Tara Gleave prepared her entire young life to enter the family law practice, but after taking several science classes at Weber State University and getting accepted into the nursing program, Gleave found her passion — and began what has now been a 20-year career.
As a nurse and now business owner of Pomarri Drug Rehab & Addiction Center, she never considered a career in drug rehabilitation and addiction treatment until she started working for New Roads Treatment Center as the nursing director to help them satisfy their credentialing requirements. She met a doctor there who specialized in addiction treatment and Gleave became immersed in the treatment and care of individuals whose lives and families were being destroyed due to substance abuse and addiction.
“I just noticed there is so much at stake with people losing their lives and families paying such a huge price. I wanted to create a treatment resource that didn’t require individuals to leave their lives, families and livelihood to seek treatment. I felt that we didn’t just need to help people get the drugs out of their system, but we needed to help people mend the other areas of their lives that were broken due to substance abuse,” Gleave said.
By early 2013, Gleave made the leap and started Pomarri as an outpatient drug detox program with just seven clients she piloted for free to see if it could be done. During that time, their success in treating clients gained Pomarri attention and more clients entered the program. Now Pomarri Drug Rehab & Addiction Center is the first medically managed outpatient mental health and substance abuse treatment program in Utah.
“At Pomarri we understand the cycle of addiction. We also understand that the cycle can be interrupted and stopped. We will assist each individual through the process of regaining the life awaiting them — a life full of peace, hope and great potential,” Gleave said. “We are here to help build a solid foundation and to celebrate every success. We can help drug and alcohol addiction became a memory in the past, so our clients can confidently step forward into their future.”
Clients no longer have to leave their responsibilities to be admitted to inpatient care for a lengthy and expensive stay. Pomarri’s program is done in an outpatient setting with evening appointments available. Based on extensive experience, as well as recent clinical studies, it has been found that a longer detoxification episode resulted in lower relapse rates. At Pomarri, outpatient substance abuse treatment and detoxification programs range from 8-12 weeks.
In late 2016, after three years of substantial growth, Gleave went to the Small Business Development Center at Utah Valley University to get guidance on how to raise capital. By the spring of 2017, Pomarri had secured a 7(a) SBA loan in the amount of $225,000 from Rock Canyon Bank.
“The SBA loan process was a great experience. I loved the communication, customer support and the updates during the loan process. It was stressful for sure because so much was on the line, but the bank walked me though the loan processes every single step of the way, all the way to the title company. I’d highly recommend Rock Canyon Bank to any business owner.
“I’ve said this before but we couldn’t have gotten though everything we went through without the advice and assistance of Shaun Wilson at the SBDC. I now recommend everyone go see the SBDC for business assistance. The reality is, it is one thing to be experienced in a field, but it’s another thing entirely to go out there and try and make it a business. Those two worlds don’t forge together until you go out there and make a lot of mistakes, which I did before I went to the SBDC. I definitely make fewer mistakes now but I wish I had known about this resource earlier,” Gleave said.
“The ability to go in with any of the trials in the moment and being able to process through those in real time was so helpful. It was great to get direction on critical business issues like SBA lending, preparing financial forecasts, analyzing financial statements, and getting guidance on making critical business decisions and just making sense of things in general,” she said.
Being a medically managed facility is what really sets Pomarri apart. "Medically managed" means they have a physician, psychiatrist, registered nurses, physician’s assistants and medical assistants in-house daily. Additionally, as a dual-diagnosis facility, Pomarri can treat individuals that are struggling with mental health issues and struggling with substance abuse. This enables Pomarri to bring in people many facilities won’t treat because of the complexity of treatment.
Over the past four years, Pomarri has added individual therapy, counseling, lab testing and a psychiatrist. Gleave emphasized that the program as a whole is designed to go beyond the individual and also assist families in weekly therapy sessions to better understand addiction and receive the critical attention and therapy they require.
Parallel to all this growth, Gleave has managed to get the website www.pomarri.com redesigned and started a blog. Web traffic has tripled and admissions increased as a result.
Gleave explained that the future goal is to “manage the ship,” add a satellite office in Millcreek where they can offer groups and therapy, and then implement medically managed elements later as it grows. After they stabilize that satellite office, she intends to open one in Ogden.