Emergency Funds Needed To Keep Us Going During...

Hello,

My name is Jennifer Fenton and I am the Executive Director of a small non profit organization based in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties called The Equine Healing Collaborative.

We provide equine assisted psychotherapy (mental health services) for low income folks in our area, using our rescue horses and donkeys. All of our staff are licensed mental health professionals (MFTs, CSWs, PCCs), and our primary mission is to ensure that people have access to quality care.

Our program is unique in its model and scope. We provide roughly 1K therapy sessions per month, we currently treat over 400 low-income individuals through Medi-Cal of which is our primary payor making up roughly 96% of our income. We operate on a very slim margin due to the added expenses of our unique program, such as caring for rescue horses and donkeys, and we rely on the money we earn from insurance companies to meet our financial obligations. Specifically the 14 paid staff who care for the clients and our amazing therapy herd.

Due to a cyber security attack outlined by Optum we have been unable to submit a single claim for over a week. According to our insurance and aging report, we have roughly $40,000 in unpaid claims over the past 0-15 days.

The most recent update from Optum and our Electronic Health Record minimizes the risk to our operations by offering work arounds that significantly slow down the payment process if they work at all.

Our entire staff is in risk of being placed on furlough, which will directly impact the care of hundreds of clients, which is our worst nightmare. This is so disruptive to our business, the lives of our staff who already sacrifice so much to work here, and to our rescue animals that we need to find funds elsewhere and fast. Moreover, the United States is currently experiencing the worst mental health crisis is in decades and recently the CDC reported that suicide rates are higher than they have been since World War II.

We are 100 % reliant on being able to bill efficiently in order to survive, the fact that such a large corporate health care (371.6 Billion Dollars for 2023 profit) operation has the audacity to state, "Any delays to claims processing have yet to impact provider cash flows" clearly shows how disconnected the insurance industry is to the people on the ground trying to provide care for our communities.

I hope someone is listening, I lay the blame for our mental health crisis solely on the shoulders of insurance companies who make getting paid for services an unrelenting nightmare.

Thank you,

Jennifer Fenton, LMFT, & staff