find ways to help, even when it looks like help is out of reach?
We have a special group of people on the leading edge of these community connection initiatives:
Pinnacle Patient Care Navigators
About Our Patient Care Navigators
To understand our PCNs, you need to understand who they help.
We can make it simple: they help everyone.
At Pinnacle we believe that everyone means everyone. Not just a person with good insurance, a reliable car, consistent childcare, a job, and a place to live. Don’t get us wrong: we help them, too – but the thing is, a person with good insurance, a car, and a job might not need too much help navigating the healthcare system and finding the treatment and support they need. They might need someone to tell them how much treatment can help. They may need someone to educate them and counter the stigma around addiction and addiction treatment. We do all that for them. They might need a number to call – and we give them the right number that will connect them to the appropriate support.
However, there are countless people out there right now who don’t have those basic resources.
Supporting Our Most Vulnerable Citizens
Here’s what we mean.
Let’s say one of our PCNs gives a talk at a local high school in rural Appalachia. The counselors tell us that too many of their high school seniors are dropping out of school before they graduate. Some end up on the street, homeless, addicted to methamphetamine, or opioids, or alcohol, or all three at the same time. The counselor might tell us exactly where to find some of these kids: on the curb at the filling station on the edge of town, between the old train depot and the abandoned auto parts manufacturer.
A Pinnacle PCN will go find that filling station.
They’ll find the people the counselor told them about – and they’ll listen. They might talk to two or three kids that are just hanging out and don’t need help – but our PCN will give out business cards and ask them to call if they ever do need help. Then, after hours of sitting on the curb and listening, they’ll find someone who does need help: a 20-year-old single mom who needs treatment but has no idea how to get insurance, find childcare for her toddler, or get a ride to treatment even if she can get insurance and somehow afford a babysitter.
For that mom, things look hopeless.
For that mom, our PCNs lead with hope – but hope without action is just a dream.
So our PCN helps her find insurance. They help her find childcare. They find her a ride to treatment. If she’s in trouble with the law, they help her find her way out of that maze. They help her with whatever she needs. The identify whatever keeps her from getting the treatment that will can save her life and improve the chances she and her child can thrive.
It might not all happen at once, but when our PCN leaves that first conversation with that young single mom, they leave her with hope. Hope that she can get the treatment she needs. Hope that she can escape the painful, destructive cycles of addiction and create a productive and fulfilling life for herself and her child.
What Kind of Person Makes a Patient Care Navigator?
A person who’s not scared of that situation we just described – or the endless permutations of that situation playing out in communities all over our country.
A person who has a personal connection to addiction makes an authentic PCN. That connection may be that they, themselves, are in recovery. It may mean they had a parent, sister, or cousin who’s been in and out of rehab for 20 years. It may mean they had a friend from high school die from overdose when they were far too young. Or they had an uncle who attempted suicide when he got addicted to opioids after a work accident, then lost his job during the pandemic, and lost his will to live.
A person who leads with their heart, knows they can help, and is compelled to find a job, a career, or a lifestyle where they can help people every day.
A person who’s resilient and can handle the successes as well as the failures. Because that mom on the curb?
She might not ever call.
Resiliency, Commitment, and Patience
If she doesn’t call, we admit we failed.
In fact, we evaluate our PCNs on the number of calls they receive – not the number of “prospects” they convert to “customers.”
If that mom doesn’t call, it hurts. But our PCNs process those emotions, get right with themselves, and get back out there the very next day and do it all over again, with hope in their hearts, the willingness to listen in their minds, and knowledge about support and treatment at the tip of their tongue.
They get back out there and look for someone to help. For someone to give hope.
To be a Pinnacle PCN, you need to have a big heart. The biggest heart. You need to know that people with the biggest hearts experience the greatest heartbreak – and you need to be able to handle that. Because as a Pinnacle PCN, you talk people off the ledge every day. The literal and figurative ledge. As a PCN, you need to be able to reach out your hand to the hand that needs holding. You need to be committed to wrapping your arms around that person and surrounding them with both the emotional support and medical services they need.
You need to be driven by love and service. And despite the hardship and the heartbreak – and the fact your feet are tired and your phone is ringing – you need to know that in the end, we all have a stake in healing the addiction crisis in our country.
You need to believe love will win and hope will win. That’s what gets you out of bed in the morning.
That’s what our PCNs do. They lead with hope. No matter how significant the barriers to treatment or obstacles to care appear to the person who needs that treatment and that care, we leave them with the hope they can overcome those barriers. We help them realize they can change their life for the better.
Are you our next PCN?