Jill is the chief executive officer of People Incorporated Mental Health Services, a Twin Cities-based nonprofit providing a spectrum of services through 65 programs in the greater metro area. Jill's background and experience is in healthcare operations, management, and service development, serving as the chief operating officer at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation for 11 years prior to joining People Incorporated. Jill holds a Master of Arts in Psychology and Human Behavior from National University in San Diego, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Social Work from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Jill Wiedemann West is the CEO of People Incorporated Mental Health Services, a Twin Cities-based nonprofit providing a spectrum of services through 65 programs in the greater metro area. Working with the community's most vulnerable and marginalized in the public space is such a unique experience compared to working in the private sector with a narrow focus. In this episode of Intentional Greatness, Jill talks about that transition and she shares her journey to becoming CEO of People Incorporated. Jill also discusses the difficulties marginalized people face in accessing basic healthcare services, and the new integrated model her team is rolling out to mitigate that.
The community space (commonly referred to as the "safety net") often includes healthcare entities that largely serve individuals on some level of entitlement insurances or pre-paid medical assistance. These are folks with a lot of barriers from poverty and criminal justice to mental and chemical health. It is so difficult for them to find healthcare simply because they have to move through all of the social determinants in their world to get to square one. They are not just dealing with one simple health issue; they are victims of circumstance dealing with a handful of other challenges on top of that. Jill and her team are doing everything they possibly can to eliminate those barriers to make treatment attainable. That has been her top priority since day one with People Incorporated.
The integrated model that Jill and her team created is making that goal significantly more tangible. But there are still broken systems upon systems making it difficult to implement on a larger scale. COVID has shown us the absolute need to move into integrated thinking, but it has also been a significant barrier as we push to get there. There is a lot of support for the integrated model, but it is also seen as a huge risk. Different thinking and different payment structures are needed to make this model work and there is a lot of push back. But with leaders like Jill at the helm, the possibility for change is much much higher.
