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Oct 27 2025
Regional Care Group continues serving as a model of innovation that redefines integrated health care nationally.
Indiana’s largest network of community-based health care and social services started with a desire to serve a densely populated area that lacked a community mental health center.
South Lake Center for Mental Health began providing that service in southern Lake County and quickly started collaborating with nearby Tri-City Comprehensive Mental Health Center.
This year, that relatively modest start marks a half century of service and growth throughout the region as the network known as Regional Care Group, a milestone celebrated with a Golden Jubilee Gala in May. Attended by nearly 400, the gala honored early visionaries, including former longtime president and CEO Robert Krumweid and Lee Strawhun, president and CEO of South Lake Center.
Throughout those 50 years, the collective of three branches has served as a model of innovation that is redefining integrated health care nationally.
Southlake Center for Mental Health - 1970s
Regional Health Systems functions as a health care provider offering behavioral health, primary care, dentistry, and inpatient, outpatient and residential addiction services. Geminus is a social service agency that runs Head Start and community partnerships that support families. Lake Park Residential Care provides housing for adults with mental health conditions, especially those on the verge of homelessness.
“When you read or hear about integrated care,” said Regional Health Systems CEO William Trowbridge, who also was honored at the gala, “it usually is about collaboration and communication between mental health and primary care. But we think it is so much more than that.”
Through its growth over decades, Regional Care Group has been finding the overlapping areas and connectivity between mental health, primary care, and social determinants of health while it seeks to coordinate services in all three areas.
“We seek to treat the whole person,” Trowbridge said. “We don’t want to handle only case management or one aspect mental health or primary care. When someone comes to us, we want to bring them into the fold and figure out how to make sure that holistic care is a seamless process—that a person is getting the primary care and mental health or substance abuse care they need; or that their children are getting Head Start if that’s what’s needed. We want to gain a better understanding of what’s going on in the family so we can provide the most comprehensive services possible.”
That approach defines Regional Care Group.
“I think that’s what really distinguishes us,” Trowbridge added. “We have such a breadth of different services that we can immediately get people to where they need to get to.”
How it all started
Sparked largely by increased federal funding for community mental health in the 1960s, the founding of South Lake Center for Mental Health in 1975 led almost organically to joint ventures with Tri-City Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center, which had been established in 1971.
Those collaborations included the founding of Geminus in 1992 as an administrative support service, which led the way for more collaborations and expansions, Trowbridge said. Establishing Lake Park Residential Care in 2007 was another key turning point.
Residency Inaugural Reception
Then, in 2009, Southlake and Tri-City merged. Five years later, in 2014, the collaborative opened the first Federally Qualified Health Center in Indiana within a community mental health center. And in 2021, Regional Care Group was established to unify the three branches.
Regional innovated again in 2022, when it welcomed its first cohort of psychiatric residents—the only community mental health center in Indiana to have a psychiatric residency program. In two years, Regional plans to offer 24 psychiatric residents in addition to its other psychiatry staff.
The year 2024 brought two more innovations: a Crisis Receiving and Mental Health Stabilization Center—similar to an emergency room for individuals with urgent, acute mental health issues—and a Mobile Crisis Team, professionals who utilize two vans to respond 24 hours a day to calls of people in mental health crisis.
Looking to the future, Trowbridge said he would like Regional Care Group to fully embrace its leadership in connecting mental health and primary health with social health—what he calls “full person, integrated care.” That includes bringing into the fold services that overlap with those that Regional Care Group offers and continuing to refine the collective’s capacity to offer immediate access to a range of mental health, primary care and social services.
He added that the psychiatry residency program is an opportunity to be “more of a powerhouse” in psychiatric services.
“I think our great history allows us to build into something that could be much greater,” Trowbridge said. “Our size, abilities and breadth also allow us to do that. So, I’m really excited about where we can go and what we can do to serve the region better and better. We’re going to flourish for sure.”
Enduring commitment to the region
A vital part of Regional Care Group’s 50-year history of growth, innovation and leadership are the people who perform the collective’s work in Northwest Indiana. Some of those employees have been with Regional almost from the start.
When they talk about their long commitment to the company, they describe it as shared values: the employees and Regional have an enduring commitment to the people of Northwest Indiana.
“I very seriously believe in the mission of community mental health and have always felt strongly that marginalized people should have the highest quality of care,” said Regional Health Systems Staff Social Worker Joan Wolford, who started in 1984 with Tri-City Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center. “I’m proud that Regional is able to do that and I like the fact that we have a continuity of care.”
Regional Care Group, Regional Health Systems, Geminus, and Lake Park Residential Care Employees
Forty-seven year veteran Denise Ladowicz, now Director of Special Projects, was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, the source of her deep connection to the region. She used two words to describe what Regional Care Group represents: community and family.
“The people who I worked with had similar beliefs to mine about giving back to the community, helping our clients, providing opportunities,” she said. “I always trusted people I worked with and I loved that we were always working together; that we all could collaborate for the wellbeing of individuals.
Regional’s capacity to provide crucial services to a diverse community with diverse needs is a trait that resonates with other longtime employees.
“We’ve grown a lot,” said Christy Markovich, who started in 1985 as a case manager and now is an emergency specialist with the crisis unit, “but we’ve always been a cornerstone of the community, and we’ve always provided people what they need.”
Court Liaison John Breslin, who has worked at Regional or its affiliates since 1988, said he sometimes tells people that “we are all things to all people – almost.”
“For the most part, we can provide mental health services and some primary care, even dentistry,” he said. “We can handle substance abuse. We have gambling programs. We offer different types of therapies.”
Most powerful for him and others might be seeing lives changed through Regional Care Group’s services.
“I think we do good work,” Breslin added, “and I like being a part of something that’s being effective.”
Added Markovich: “Anybody who is thinking about coming to work at Regional shouldn’t think twice. They should come. It’s an experience that they will not forget and won’t regret.”
