Patrick Sallee, CEO of Vibrant Health

Patrick Sallee, CEO of Vibrant Health, sat down with us to talk about his organization’s partnership with Camber Children’s Mental Health (previously KVC Hospitals). Vibrant Health is a network of safety net clinics in Wyandotte county providing medical, dental and behavioral healthcare. It is an access point to healthcare, especially for those within an underserved or underinsured population.

In 2018, Camber began providing psychiatric services to Vibrant Health’s youth and adult clients in need of psychiatric medication services. Camber’s physicians work with providers at Vibrant Health to ensure patients are in a space where they’re comfortable and working with providers that are familiar to them as part of a patient-centered medical model.

Read our Q&A with Patrick to learn more about the partnership between Vibrant Health and Camber. He tells us how these companies are working together to provide more specialized behavioral health services to families in Kansas City, KS.

Q: Can you tell us about yourself as a professional and share your beliefs on leadership?

Patrick: I’ve worked for many years within nonprofits, mostly in fundraising roles but also in business development and operations. Everything we do only works if you have a commitment to helping people. I have a passion for helping people at the end of the day.

I believe the organization operates better if we’re transparent. That goes externally and internally. This means I share information with donors, community members, employees, etc. We try to be clear about what is happening and where we are going so both employees and stakeholders understand why we make the decisions we make.

Within our leadership team, we have a good group of people that challenge one another in constructive ways and add perspective to ensure we represent our employees and our community to the best of our ability.

One of the key aspects to leadership, in my view, is to bring together the varying perspectives and priorities, including what we see and hear from our patients, staff and community. Each of us has a different perspective on what happens when we walk through the clinic or work with teams on specific projects – but none of us has the entire picture, so it is important we blend all the varying information together to help guide our direction.

Q: What made Vibrant Health seek Camber as a potential partner?

Patrick: Reputation and services. We don’t offer the level of psychiatric treatment that Camber offers and we knew our patients needed it. We came to Camber with a problem to solve and as an organization, it was able to help guide us through the process of how to make this partnership work and how to implement it within our clinics.

Vibrant Health has therapists at each of our clinic locations, and they do a fantastic job, but we also see patients with greater needs. We want to meet those needs and before our partnership, we weren’t able to do that. We don’t want to have to send patients off-site through another process. With Camber, we are able to provide weekly telepsychiatry services to Wyandotte families in need of more specialized treatment. It has been a great partnership and we have gained resources we weren’t able to provide to our patients.

Q: Wyandotte County has some of the poorest health outcomes in the state—why is it important for the community to have physical and behavioral health in the same location?

Patrick: Health outcomes are often related to both physical and mental health and the key to improving health outcomes is treating the whole person. Only about 10–12% of our client population is enrolled in our behavioral health services, but we know there’s a good portion of other patients that would benefit from these services greatly. We’re at the point now where we’re moving more toward integration so behavioral and physical health care can be delivered more cohesively and more seamlessly for our patients, which will also benefit our providers in the care they’re able to deliver.

Families don’t have time to get away from work or school or all that they have going on to make multiple appointments in multiple places, so integration in the same space by the same service provider can have a huge impact on participation.

Q: Who benefits from the services at Vibrant Health and by extension, through the partnership with Camber?

Patrick: Vibrant Health serves families and individuals of all ages and we’re always looking for ways to serve a broader community within Wyandotte County. Our partnership with Camber is allowing us to do that. We see many patients both with and without insurance. We do everything from well-check visits to chronic disease management.

Many of the patients we serve benefit from our numerous partnerships. In addition to partnering with Camber, we also have a great partnership with the University of Kansas Health System that is fantastic and strengthens our ability to serve more people with quality services. There are many other community partners that we have that make an impact each and every day.

Q: With so many exciting things going on in healthcare, what can we expect next from Vibrant Health?

Patrick: Vibrant Health is looking to grow and expand our partnerships. We’re looking at gaps in service throughout the community both location-wise and programmatically. Our Board of Directors and direct care teams are constantly looking for ways to provide quality care to our community.

To learn more about Vibrant Health and the services it provides, visit vibrantwyandotte.org.

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