Hawaiʻi Virtual Care, a virtual intensive outpatient program for substance use and mental health, is now available to residents across the Hawaiian Islands.
Founded by the team behind Crownview Psychiatric Institute, Hawaiʻi Virtual Care is a virtual intensive outpatient program that expands access to quality behavioral health care and brings that level of treatment to individuals and families.
“For many Hawaiʻi residents, insurance coverage can make out-of-state treatment difficult or prohibitively expensive, which means going to the mainland often isn’t a realistic option,” said Jeff Klein, co-founder of both Crownview Psychiatric Institute and Hawaiʻi Virtual Care. “If high-quality care isn’t available here, people can be left with very few choices.”
The program was built in response to a gap its founders have seen for years. The University of Hawaiʻi’s 2025 Physician Workforce Report estimates a 39% statewide shortage of adult psychiatrists, with Hawaiʻi Island and Kauaʻi each lacking roughly two-thirds of the psychiatrists needed to meet demand. Maui is short by nearly half.
The need isn’t small: federal survey data estimate about 195,000 Hawaiʻi adults, nearly one in five, had a substance use disorder in the past year, and three out of four who needed treatment didn’t get it.
For residents on neighboring islands, accessing more intensive treatment can mean traveling to Oʻahu or struggling to find an appropriate local option. Hawaiʻi Virtual Care delivers structured clinical care by video to residents statewide, without asking them to leave their jobs, homes, or families.
Hawaiʻi Virtual Care was founded by Jeff Klein, Dr. Mark Melden, and Chandler Blanks, bringing together decades of behavioral health experience with a shared vision for expanding access to high-quality mental health and substance use treatment throughout Hawaiʻi.
Klein and Dr. Melden also co-founded Crownview Psychiatric Institute in San Diego in 2014, where they helped build a reputation for individualized, whole-person psychiatric care for serious mental illness, trauma, and mood disorders. That same philosophy—grounded in clinical excellence, personal connection, and trust between client and clinician—helped shape the foundation of Hawaiʻi Virtual Care.
Together with Blanks, the leadership team is bringing that experience to Hawaiʻi while building a model specifically designed around the needs of local individuals, families, and communities.
Klein has more than 20 years in mental health and substance use treatment. Dr. Melden is a board-certified psychiatrist who completed residencies at University of Southern California and University of California Irvine and a geropsychiatry fellowship at University of California San Diego. CEO Chandler Blanks brings more than a decade of operational leadership and oversees the systems that let clinical teams focus on care rather than logistics.
The program fills a treatment gap between weekly therapy, which may not provide enough support, and residential treatment, which may be more intensive than necessary and take clients away from their jobs, families, and daily lives.
\Sessions are held Monday through Thursday evenings, and clients receive roughly twelve clinical hours a week across group, individual, and family sessions. Licensed Hawaiʻi clinicians deliver all care, with separate mental health, substance use, and co-occurring tracks. The program is now accepting calls from individuals and families statewide.
“Reaching out is the hardest part, and it’s the only part anyone has to do alone,” Klein said. “Everything after that first call, we do with you. That’s the promise we built Crownview on, and it’s the one we’re bringing to Hawaiʻi.
