Following a competitive screening process, OneFifteen has been approved by Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague's office to pursue state funding for a three-year, $9.1 million program in Montgomery County that aims to benefit 1,500 adults with substance use disorder.
The program, Providing Rigorous Outcomes Generating Reliable Effects and Strengthening Systems (PROGRESS), aims to expand OneFifteen's continuum of care for individuals in southwest Ohio’s criminal justice system. The idea is to create a safety net for those individuals to receive treatment, achieve recovery and reduce recidivism and length of stay in jails.
Marti Taylor, president and CEO of OneFifteen, said the proposal has several major goals, including improving access to care, reducing recidivism rates and helping individuals in the justice system find active employment. It should complement much of the work OneFifteen already does at its Carillon-Edgemont treatment campus, she said.
"To have some focused efforts with the justice population and continue to have more information to say what works and what doesn't work, it just felt like another part of the evolution for the populations that we're serving," Taylor told me.
The project would place "telehealth hubs" in the Montgomery County pretrial services office, public defender’s office, Day Reporting Center and probation office. Through co-location of those hubs, OneFifteen plans to increase population-specific engagement and provide mentoring, medication assisted treatment and workforce training services.
OneFifteen's proposal is one of five programs that were deemed "Pay-for-Success Appropriate and Ready" through ResultsOHIO — a state-led infrastructure and fund that enables policymakers and innovators to pursue pay-for-success (PFS) projects designed to address Ohio's most pressing social and public health challenges.
"With issues like addiction, infant mortality, and poverty gripping our communities, we must find new ways to combat the most persistent challenges facing our state," Sprague said Wednesday in a release. “ResultsOHIO gives Ohio an avenue to do things differently – to be bold – and put innovative ideas to the test."
"Today's announcement highlights five organizations that have the tools and vision to work under a pay-for-success model, and we wish them the best in their efforts to make their projects a reality," he said.
Verily Life Sciences intends to provide the upfront funding for the OneFifteen project, though the latest designation will enable OneFifteen to advocate for results-based funding from the Ohio General Assembly. That means the project is well-positioned to move forward with a PFS contract should it receive the support of policymakers.
By late summer or early fall, OneFifteen should have a clearer picture about how the program may be funded in the state's 2022 budget, Taylor said.
Over the next several months, OneFifteen will coordinate with its governmental affairs team to educate Ohio policymakers about its goals and mission, Taylor said. The next step is contracting with organizations that will help facilitate the program's implementation.
"It's hard in the middle of a pandemic to bring people onto campus, so we have to find creative ways to do that," she said. "But I think it's (important to) help them understand what our proposal is for, and the fact that we're looking at this for the long haul."
The project is expected to have a six month ramp-up phase before providing services at full scale for three years. Performance metrics will be evaluated annually and include reduced jail time, emergency department utilization and recidivism rates; increased completion of treatment; long-term recovery; and vocational training and employment.
First Look at OneFifteen Living
OneFifteen will partner with Ascend and Samaritan Behavioral Health Inc. (SBHI) for data collection, Verily for data maintenance and upfront funding, SBHI for behavioral health services and various units of Montgomery County to implement the telehealth hubs.
OneFifteen is already working with Ascend to receive data sets which link data from three area health systems and 29 area hospitals, among other local entities. It also receives data from its clinical partner, SBHI, through Care Logic, which is an electronic health record.
In addition to the receipt of data sets, Verily and OneFifteen have partnered to create a data management platform to evaluate progress outside of the clinic with real-time data feeds.
Depending on the contracts OneFifteen establishes with partner organizations, some aspects of the program may remain in place long after the state's funding window expires, Taylor said.
"Getting folks back to sustained employment is not going to be a three-year message," she said. "Whether the funding stops at the end of year three, we're absolutely committed long-term to continuing to better understand the justice population."
Other organizations whose proposals were deemed "PFS Appropriate and Ready" include Cincinnati Works, Columbus Works, Every Child Succeeds and the Ohio Department of Higher Education.
Established in early 2019 by Verily in partnership with Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., Dayton-based OneFifteen is funded and supported locally by Kettering Health Network and Premier Health. The nonprofit offers a system for addiction treatment and recovery that integrates clinical services with technical infrastructure to offer a full continuum of care, including vocational training, job placement, peer support and sober housing.
The organization is comprised of two nonprofit entities: OneFifteen Health — the taxable, nonprofit Management Services Organization for the administrative and management services to the clinical partner — and OneFifteen Recovery, the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) that coordinates community-based, wrap-around services.
