Recovery Centers of America at Devon Celebrates Five Years Saving Lives from the Disease of Addiction
Honoring RCA at Devon on the Occasion of Our Five-Year Anniversary
Approaching the five-year anniversary of Recovery Centers of America at Devon, I feel a sense of accomplishment, not chiefly for my own modest, individual contribution, but rather for the heroic efforts of staff, patients, their families and the larger recovery community in which we’re all embedded. Guided by RCA’s defining mission of saving one million lives from the disease of addiction, we’ve worked to counter the crisis of addiction one life at a time.
We broke ground, as it were, in December of 2016, with RCA’s acquisition of the former Devon Manor care property at 235 Lancaster Ave. Since then, we at RCA at Devon have been honored—humbled—to have undertaken over 12,000 admissions, helping each individual start their journey to meaningful recovery and build rewarding lives free from the burden of addiction.
My investment in this mission is both personal and professional. A number of people close to me over the years have been affected by addiction, and I’ve also worked in the field of behavioral health for over 40 years. At the same time, I was frustratingly aware that the world of addiction treatment had been stagnant for many years. So when the opportunity came along to do something different, I jumped at it. After five years serving as CEO of Devon, I can confirm that RCA is truly doing something different. From our understanding of the nature of addiction, to our comprehensive approach to day-to-day treatment, family involvement and commitment to lifelong recovery, we have brought the Devon Difference to bear in reshaping recovery.
Not content to oversee Devon’s affairs from above, I spent every Friday for four years meeting with patients to hear their candid assessments of treatment. I would say to them, “I know you’re going to tell me nice things, but what I want to hear is what we could do differently.” On one occasion, a group of older men told me “Steve, we just need some time away from the kids.” This got the ball rolling for what culminated in the creation of Evolutions, a dedicated treatment program for adults over 50. Breaking Free, too, originated at Devon before spreading to other facilities, as a specialized treatment program for trauma and addiction.
The larger point here is that we meet patients wherever they are in their recovery journeys, and fashion individualized care regimens for them on that basis. Building a culture of dynamic treatment, we offer, to date, several other specialized inpatient treatment programs.
- Balance: to treat the co-occurrence of substance use and mental health disorders.
- RESCU: for first responders and military members.
Beyond this, we recognize the crucially important role that family plays—both in the success of their loved ones’ long-term recoveries and for their own therapeutic and educational needs as well—offering a comprehensive suite of offerings to them accordingly.
And as we look to the future, we will continue to expand the continuum of care with creative, cutting-edge approaches, integrating mental health treatment as well as dual diagnosis mental health and addiction.
While talk of ‘disrupting the industry’ might have become cliché, I can confidently assert that the Devon Difference is real. What this amounts to is a multi-tiered, coordinated effort to tailor the best in addiction treatment to the unique needs of a diverse patient population. The result has been innumerable lives saved from the disease of addiction and set on the flourishing path of recovery.
Celebrate with us and learn more about our facility by attending the Devon Five Year Open House.
