Two months into her role, Director Allie Friesen knows where she wants to go for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
It may take a little more time to figure out how to get there.
“I don’t know everything,” Friesen said during a visit to Tulsa World. “What I’m really good at is getting the right people to the table and making sure we’re moving in the right direction.”
Mr. Friesen has been with Integris Health for nine and a half years, the last three and a half years as Director of Clinical Behavioral Health before taking over ODMHSAS. The agency has come under fire for its handling of several issues, including the treatment of people who are imprisoned but deemed incompetent to stand trial.
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After years of “poverty,” Friesen said Oklahoma has an abundance of “really, really good” mental health resources, but communication remains fragmented.
“Behavioral health services are growing vertically rather than horizontally, resulting in increased silos and a more difficult system to operate,” Friesen’s document outlining the department’s goals said. It is stated that.
“It’s clear that people with expertise and who have dedicated their lives to public service have not been allowed a seat at the table for a long time,” Friesen told the world. “We need to repair those relationships, establish trust, and then bring them to the table to resolve the issue.”
“We know we’re not doing a good job on that front end,” she says. “The homeless in Nichols Hills, the Blue Cross (insurance) people, we’re not doing a good job on that front end. And we’re not doing a good job on prevention.
“We have been very focused on the crisis, and rightly so,” Friesen continued. “We need to connect parts of the crisis continuum across public and private (resources), and at the same time have confidence in the quality of prevention programs from early childhood to the workplace.”
Friesen said there was no clear answer for mentally ill people caught up in the justice system, but he would add an ethicist to the agency to find individual solutions among the conflicting positions. .
“It’s not a middleman,” Friesen said. “It’s someone who can help you look at it from all angles. Usually they have a legal background and a clinical background. They go into the scene and put every possible lens on (the situation) to determine the best and fairest outcome for the
“We need to improve ‘this’, but we don’t know what ‘this’ is yet,” she says. “I think what’s contributing to where we are is the lack of front-end evaluation.”
Friesen said each day is a revelation.
“For me, coming from the private sector and having little exposure to state structures, stepping into any field would have been new and overwhelming,” she said. “This is a culture that requires a lot of love. It takes a lot of safety to re-establish safety for our employees.
“There are some differences that I have identified between how we have done business in the past and how we will do business going forward,” Friesen continued. The situation continues to be chaotic, and each day brings new challenges and new things to overcome and understand.
“My purpose is not to make us look good. There’s a time and a place for showing off the good things we’re doing. But the data is on the table and we’re actually showing performance.” When you’re checking to see if things are working, you need to learn from what’s working if you want to know what’s going wrong.
“I’m never going to show up and give you information that isn’t authentic. I’m going to address the problem and figure out how we can improve. … We have to know where we’re failing. yeah.”
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