All incoming clients are prescreened using five assessments prior to intake by associates on the Connect Team: PHQ 9 or PHQ A, CSSRS, GAD 7, AUDIT, and CAGE AID. Therapists update these assessments at least monthly for clients who have relevant symptoms and diagnoses.

All clients are also scheduled for an extensive NOMS interview by Research Assistants in CRI to be completed within two weeks of intake. Follow up interviews are conducted at six months and at discharge, and clients receive a gift card for each interview.

The Virtual Clinic is available to any client with commercial insurance who has personal access to internet and the use of Zoom. We do not generally utilize clinic rooms for telehealth as we cannot control scheduling and access to these rooms. Clients are screened for their ability to access and use Zoom prior to intake.

We serve clients of all ages.

Specific grant requirements mean that only clients whose intake is conducted by the clinic and who complete a research interview count toward the minimum number of clients that must be seen each year in order to access the grant funds. For this reason we prefer to do the intakes ourselves rather than have the intake completed at another clinic. If you know of any commercial clients who may be better served by the Virtual Clinic, please reach out to us so that we can schedule their intake at the Virtual Clinic.

Our goal is for clients to be seen weekly. For this reason, clients who only want medication management or wish to be seen only once a month or as needed should probably be referred to another clinic for services. We also believe that evidence shows that clients who receive therapy along with their medication get better more quickly and remain stable after successfully discontinuing therapy services.

We refer clients mostly to Centerstone clinics with psychiatric services close to their home or place of employment. In the event that there are no clinics close to either home or work, we rely on the availability of virtual appointments for psychiatric care as we did during COVID. Please let us know of providers who are available for virtual psychiatric evaluations and follow up appointments as it will make our internal referral process more efficient.

Please use the Internal Referral Process.

We can take referrals from schools if our therapists have availability. Since referrals from schools are not usually initiated by parents, if you have a referral, please make sure the parents or guardians agree to be contacted, that they have internet access and wish to use virtual services, and have commercial insurance. You may email this information to our Office Coordinator until we streamline the referral process more. If the client was a prior client with Centerstone, you may use the Internal Referral process for this as well.

These situations are handled as they are in all clinics, on a case by case basis. We will help clients sign up for TennCare or Safety Net if applicable and continue treatment if at all possible.

We will work with our colleagues in other clinics as best we can to provide them services in a face to face manner. We know that virtual therapy is not for everyone, but we know it has been amazingly successful for many people.

We currently have 11 licensed therapists and hope to hire several more. Just like other clinics, we could easily accept additional clients if we had the therapists to do so. If you know of anyone who is licensed and interested, please do not hesitate to contact us for more information. Therapists work a minimum of 30 hours weekly to qualify for benefits and also have their clients count toward the grant.

If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to LA Hill at LA.Hill@centerstone.org.