Expanded staff, facilities will help serve more people
Aurora Harmony Health Center will be relocating to a new location at 1619 9th St. to help its expansion in providing more services and opportunities for people within the community, according to Harmony Health Centers LLC owner, Brady Shay.
“My passion is to bring the services to high need areas as best I can in order to help fulfill the need for substance abuse and mental health counseling and/or therapy,” Shay explained.
Shay opened Harmony Health in Aurora back in August 2020 as a means to branch out to other communities beyond Lincoln.
“At that time, I had a therapist, Vicki Hill, who had moved here and because I knew her from afar, we talked about it and I opened up an office here,” he recalled. “She since has moved on, but I’ve developed our business here in this community, primarily because it kind of fills a gap between Grand Island and York.”
Shay’s explanation for the necessity for Harmony Health’s location was to help people who don’t have an accessible way of traveling to mental health clinics.
“A lot of times it’s difficult for people to get away to Grand Island or York when they’re here in town and they have lives here,” he stated. “Then you also get some people who don’t have vehicles, transportation or the ability to use the transportation they have, so this makes it more convenient for the area. We do have people come from out of town here as well, because we have a fairly good standing with different referral aide sites like the legal system, different work sites, the school system and we get different referrals in from different places (as we’re) becoming more well known, so we’re getting more referrals based off of that.”
Four therapists will be working out of office at the new location. Jennifer James will serve as a provisional substance abuse counselor and visual alcoholic drug counselor; Siobhan Allen is a mental health and provisional substance abuse counselor; Katherine Fleming is a licensed independent mental health practitioner; and Annie De La Cruz is an independent health practitioner. Shay also works with clients during his weekly visits in Aurora.
“I’m a licensed independent mental health practitioner, a licensed alcohol and drug counselor, a licensed professional counselor and I do Department of Transportation, substance abuse and professional evaluations.”
Every patient who seeks help from Harmony Health Center will be provided with an assessment that will determine their needs.
“Whether it’s a substance abuse or mental health assessment or evaluation, we try to figure out what are we looking at as the issues or problems,” Shay said. “We work with the individual on how often would best help them get to their goals. Most of the time we start off with once a week therapy and then scale it back to every other week or once a month depending on where they’re at in their progress and how much they need.”
Through their progress at Harmony Health, patients will be provided methods that improve the health center’s “six domains of wellness.”
“We focus on physical, courage and care of your physical self; mental, which is how we think about things and how we process things; emotional, how we deal with our feelings; social, how we interact with others; spiritual, which is the values and beliefs that guide our behavior and how are you using those in your life; and volitional, which is free choice,” he explained. “How do you stop and recognize that most everything you do you have a choice in how you respond, so we tried to use that as a template to follow as we’re doing our therapy.”
Along with providing counseling and therapy on-site, therapists are able to communicate with their patients through telehealth, which has been an efficient tool for the health center.
“We do telehealth services as the computer and the pandemic taught us that very well,” he said. “Then if there was somebody I needed to see, I could still see them via telehealth if needed as far as my office staff and running the office here. Crystal (Holloway) and I are in a lot of contact. My therapists here and I are in regular contact as well.”
Just like their clients’ feedback to their appointments, the health center’s location change has been well received by patients.
“Everyone who I’ve talked to directly about this had a positive attitude about it,” Shay commented. “They all know that we have a limited space here. I think it’s going to be a welcomed change for most everybody. I know that for those who refer to us, they like the idea that we’ll have more people on site and more people to refer to.”
Having been at their current location since opening, the new location will provide expanded opportunities that Harmony Health can provide more possibilities for both patients and health practitioners.
“It’s a larger building that will have more office space and we can use it to expand even further,” Shay said.
One of the opportunities he commented on was group sessions with patients.
“We would like to be able to offer some groups for some individuals who the group setting would be beneficial for them all to grow in the same room, but by mutual support with each other in a group setting,” he explained. “As far as the educational opportunities, we’d like to be able to regularly provide an alcohol and drug education class for those who just feel they need more information, for those who have problems with the legal system or for those work referrals if they have an issue at work.”
Harmony Health will begin moving its offices Thursday and is getting its rooms set up on Friday to continue work on Monday.
“There is some remodeling that will have to be done to a couple of rooms to make sure they’re confidential for a larger group or setting up in an off-site location if it’s going to be a really large room,” Shay noted.
No matter what those changes may be, Shay and the staff are dedicated to making Harmony Health a welcoming place for patients and provide the support that they need.
“Hopefully by next summer, we’ll be equipped to do something like different topics that are of interest to the community and that are related to mental health and wellness,” Shay commented.
Harmony Health’s website will remain the same as well as its contact information for the Aurora Office. Patients can contact by email at aurora@cvharmonyhealth.org or call at (402) 694-6445.