Recent Accomplishments, and a Look Ahead.
It is a perfect time of year to write this very first President’s Message. My first message to everyone is to wish you all a very merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I am grateful for all of the contributions from staff, shareholders and business partners that have assisted us in achieving so much in this past year and thank each and every one of you for all of your efforts. I could highlight all of the accomplishments that we have achieved together in the last year but that would be a long letter. I do want to highlight some recent accomplishments and look ahead to what we hope to achieve in the near future.
In the last couple of months, we changed the name of our operating subsidiary from Seastone Delray Healthcare LLC to Addiction Recovery Institute of America LLC. We moved the location of our PHP, IOP and OP facility from our location in Delray Beach to our new location in West Palam Beach. We were granted our license for Detox and Residential Care at our new West Palm Beach facility and we are currently in the process of moving our PHP housing in Delray Beach to West Palm Beach.
We recently went through our Joint Commission annual survey and I am pleased to report that we were successful in maintaining our accreditation on all of our levels of care. Our staff had to work very hard to accomplish this due to the changing locations, the name change and the addition of many new staff. A daunting challenge to say the least. We also went through a DCF audit which was just as daunting and at the time of this writing we expect to get a further extension to our probationary licenses while DCF works their way through the findings.
We slowed our admission process down during the last three weeks as we went through the audits as they consumed a large part of our staff time and we expect intakes to pick up significantly after the new year. We have been creating relationships with other providers that have less levels of care which will also provide us with a source of referrals. We are in the credentialing process with a new insurance carrier and expect to start the credentialing process with two others early in the new year. Additionally, we are most of the way through the Legit Scripts approval process which will allow our company to participate in google ad-words campaigns should we choose to participate in that type of marketing.
On the real estate front, we entered into a 2-year lease for our office building in Delray Beach with a psychiatrist working in the addiction treatment field. We also determined the housing in Delray Beach to be surplus and have listed this property for sale. We expect the proceeds of the sale of this property to be used to pay down debt on the property and to pay down convertible notes issued to finance the deposits on the West Palm Beach property. We have been negotiating with lenders for the completion of the purchase of the West Palm Beach property and expect to be in a position to close on this property in the very near term.
We recently retained the services of a leading digital communications agency to manage our social media presence and implement a shareholder communications program. This President’s Message is a result of that engagement. We expect to tell our story to many others and if you like what we are doing please help us and share our story with others. You can follow Ethema’s story on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
It is my profound wish and intention to change the way addiction treatment is done and improve the lives of those suffering from addiction. Thank you for your continued support, I look forward to sharing more Ethema updates in the near future.
Sincerely,
Shawn Leon
President and CEO