Burrell Behavioral Health's parent company to create nation’s largest nonprofit provider of behavioral health services

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Burrell Behavioral Health's parent company, Brightli, announced they will be merging with another company. The merger with Centerstone would create the nation's largest nonprofit provider of behavioral health services.

Brightli CEO, C.J. Davis, told Ozarks First that service delivery will go unchanged as the companies merge, but the industry will benefit from combining resources.

"We've never had an organization that has this kind of scale," said Davis. "To have that can have this sort of transformative impact on many, many communities across the country. "

Davis said the demand for behavioral health services are at an all-time high while the number of providers in the industry is at an all-time low. The merger comes with the goal of finding innovative ways to keep up with the demand.

"Clients need more research, more evidence. This organization collectively, together will be able to fill some of the research gaps that exist in our industry," said Davis. "It's also for our employees. It's about attracting more people during a workforce crisis. We'll have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10,000 employees and impact roughly 250,000 lives over the course of a year."

Davis said they want to combine the strengths of both companies, taking Brightli's success with services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and adding Centerstone's skilled crisis services and research.

"It's really from a position of strength," said Davis. "What we're doing when we're aligning all the services, and the administrative services, is we're really trying to find the best of the best. Our IDD service line is one of the best of the best. I would anticipate that that would be an opportunity for service expansion to implement what we're doing in Missouri around the population in other states."

By streamlining services and staffing, Davis said research will expand and the quality of care will improve.

"What we hope is to demonstrate through this partnership that we can do things more efficiently," said Davis. "That's been one of the biggest sticking points in our industry for a long time, is how do you optimize care by reducing the amount that it costs. The goal is that we can go to payers and demonstrate some of the new evidence-based practices that we're implementing, that actually cost less money and have a greater impact on people."

There will be no disruption to patient care resulting from the merger. Both Brightli and Centerstone patients will continue to see the same provider.