Image: Special episode of Modern Therapist's Survival Guide featuring Candace Wallace from Relias.

Special Episode: Modern Therapist’s Consumer Guide on Relias

Curt and Katie talk with Candace Wallace, Chief Customer Officer, Relias. Candace discusses their mission to measurably improve the lives of vulnerable individuals and healthcare workers. Relias, which has been in operation for over 12 years, addresses challenges like staffing shortages, turnover, and regulatory compliance. They offer solutions for staff development, clinical skill building, and regulatory tracking. Candace highlights the importance of reducing administrative burdens to allow healthcare professionals to focus on patient care. Relias serves over 12,000 healthcare providers and aims to help organizations maintain compliance, improve retention, and enhance patient outcomes through tailored education and technology. This episode is part of our Modern Therapist Consumer Guide, where we explore innovative tools and services built for therapists and their clients.

Transcript

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Interview with Candace Wallace, Chief Customer Officer, Relias

Image: Candace Wallace headshotCandace has the pleasure of serving as Chief Customer Officer at Relias, overseeing the functions of Customer Success & Renewals, Professional Services, Support, and Client Care Operations. Her role is focused on delivering customer value at scale. Working in an organization focused on healthcare and growing the talents and opportunities of healthcare workers means she and her teams have the privilege of driving real change across many aspects of the healthcare continuum. Having joined Relias in 2013, Candace has led several key teams including Customer Success, Support, Professional Services, and the Solutions Group. Prior to joining Relias, she worked as an archaeologist in the environmental compliance industry at Atkins and holds bachelor’s degrees in Archaeology and Religion from Baylor University.

In this podcast episode we talk about training, infrastructure, and compliance for therapy practices

We talk with Candace Wallace, Chief Customer Officer at Relias about how Relias can support training, infrastructure, and compliance needs for practices of all sizes. This service is especially important during this time of big transition for our profession, to help clinician-run practices compete.

Interview with Candace Wallace, Relias

“The mission of the business is to measurably improve the lives of the most vulnerable members of society and those who care for them. We’re going to commit to bringing products to market that actually help move the needle, that help you provide better care, help get rid of some of those challenges, or kind of, maybe simplify, reduce, whatever you want it to be, so that you can do what you do, which is deliver great care.”  – Candace Wallace, Chief Customer Officer, Relias

0:00:15 – Introduction of Relias and purpose of the episode

0:01:09 – Candace Wallace introduces herself and her role at Relias

0:03:20 – Origin story of Relias (Essential Learning merger)

0:04:40 – Discussion of staffing challenges in healthcare

0:06:46 – Relias’ mission and approach to solving administrative burdens

0:08:14 – Candace’s background and passion for detailed processes

0:09:02 – Approach to tracking regulatory changes

0:12:08 – Challenges with funding and regulatory compliance

0:14:58 – Solutions for compliance and training

0:18:43 – Staff retention and development strategies

0:21:34 – Types of training and assessment solutions offered

0:24:59 – Leadership development and career paths

0:35:52 – Customer success stories

0:44:22 – Future growth and upcoming innovations

0:48:50 – How to find out more about Relias

Curt and Katie Chat – Our review of Relias

0:49:30 – At the end of the episode, Curt and Katie shared positive impressions of Relias:

Katie highlighted that the Relias team is passionate about supporting mental health clinicians and organizations. She noted that they actually started with smaller providers, offering compliance solutions that could help practices expand services without building extensive infrastructure.

Curt initially thought Relias was only for large behavioral health agencies, but after the conversation, he realized they have solutions for practices of all sizes. He emphasized that Relias offers professional guidance for growing practices, rather than relying on informal advice from friends or colleagues.

An Invitation for the listeners of Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast from Relias

Check out relias.com. Explore their continuing education solutions for solo practitioners. Look into infrastructure solutions for small to medium practices wanting to strengthen their business. Consider Relias as a way to potentially compete with app-based therapy services and create a unique practice space

Relevant Links:

Meet the Hosts: Curt Widhalm & Katie Vernoy

Picture of Curt Widhalm, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcast; a nice young man with a glorious beard.Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Picture of Katie Vernoy, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcastKatie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

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Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:

Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/

 

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:12
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Consumer Guide, one of our episodes where we reach out to the movers and shakers of the world and dive into a little bit around some of the businesses that we appreciate, we vet and say, Hey, these are ones that we give the Curt and Katie stamp of approval for all of the wonderful things that are going on. And we are talking today with Candace Wallace from Relias, and if you haven’t heard of Relias, Relias partners with behavioral and community health organizations to address key challenges, like workforce shortages, burnout, increasing compliance demands, all of the big shifts that happen in the field. And I’m really excited to learn about people who are doing many of the things that we talk about, and say, hey, there are people who should be doing these things, and you’re one of them. So thank you so much for joining us.

Candace Wallace 1:09
Excellent. I’m excited to be here. Thank you all for letting me join. I’ve been with Relias and serving you know, or healthcare organizations for, gosh, over 12 years now. So really excited to share some insights about the business, about what we’re seeing in the market, and to just to have the conversation. Thanks for the invite.

Katie Vernoy 1:29
We’re so excited for this conversation. I met some of your colleagues at the behavioral health tech conference, and we started talking about all of the things and so much of what you guys do is really supporting a lot of mental health and behavioral health companies to to navigate the chaos that is coming down the pipe. But before we get into that, I want to ask you the question we ask all our guests, which is, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?

Candace Wallace 1:56
Yeah. So you know, for me personally, I would say I I’m our Chief Customer Officer at relias. I always say that means I’m in the business of customer joy. What that really means is I’m here to help customers solve key challenges and get value from the products and solutions Relias brings to the market. You know, at Relias, I will say, because I’ve been here almost from the beginning, our mission, the only thing that’s changed is one word in it over the years, which is the word measurably. So the mission of the business is to measurably improve the lives of the most vulnerable members of society and those who care for them. And I think you know when you think about what that really means, it’s that we’re here to help healthcare workers get through administrative burden, red tape and deliver great care, which is what you know, folks signed up for when they got into the healthcare industry in the first place. And so you know that addition of the word measurably over the years was really us leaning in and saying, we’re going to commit to bringing products to market that actually help move the needle, that help you provide better care, help get rid of some of those challenges, or kind of, maybe simplify, reduce, whatever you want it to be, so that you can do what you do, which is deliver great care.

Curt Widhalm 3:09
This all sounds really wonderful as far as the why relias was created, how did this come about? What can you talk about, kind of the origin story of how this came to be and how you’ve developed?

Candace Wallace 3:20
Yeah, absolutely. You know, feels like a long story. It started many, many years ago, but it really did so quite a long time ago, a lot of people may remember that one of our first companies, which was Essential Learning. So, Essential Learning was a company that was founded to serve the behavioral and community health space. So they created online education, a learning management system, and it was to meet regulatory requirements and also things like professional development, clinical skill building. And then about 13 years ago, Essential Learning merged together with a company called Silverchair learning, which was focused on the post acute care market, because really what we saw is that, you know, there’s a lot of blurred lines within healthcare when it comes to care that’s being provided, and bringing together more healthcare focused solutions that kind of ran that full continuum of care was always the focus. So about 12 or 13 years ago was really when that started, when we brought those two businesses together with this mindset of, we’re going to continue to bring solutions that really cover any kind of patient need, any kind of healthcare worker need, and we’re going to continue to expand beyond just that kind of education space into other key challenges that we can solve for our customers, where we really have kind of expertise and a right to do something about it, quite frankly.

Katie Vernoy 4:41
What types of challenges are you seeing that Relias is digging into, sharing resources on, training on?

Candace Wallace 4:50
I mean, the biggest one we see is kind of the staffing challenges-is certainly a key topic that we see within the market. That is, that’s not new information. When it comes to that, it’s not only are there not enough folks in the market, but the turnover is quite high. So I think when we look at some of the different averages that we see within the behavioral community health space, they range, you know, somewhere between 30 and 40% sometimes higher, depending on which you know, specific service line that you’re looking at. And so anything that we can do to help organizations provide clarity, reduce burnout, retain the staff that they have, because in a place where you have high shortages, retaining staff is going to be your better outcome, you know, when it comes to delivering care and hitting on some of those items. And so we are putting solutions in that help with things like staff development, clinical skill building, career ladder programs to help folks kind of elongate their journey within a healthcare organization. And then some of the other things that we’ve been leaning into in the last few years have been focused on, like, what most people call the bane of their existence, which is, like, regulatory compliance. So, I think, yeah, you know, but we always say, like, it is. It’s kind of like when people make jokes about the weather in some places, like, just wait a minute, it will change. Regulations are the same way. And so for folks in that in the market, we are trying to say, Okay, what else can we do? Which means we can help with regulatory tracking, both at a federal and a state level. We can help people with that journey toward quality accreditation, when you’re thinking about things like CARF or NCQA or joint commission, or any of those topics. And I think when it comes to kind of even similar things, like policy management, tracking, things like incidents and grievances, the stuff that you have to do that make you a better provider for doing it, but it’s really difficult to keep track of. And so bringing solutions that kind of solve those key challenges are where we’re focused really heavily right now.

Curt Widhalm 6:47
How does the mission of Relias help guide a lot of this stuff? This sounds like an incredible amount of just very dull stuff that you take care of. And I’m wondering, as a company how, how you really be able to kind of stay in rather than just kind of we’re pencil pushers, and how does that bring kind of this excitement that keeps you going, keeps you going with your customers?

Candace Wallace 7:17
I know I joke sometimes I’m like, I bleed Relias green, like, I wake up very excited to be at work every day. And I think, you know, solving administrative burden can sound dull, but the reality is, when you solve for kind of some of these other tasks, it means that people can deliver better care. And honestly, like a lot of the folks who work at Relias, who show up every day, show up because of the mission. And so that’s a key part of even just our employee engagement, is we help people who help people. And so if I can make it where someone who is a licensed clinician gets to actually be out delivering care, instead of filling out paperwork nonstop, flipping through binders, going out to public websites to read regulation changes. Like, these are things I want to help get off their plate. And we can, you know, we’re experts in technology. We know healthcare very well, and so we want to solve that problem for them so they don’t have to do it. So we get super excited about these kinds of things.

Katie Vernoy 8:15
Curt’s like, I don’t understand. These are not anything I’m excited about.

Candace Wallace 8:19
You know, I’m a researcher by trade. I have a bit of a weird background prior to getting into the tech world, I worked as an archeologist for about a decade, and so I love tedious, data driven, detailed process, task items. So I am living my best life. I will say.

Katie Vernoy 8:38
It just seems like there’s so much to pay attention to, and especially when, you know, we recently had an administration change at the the federal level in the United States, it seems like there’s a lot to keep track of. How, how does Relias determine what are the things to pay attention to? How do they discern, you know, kind of discern what needs to be shared? What is shared? That kind of stuff. What does that look like?

Candace Wallace 9:02
There’s a lot to look at. It’s like squirrel, like, turning your head every moment. But I do think like it is, you know, you have to sometimes cut through the noise. And there’s a lot of when it comes to, you know, there are the things that are certain. So as we’re watching kind of bills make their way through the government right now, and you’re watching each stage of that process, there are the facts that lie within it. I think the other thing that we like to take a look at is, you know, with this administration, it’s our it’s our second term, so we have a lot of past information that can sometimes guide how we think things will settle as they go throughout this process. And, you know, we lean on some of our partners, like the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, who are great advocates in the space and are on the Hill on the regular. And so, you know, staying in line with what are the real things that we think are going to be making moves here? How do we pivot and adjust to help our customers inside of this space? You know, and provide guidance where we can. You know, give them solutions that continue to solve these problems. So I would say, you know, we have a lot of experts in house who watch it, who look at it. We leverage a lot of industry expertise, you know. And I think in some of the ways we’re looking at some of these items for our customers with, like the regulation management solution, we are putting tech in place and AI in place to help them understand what changes are happening as real time as they possibly can. And what that means is that there’s no way you can keep track of every single regulation change, but let us do that for you. We’re going to tell you when it happens. We’re going to tell you when you have a policy that’s related to that when that happens, so you can go back in and update your documentation. So mundane tasks, but finding ways to keep people informed of what matters. And I would say, you know, at a kind of from a funding perspective, that is probably where most of our focus and conversations can go sometimes, because, as we think about the high dependence on Medicaid, especially in the behavioral and community health space, as well as additional grants and other funding sources, it’s really important that we lean in and understand what’s happening at a federal level, and we can lean into some predictability as well at what happens at a state level, because, as you know, with the Medicaid, it’s going to change state by state based on how they’re looking at this and their participation in things like the Affordable Care Act. And so, you know, there is, there’s quite a bit of data and fact and information out there that can guide us, you know, in how we’re looking at these things.

Curt Widhalm 11:36
So since you’re talking about some of the funding stuff here already, I’m assuming that this is one of many current challenges that you’re seeing going on in the healthcare world. How does Relias go about just doing your job in all of that? Because it seems like some of the interactions between what’s going on at state and federal level, things change by the day, and being able to communicate that in a way that is predictable for your customers. How do you go about doing that?

Candace Wallace 12:08
Well, I think you know, one of the most important we things we say, first and foremost, is the reason why we exist, solving these challenges for our customers that doesn’t go away, regardless of what happens in the funding dynamics right now. So, and it’s probably going to become a little bit more important. I have said since the since I’ve been working here, that in healthcare, every single year, sometimes it feels like every day, you know, healthcare providers are asked to do more with less and to deliver better outcomes while they do it. And so, you know, we are committed to bringing innovative solutions to the market that help them do that, that help them save on costs, and hopefully, in some cases, help them deliver growth and revenue as they plan, you know, for the future. And so we double down on that. So that’s kind of the focus we put in place for our our customers, but also for our team members to know that, you know, Relias is committed to helping organizations, helping folks in that behavioral and community health space. And what that means is that we are not going to take our eye off the prize. We are going to stay focused on solving on these key challenges. And it is likely that as regulations continue to pass, there’s going to be more challenges for us to tackle for our customers. And so what we can say to our customers and to our team members, because it can get kind of noisy when you’re thinking about news and the environment and what’s happening, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, and we’re going to continue to focus on this. And you can count us, on us for that. You know, relias has a long history, we serve over 12,000 healthcare provider organizations in the country. We serve across some of our consumer brands as well, probably a few million different consumers as well, with brands like Relias Academy, where some of you may know us from. But that’s a big footprint, and so we have this not just a drive, but it’s a responsibility to keep showing up for our customers and providing some kind of stability and certainty in a storm of, you know, change and chaos.

Katie Vernoy 14:08
I’m picturing my own experience in community mental health and some of the dramatic changes when funding cuts happened, when there were a lot of things going on, and it felt like we were rebuilding our programs from the ground up. It was something where we had to pivot, get different funding sources, we had to align with different definitions of things, that kind of stuff. And so if I’m hearing correctly, so correct me if I’m wrong on this, there’s a resource to basically say this is what you need to do. Let me, let me explain what this new regulation means. Let me tell you what that looks like. Here are the choices. Here are the options. Go forth and do this much more quickly than someone that has to go through and read the legislation and do all that stuff by themselves.

Candace Wallace 14:58
Yeah, I will. Say the solution that’s focused out there right now is focused on kind of Federal Regulations, like 42 CFR. So you know, that is not a lot is changing within that space, you know, at a broad level, but there are small details that change on a daily basis. And then what we’re bringing to market right now are state regulation management. So starting with California, we thought, you know, they’re one of the most robust, quite frankly, that’s probably not a surprise to any of you, especially if you live in California, but one of the most robust, just from a kind of complexity and kind of depth and breadth. And then we are going to continue to bring more states month over month online to help customers understand what is happening at a state regulation level. What we are not doing is saying, you know, what are the changes coming out of the Big Beautiful Bill, and explicitly, how should you change in alignment with that? I think one of those things I would say for folks is they’re going to need to lean on kind of public policy and advocacy and state level advocacy to really understand kind of what is coming down at a state level from a funding perspective. And as you well know, that’s going to change based on the type of services that get provided. For example, we see a lot of the FQHCs that we work with and having some of the grants cut short with like making care primary, which was one of the biggest impacts we’re seeing happen inside of that sector, those were additional dollars folks were counting on coming in for a long period of time that have now been cut to close by the end of this year. And so when you’re in that market, you’re now looking at, okay, that was a funding stream I was depending on for outer years. Where do I shift next? And I think that is probably, I will say, one of the things that the resilience in the behavioral and community health space to shift and pivot for funding has that’s not new. I think you know, most of you know, you that it is part of the game. I think sometimes I get, like, pleasantly surprised by how folks continue to show up every day and say, we know it’s coming. We know it’s tough. We expect this to go away, but we’re just going to find another way. And I think that is that’s kind of the attitude you have to have in this space if you want to survive.

Katie Vernoy 17:09
And so the solution really is to decrease the burden of the unfunded mandate. It’s to provide resources to train, to stay up to date with regulations, to make sure that what you’re doing makes sense without all of the administrative burden of building those things from scratch.

Candace Wallace 17:31
Correct. We’re doing manually, which is what most people do. I mean, I think most folks know you’ve got a binder where you are tracking all of your policies, where you’re keeping regulations, you’re having people sign off with paper and pen, and you have an auditor walk in, you go find the binder, you bring it out. And I think, depending on the size of your business, that may still be a very viable process, I think. But you know, when it comes to those bigger burdens of like true, like federal regulation tracking, like it, those types of solutions are going to they can save people, and we’ve seen it save folks, you know, significant hours on a week, on a month. You know, when you bring that about for a full year, it has pretty massive savings. And one of the things, if you are in a space where your clinicians are conducting a lot of the administrative tasks, it should allow you to free them up, not only to not do those tasks, but to also have more time for billable services, which is really what’s going to help you thrive in this kind of, you know, uncertainty in the market.

Curt Widhalm 18:29
I want to shift a little bit to one of the other things that Relias offers here, as far as some of the management and onboarding and retaining staff. How does Relias help in that arena?

Candace Wallace 18:43
Yeah, we have a few different things that we do inside of that space. I would say on the staff retention, you know, one of the things we have been really proud of over the years is just kind of a being able to deliver great education in the behavioral and community health space for decades. And I think that is something that folks come to rely on with us, whether it is, you know, Children, Youth and Family Services, whether you have substance use disorder services, you name it, there is content and education for the different types of service you’re providing, or the different types of clinicians you have on staff. And a lot of times, we’re also seeing non clinical staff being covered as part of that. Because the reality is, if you have non clinical staff, they still fall under federal regulation. You know, a lot of what we’re seeing now is that they’re also being asked to have basic training on things like, you know, as we’re thinking about just the basics of trauma informed care. So I think these are some of those things where you may not have time for your staff to go around and train, even your non clinical team members on the basics of what needs to go on there. And so having education at your fingertips and being able to push it out at onboarding as well as annual training becomes really important. I will say, some of the things we’re also really excited about in that space that we’re developing right now that we should bring out, hopefully by the end of this year or early next year, is the ability for folks to do things like test out of taking training. So I think, you know, measured competence. I think sometimes we hear someone say, if you’ve been in the field for 20 years, not a lot has changed on some of these topics. And so that ability to show competence, and instead of spending 30 minutes or an hour, maybe you can spend 10 minutes on an assessment and then get back to your day. And so those types of items are pretty important. I would say one of the other things that we really love bringing is assessment solutions. So depending on the healthcare sector that we’re operating in, we have a different variety of assessments that can be used for kind of pre-hire. So helping in the selection, you know, because of the way that they are built, they meet EEOC hiring standards, if you want to leverage it for kind of a pre-hire process to understand, does someone have the appropriate kind of skills and knowledge, or do they have the right judgment when it when it comes to certain situations that they might encounter within the workplace. A lot of organizations like to use those types of assessments post hire. So I bring someone on board, and then I’m going to leverage this to understand, where are they really strong, and where could they use some additional growth and coaching? And that’s where I focus my onboarding, which means we can be a little bit faster to get folks out and delivering care, and we can spend our time on the things that really matter with clinicians or even with our non clinical staff. So I think some of those assessment solutions are really helpful there.

Katie Vernoy 21:34
It seems like there’s a lot of spaces that Relias is in and providing some support. So pre hire, you could do some assessments. At onboarding you can do some assessments there as well. Potentially, in the future, have folks, you know, test out of training and/or go through a whole onboarding process. It seems like there’s the training that is regulation based, you know, can they do the sexual harassment training? Can they do the trauma informed care training?Whatever it is, those types of things. I know that Relias also has the more clinical kind of the nice to have trainings. And so it seems like if someone has the full solution, they’re getting their clinicians and other folks assessed, trained, and then there’s this benefit of being able to have these additional trainings from folks you know, all over, all over the place, that these experts that are coming in and talking about a lot of really important topics, clinical topics, I know, potentially also burnout topics, that kind of stuff. It seems like it would also be a staff benefit at some point.

Candace Wallace 22:40
Oh, 100% and I think it is, it’s a benefit, but it’s also that development tool that comes along the way. I think one of the things that we, you know, and they run a different variety of modalities. Sometimes clinicians will say to us, we just want to read the content and kind of move forward. For things that are more, kind of deeply complex, that’s where we’ll develop content for things like simulation. So if you’re doing something like a suicide assessment, you don’t get a lot of that bats at that before you actually do it. And so what are the safe environments where we can allow someone to come in and practice safely and get comfortable before they find themselves doing that, you know, out the real world? And so I think some of those different types of content can be really interesting. One of the other big things that we see from, you know, staff development perspective is most often really great clinicians get promoted into leadership. And a lot of organizations don’t spend a ton of time developing leaders. You were a great clinician. You could manage other clinicians. So it just makes sense, right? And, it…

Katie Vernoy 23:43
No, it does not, by the way. No, it does not.

Candace Wallace 23:45
That is, and the reality is, they do make great leaders. But to be a really great leader, you’re missing, you know, probably some concepts on kind of financial acumen and, you know, leading with empathy and motivational interview skills and all the things that come into leadership. And so a lot of folks are leveraging those leadership development elements to also supplement and help because, you know, that’s the pathway, that’s the path of growth for folks on staff. And so how do we leverage this full solution to help solve for those challenges? Because, you know, we also see high turnover and high burnout in new leaders, not just new employees. And so those are some of those pieces where, when you’re putting great education programs in place and tools to help measure and help people understand word and focus, things like competency management, where you’re tracking and helping develop an employee, even a leader, along their journey. You can actually measure those outcomes, and you can see it in retention with customers, and some of our favorite success stories that we see out there are when they’re leveraging that end to end. We’re solving for compliance and the stuff that folks don’t necessarily want to do, but we’re also developing staff along the way and growing the skills and keeping them on board, which is really what everybody wants to do.

Curt Widhalm 25:00
Relias is a very data driven company. How do you show that to your customers that this kind of retention pays off in the way that it does? Because I’ve seen a lot of organizations that are very much in agreement with the spirit of investing in these kinds of leadership things, and then balk at the costs and run into very predictable results.

Candace Wallace 25:21
Yes, I will say return on investment is one of our favorite phrases I think when we talk about some of these items. It can. when someone comes into the business, you know, a lot of times when someone first starts out a relationship with Relias, it’s to solve compliance. And so when we’re talking about measuring compliance for someone, we are looking at reducing administrative staff time. So we have a lot of great examples where we’ll say to someone, hey, you’ve come on board with us. You say, this is a challenge. We’re going to set you up the right way. We know you spent this much time or a full staff member doing it before, and let’s track it. So now that you’re up and running 90 days in, 120 days in, what are the time savings? And so sometimes time savings can be one of the easiest ROIs that we can measure with customers. We see that based on just leveraging the technology and the education, where they have someone who was previously running all of the live trainings, they were facilitating, you know, kind of in service style, pulling folks around to train on those topics. And we can actually measure the time saved and what that looks like for them. So that’s really helpful. Obviously, measuring turnover takes a little bit longer. You know, for some key roles, even within behavioral and community health, you’ll see them turn over at over 100% in a year, depending on the organization and where they’re at. But watching those trends for a full year and tracking that with the customer. So kind of that joint partnership and measuring those results together, some of the other things we do, not just software, but also services where we can complete some tasks on behalf of our customers. So manage services. So in some cases, customers may come to us and say, you know, tracking these regulations and required training at a state level is really difficult for me. I have a hard time doing it. I have three people working on it, and they will pay us at Relias to do manage that for them, manage the regulatory training plans, help them ensure they stay compliant. And then they can measure those cost savings, you know, related to that. So it kind of depends on what the challenges that the customer is looking to solve. A lot of times, folks start with compliance, because it’s the meatiest, and then we grow that relationship to kind of say, what can we tackle next? And so that’s where we’ll say, let’s look at staff development. What programs do you have in place? What career ladders do you have? Here’s some examples we can share of how we see people leveraging this. And it kind of, it’s continuing that journey together, because compliance is always going to be a thing. You’re always going to have to solve for it. And once you get that kind of humming along, and something that’s a little more automated than it is today, that’s where we can kind of set our sights next. And, you know, in some cases, we work with folks to look at things like clinical outcomes or improvements based on that’s never going to come just from taking an online course that’s going to be married together with competency development, maybe hands on kind of skills training or development as well. But those types of items where we’re improving healthcare outcomes are also some of the places where we love to spend our time, because that’s really, you know, it’s why we wake up every day.

Katie Vernoy 28:23
So you’re deep in this. You’re really looking at, how can you support behavioral health providers, whether they’re large organizations or slightly smaller organizations, do what they need to do to continue to stay viable and provide as many high quality services as they can. We ask this question of a lot of our folks that come on, and so this is, you know, a little bit of a hot take for you. So because it’s not one of the ones on the list, but if we’re looking at folks in this space, they’re, they’re a small to medium sized group practice, for example, they’ve been taking insurance. Maybe they have Medicaid, maybe they have Medicare, they have, you know, enough stuff that there is some compliance things going on. But they’re also facing, you know, kind of a lot of the other behavioral tech space stuff. So there’s, you know, big companies that are able to do evidence based care in a different way. There’s, you know, so many different changing. There’s parity issues of, you know, maybe mental health care is not going to be covered at the same level. And they have the turnover, they have the difficulty in keeping supervisors well trained and doing a good job. It seems like that would be a great client for you guys. But the question I have is, when someone is doing their best, what might they focus their attention on to really move the needle, to become more viable, to be able to compete in the current landscape. Like, what are the best practices that they can really look at, and whether they whether they join Relias or not. Obviously, relias would make it a lot easier. But what are the what are the biggest things that would help someone stay competitive in such a really fraught time for our profession?

Candace Wallace 30:07
I would say some of them are harder than others. So I think one of the things we talk about with customers a lot is just what services you provide. There are some services that have kind of more funding opportunity than what you may offer in your mix today. Some of that comes, you know, with additional regulatory red tape, but I think that the one thing I think you folks should always ask is, why do we exist? What’s our differentiator in the market? Like, how do they define themselves as a business, and are there additional services they can provide that provide additional kind of, you know, funding streams for them to continue to deliver care in a market that they care about. And, you know, we see, you know, some, you know, there’s a lot of kind of expansion and like medication assisted treatment, even moving into residential and other pieces like that. And so just staying attuned to, what are those different options, and what is your ability to deliver some of those additional services that are kind of next to where you operate today? So I think that’s kind of looking at it from a growth perspective, like, where do I get additional dollars? I think just as a business operator, I think that’s something you have to be attuned to and really lean into understanding from a regulation standpoint, what it takes to deliver services beyond what you do today. So that would be number one. I think I’ve had this conversation because I find myself at conferences sometimes, and we talk about things like staff retention and burnout, and there’s a lot of big, beautiful things you can do. And a lot of people say that’s really tough for me, and I’m like, with an average turnover, you know, for some of the businesses we see of over 50% it costs too much to ignore. So, you know, I think we can show people basic math of if you can reduce turnover just by 10% this is what your savings could be. And I think understanding the math of turnover is really critical. You don’t even have to, you know, there’s crazy things out there that say it could be like, it’s like, 2x someone’s salary to replace them. That’s math that none of us are comfortable with. I’m like, Let’s go smaller. Let’s talk about like, maybe it cost 20% of someone’s salary to replace them. It’s a little more realistic, and those are some of the older estimates that we see in the market. But do the math. Like, look at your business, look at your turnover rate, and say to yourself, like, Am I comfortable with this going forward? Because it’s costing me more to replace than it is to retain. And so and if you do that math, then the next thing you need to look at is, what are the things that drive retention in my business? Sometimes they’re things as simple as like, employee recognition, making sure that people see seen in where they are, that they are being appreciated in very simple ways. Sometimes thank you goes a very long way. But you know, some of those pieces go into place and understanding paths to professional development. So if you have, you hire someone, and there’s no clear way for them to know where they go next, it’s really easy for them to leave you to do something for slightly more money somewhere else. And so in a space where for certain types, especially non clinical roles, where you’re competing with McDonald’s, or some of you know, sometimes the local gas station, depending on what their hourly rate is, like, that kind of stuff is important. And so your differentiator has to sometimes be higher than compensation. So you have to find some of these ways to lean into staff retention. So I would say, you know, those are some of the top two. Focus on something that drives your top line growth, and then focus on something that helps you keep your staff in place, especially the really good ones, you know, making sure you’re developing them and moving them along. Those are huge, and those are kind of basic, right? I think those are, they’re basic, but they’re really easy to ignore. I always say I’m a big fan, I don’t know if you’ve I’m sure everybody, if you’ve ever heard me talk, you’ve probably heard me talk about Patrick Lencioni, who wrote The Advantage. But I think I love Patrick Lencioni. One of the things that I love, that he talks about, and I talk about this a lot, is this piece around reinforcing clarity. So once you know who you are as a company, and you’re online as leaders and all that good stuff, reinforcing clarity is really about putting kind of systems, process things in place that allow the right things to happen when you’re busy and you’re not watching. And so things like career development, job descriptions, staff competency development, like, these are things that if you don’t have them in place, they’re not going to show up. So like, Hey, I say the same thing goes with your hiring practices. Like, if you’re not leveraging scorecards for hiring like, then how do you know that you’re hiring the right staff with the right skills and qualifications, like, there’s just some of these kind of basic things that, if you can just look at the simplest things, what are the systems, tools, process I can put in place that make sure that the business I intend to lead shows up every day and does what I need it to do every day. And you know, in a lot of ways, especially if you’re a small business and you’re doing okay, you don’t need massive tech to come solve that for you. These are things I always even say in my own business, I want us to operationally be able to do something before I’ll put software behind it to make it more efficient. And so, you know, those are the guidance I would give anyone like, figure out operationally what you want to look like, and then put tech behind it, and it’ll help kind of move the needle even further, but sometimes you kind of have to step back and kind of, you know, clean the house a little bit before you get ready for some of these things.

Curt Widhalm 35:30
One of the things that makes conversations like this really hit home with our listeners is, can you give some descriptions of some success stories with some of the customers that Relias has worked with, and I don’t know kind of the buzz and the feedback, the glowing reviews that you have from really successful work.

Candace Wallace 35:51
Yeah, I will say, you know, one of my more recent, favorite ones is a company called New Dawn Treatment Centers. They are someone who has been a customer with relias. So they have our education, you know, they have some of our solutions, and they chose to leverage one of our new services, which is the, you know, training plan compliance, where we manage the regulatory training sets for them, as well as what we call, kind of our managed service for solution administration. So when they came in, you know, they they needed help, kind of adhering overall to what was being required at a federal and a state level, from a training perspective, but also just managing the software itself, some of the kind of key tasks related to it. And so they entrusted us, you know, this past year, to actually take that on for them. And for their administrator, you know, I think we saved them about 20 hours a month by taking that on. And so the cost of that service, you know, was far lower than what they’re you know, they saved significantly more dollars on that side. And that’s one of those examples of depends on what your challenges are. You know, for them, they they had this challenge and had this ability to outsource some of that to Relias to kind of not just deliver a great software solution, but let me take on a little bit of that additional burden for you, and we see great results with it. And so not only are they able to save time, but you know, they’re kind of meeting audit requirements and other pieces without significant strife and worry. And so I think that’s one great example. We’ve seen some on, like, a much bigger scale, where we’ve partnered with, you know, payers across an entire state, like we do in Arizona, where we’ve rolled out a competency program and framework that their payers are leveraging in the behavioral community health space. And I think that has been really incredible at a state level, to kind of align on competence of certain staff members and roles, you know, to ensure that delivering care in a you know, in a standard way. And so I think that’s why I always say competency frameworks I love, because they allow you to really not just measure, you know, kind of uniquely, but you can also set the standard of what different levels of proficiency look like for any given role in any given care setting. And those types of things can be really important to move the needle when we’re measuring from the same stick. And so that’s another great example where kind of standardizing competence in how we think about something, even at a state level, is kind of incredible.

Katie Vernoy 38:17
I just want to highlight something that I’m hearing that really makes Relias shine, which is, there’s this element of, we’re going to save you time, we’re going to do this. We’re going to take it on. It’ll be done right. We’re going to save you time. We’re also going to give you some peace of mind. There’s, you know, you’ll have the basics covered. It’ll be great. I actually am curious about, what are the risks of not being able to maintain compliance with regulations, with not being able to ensure minimal competency. Like, what are the what’s the problem that you’re solving in that regard?

Candace Wallace 38:54
Yeah, you know, I think, gosh, besides the like stress of having an auditor in your building, I think the…

Katie Vernoy 38:59
Yeah.

Candace Wallace 39:00
…you know, the fines can be pretty significant, you know, I think a lot of folks know, depending on kind of the severity of the issue that comes up with an audit, it can be something as simple as a warning and they’re gonna they come back and find it again, it could be a monetary fine. Other times, it can be large enough that it can be a pretty sizable fine that you’re going to have to incur that you weren’t planning for within the year. I think some of the other things we see depending on kind of services provided and kind of minimum staffing ratios as well, you know, being able to, if you have an auditor come in and see that these are challenges. Not only is it a fine, is it public, it can also impact kind of future payment and kind of participation in some of the kind of funding programs as well. And so it’s not just making sure you’re checking a box. I would say, you know, we see this a lot across every care setting that we work with, but you are avoiding and you know, while regulations are can be challenging and tough, the essence of them is quality, right? It is protecting patients and delivering standardized quality care, you know, giving everyone a right to kind of health care, health care equity, right? So, like, these are why we do these things. And so the fines can be pretty big depending on the severity of what your miss is. So if you missed, you know, two people missed training on HIPAA in the last year., that may not be that big of a deal. If you had a handful of, you know, providers who weren’t qualified to deliver a billable service that you claimed as a billable service, that’s different, right? And so I think these are some of those types of things with regulation solutions with things like incident management, which we’re rolling out now, to be able to track when you actually do have incidents or even grievances, in some cases take place. These are what the regulations are asking us to do, but they’re asking us to do it to protect patients. And so I think you know, the fines can go in the hundreds of 1000s, millions, in some cases, based on the business and the severity. So sometimes investing in software can seem expensive, but, you know, the the offset of that can be enough to put you out of business. And, you know, in the really scary ways, it can put some people in jail based on what’s happening. And so these are, these are some of the things we want folks to avoid. I would say.

Katie Vernoy 41:17
For sure, for sure.

Curt Widhalm 41:20
How can people sign up with Relias? What does that process look like? What can they expect from the first part of working together?

Candace Wallace 41:28
Yeah, so I think when someone is interested in working with Relias, it comes in two ways. Sometimes you may just be a clinician, you’re out there and you want you have continuing education elements that you’re looking for. You come to us through Relias Academy, you buy access to take continuing education. You can go on the website and pick them out based on your license and the state you operate in, things like that. So at an individual level, that’s certainly the, you know, one of the easier ways. If you are a provider business and you are interested in compliance solutions, you know, continuing education, skill development, all those things you come in through relias.com and let us know what your interest is. And from there, we will have someone on our sales organization engage and kind of figure out what the right fit is for you and your business. If you sign up with Relias and you move into, you know, partnership or relationship with us. That’s where you get to work with my folks on the customer side of the house. So from the moment an organization signs a contract, it kicks off our whole process where all of our team members get engaged. So you onboard with one of our Relias employees in our professional services organization. We don’t let people leave implementation until they’re set up for success. And so folks spend time with us, getting online and getting onboarded, and then they continue their journey with us through our customer success function, our support teams. And really the full business is here to ensure that customers are successful in the long term. And so you show up, and then we never, we never let go of you. That’s the best way to say it.

Katie Vernoy 43:00
And from what you’ve described, it sounds like the solutions are fairly tailored to the individual company.

Candace Wallace 43:08
Yeah, I would say, you know, that’s one of the big, it’s one of the great things, and it can be a big challenge, too, is healthcare is pretty diverse. So one of the great elements of having been in the behavioral and community health space for, collectively, about two decades now, from a business entity to perspective, is that we can go deep on the needs of a business. And so while the technology is highly configurable to meet needs, you know, I think what we see in behavioral and community health tracking, kind of training requirements dynamically based on someone’s licensure, is really important. So the software allows for that. Being able to onboard people easily is important, but also having content that is actually tailored toward the care setting that you operate in, the services that you provide, the state and federal requirements or approvals that are needed, or even continuing education elements, that’s one of those things that people come to Relias to trust. That we’re not just going to give you education. We’re going to give you education that meets, you know, state, federal standards that are required for you as an operator.

Curt Widhalm 44:10
Before we wrap up here, where is Relias still growing? But what’s next? What’s in your productivity line? And we always recognize that there are companies that kind of keep some things under wraps. But is there anything that you can share with us?

Candace Wallace 44:22
I will say, you know, I mentioned one earlier with that test out functionality. I always say, it seems like a simple thing, but it’s probably one of the biggest time savers we’re going to bring to our customers in the, you know, in the next six months or so. So that’s a big one. One of the other things we talk about a lot is connected workflows. So I have this kind of education solution in the market now, we now have compliance elements in the market. Connecting those two things together to make it even more seamless for our customers is really important. Leveraging AI in the technology so you can have recommendations and other pieces is a big part of where we’re thinking about kind of moving things forward and actively developing now. Things like taking an assessment and then based on your results, having automated education available for assignment as well. So instead of having to go through the unique steps to do that, being able to just have it automated. Those state regulations I mentioned as well, bringing those out to kind of solve for some of those key challenges and one of the really exciting items that we’ve brought to market through a recent acquisition is experience management software, so the ability to do things like patient surveys. We see a lot of our customers, especially FQHCs, are very active in leveraging patient surveys, because you can do things like grow your customer base, especially if you’re leveraging it for things like reputation management and being able to increase your brand awareness through the reviews and other pieces online. And so those patient surveys are something that they’re required to participate in, but those delivery mechanisms are a little bit more flexible than some other markets. And so that kind of digital option of text messag, you know, kind of engagement with patients has been a really big growth area for us, and we’ll continue to bring that patient experience element together with our solutions that we already have in place. So you always say, imagine a world where, based on patient feedback, you understand that one of your providers needs a very kind of distinct adjustment, maybe in soft skills or other things of that nature that trend up. We can recommend education and learning in kind of bite size components that meet that need. And so those are some of those exciting, kind of connected workflows where we’re taking kind of software in the market that’s been pretty separate and aligning them together to make things a little bit easier, save a little bit more of time. Yeah.

Katie Vernoy 46:44
I love that. So just if folks are thinking about signing up with Relias, who is a great customer for you, and who isn’t your customer?

Candace Wallace 46:55
Oh gosh, I know I love everybody. But I will say, you know, I think the from a great customer perspective, I think you have to be ready to go down a journey of digitization. I think if you are not leveraging any technology in part of how you’re operating today, and everybody starts out in some different space. I think, you know, making that first step, you have to be ready to make that transition. I think so that’s a big part of it. I think a little bit too of kind of understanding where you are as a company, and kind of your readiness to accept any kind of change management that comes along with technology implementation. I think it’s pretty important, because you’re not just picking a solution that’s going to solve challenges. You’re going to need your staff members to leverage it, to engage with it, and you need to be kind of ready for kind of taking that forward with your business, I would say. You know, for the market, I would say, you know, we would love to solve challenges for everybody that that’s out there, right? And I think that, you know, if you have challenges with staff retention, if you have challenges with compliance, if you’re thinking about patient engagement, trying to think about how to do that a little bit better. You know, we can solve for any of those challenges. I’d love to solve most of those challenges. The more we can look at as key challenges together across a variety of solutions, the bigger the impact we can have for customers. And so, you know, I would say the bigger the challenge, come find me. It will be good. You know, I think that you know you have to be ready for this, and if you are, you know, if you feel like you’re a small enough business where you don’t need a heavy set of technology to solve for that challenge, maybe a consumer site like Relias Academy might be a better fit for you to start. If you’re not unsure, if you’re unsure of, like, how you how you’re ready, how you get there, I would say, you know, sometimes dip your toe in the water by buying some continuing education for some of your staff members and see how it goes.

Curt Widhalm 48:50
And where can people find out more about all of the wonderful things that Relias offers?

Candace Wallace 48:56
Yeah, I would start with relias.com, that’s like, the center of our universe. So you can get access to, kind of any of the information on the solutions, customer testimonials, all those good things. And those can also link you out to some of our other brands, like Relias Academy, like nurse.com, like freecme.com depending on if you maybe you are a prescriber and you’re interested in leveraging continuing medical education, for example. So take a look at our brands, but start with relias.com that’s going to get you everywhere you need to go.

Katie Vernoy 49:30
All right. So now we get to talk about our impressions and our thoughts, and we actually kept asking Candace questions, and so we have a little bit more information as well. I, I really enjoyed meeting the Relias team in the Behavioral Health Tech Conference. They are all as passionate and excited to support mental health clinicians and larger mental health organizations to do good work. And that definitely came through. What I didn’t know, and what I had asked, because I was like, I think you’re too big for me. And they said, No, we actually started with smaller providers, and our goal is to help the providers who don’t have the infrastructure to be able to potentially compete on a higher level or to do more things. And so when she was talking about the ability to get some compliance solutions, I just imagine all of those ideas that I dropped over the years of, you know, becoming a nonprofit or doing some more services that would require CARF accreditation or require some sort of compliance issues that I didn’t want to build the infrastructure for. And it sounds like these solutions are actually not terribly expensive, but save a ton of infrastructure building time and make sure that you’re actually aligned and that you’ll be able to continue to get those those dollars. So it seems like a really kind of unique and pretty amazing offering. So I definitely would recommend folks that are in that space to check it out, because it feels like it could be what makes a difference between your practice being consumed by the app based therapy things, or standing out and having your own space to provide services for folks who need it.

Curt Widhalm 51:21
I had known nothing about Relias before you came back from the Behavioral Health Tech Conference, and you were kind of raving about a lot of what they were offering. And at first glance, I admittedly have to say, Oh, this is kind of too big for me in my practice. And my practice on the smaller group practice end of things, this seemed something more geared towards behavioral health agencies, community mental health, the very corporate kinds of things. And one of the things talking with Candace that became very apparent, I think, more so after we pushed stop on the recording, was a lot of the things that do filter down to even some of the smaller practices. And so if you’re sticking with us at this point in the conversation, they do seem to have stuff at every level of size. And rather than kind of taking if you are building out a practice, rather than taking the advice of your friends down the street who has a practice that you want, and kind of going through a lot of growing pains, this seems to be in the space that is really around, hey, we know what you need to do, and we can sit down, and our entire job is helping you to be able to level up in the way that you need to, rather than just kind of taking the advice from somebody who kind of took the advice from their brother in law’s lawyer who was at a barbecue over the weekend. So this is a really, really great service, and the pricing is actually pretty affordable for what I had thought were monthly prices are actually kind of annual prices, at least as far as what we were talking about here.

Katie Vernoy 53:08
So yeah, I would definitely recommend folks checking them out. If there’s specific trainings you need as a solo practitioner, it is a continuing education solution, so you can see some stuff there. And then, for those who are in the small, medium, to on the way to large group practices who are looking to grow or who are wanting to clean up their infrastructure, I would definitely check out their infrastructure solutions so that you can kind of very quickly strengthen your practice, but business policies.

Curt Widhalm 53:39
So check them out at relias.com I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy Thanks for listening to us with Candace Wallace.

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