Eating Recovery Center (ERC) is a national treatment center with a number of locations across the country. This page is for their Denver/Colorado PHP and IOP locations.
ERC provides all levels of care across their many locations, from inpatient, residential, PHP, IOP, transitional living, and virtual treatment. They are unique for offering every level of care, and are known for their intense specialty track called BETR that treats Binge Eating Disorder separately from the main ED track.
Some ERC locations also have a separate PHP and residential treatment program specifically for mood, anxiety, and trauma through their partner treatment center, Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center.
Eating Recovery Center (ERC)’s Denver location has Inpatient, Residential, PHP, IOP, Virtual IOP, and Transitional Living. This page is for their Partial Hospitalization (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient (IOP) programs, including Transitional Living for PHP.
ERC Denver Residential/Inpatient reviews can be found here (although some PHP/IOP reviews are mixed into that page as well!):
ERC has additional residential treatment programs in Texas, Washington, and Chicago. Here are their separate review pages:
- Eating Recovery Center (ERC) of Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, The Woodlands
- Eating Recovery Center (ERC) of Chicago
- Eating Recovery Center (ERC) of Washington
As well as PHP/IOP centers in Baltimore and Sacramento:
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Any updated reviews?? Please post in the comments section below! You can check out the FAQ and Guidelines for suggested questions. Thank you!
ERC Colorado now accepts some Medicaid plans for their PHP, IOP, and VIOP programs:
Colorado Access
Rocky Mountain Health Plans
Colorado Community Health Alliance
Any recent experience with virtual iop ? Or even php?
Can someone please write a review for Virtual PHP at erc? What are the hours, how do meals work, weights, etc
50 dollars a night for the apartments during PHP?! That’s ridiculous! I don’t understand how anyone affords this. That, plus flying to and from treatment, plus 2-3 passes a week that I’m sure you need to use Uber or a bus for while having to pay bills at home. How have people made this work?
Financial aid – while I was there literally everyone I knew was living in the apartments for free, even a girl who I knew who was very wealthy but her parents just thought $50/night was a lot when there were programs closer to home, and since this was the deciding factor they waived it. I had my housing fee completely waived and made a reasonable enough salary that I probably could’ve paid it but I would’ve been stressed about it. Literally zero questions asked. You just have to fill out a form. Don’t let this be something that keeps you from going here!
Is this more like a factory type of program? I am trying to find a program that is the most famous in the US, but unsure if this is suitable..
I was here for residential and PHP over a year ago. Residential March-April 2017 and PHP April 2017- July 2017. Overall my time at ERC was a very positive experience. I am writing on behalf of the Pine location for PHP. There are two PHP locations, Pine and Conifer. Pine PHP is combined with residential patients, and at Conifer PHP does not mix groups with residential patients. The programs are completely separated but in buildings adjacent to one another. In the PHP program if you are not a Denver resident you live in the ERC apartments which cost $50 a night for rent. This rent can be waived based on financial need. You are placed with other people in the program in a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment and have a roommate. A shuttle picks you up in the morning around 6:30am and a shuttle brings you back to your apartment around 6pm in the evening and then you have your night free. On Sunday PHP hours are shortened 9:40am-6pm. The program itself focuses a lot on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) which I found a positive. The values based treatment model was different yet helpful. The program relies heavily on a community based model and peer support which I responded really well too. You meet with your individual therapist twice a week, have a process group with your individual therapist 3 times a week, see your family therapist once a week, and dietitian once a week. I found that if you needed something in between sessions my treatment team was always very accessible. Meals and snacks were based on a level system. Level 1 meant you sat with staff for all meals and snacks. At level 2 you could sit with peers for snacks but staff for meals. Level 3 you were able to sit with peers for everything. Later on as you progress thy would introduce picking snacks in the moment and self-portioning. The program does a once a week meal outing when you reach table level 3, and a weekly cooking group for level 3. It would be nice if the program offered some sort of step-down (to like a 6 hour or 8 hour a day PHP) but it doesn’t. That’s one of its flaw that is quite a huge leap to leave a 12 hour a day program to go straight to IOP. Towards the end the program offers more passes to prepare for this transition but I still think its too big of a step down. Other than that, I do think ERC does a really good job with dual diagnosis and complicated chronic eating disorder cases. They help people with major depressive disorder with ECT, TMS, and Ketamine. I was very appreciative other interventions to treat my depression were recommended to me after so many interventions had failed in past programs. They can handle pretty much anything. It is one of the best programs in the country and I have been to 6 residential programs. The program recruits the best therapists from around the country (many of the therapists and dietitians moved to Denver just to work at ERC). They hire very little entry level staff, all of the staff, even the techs (called BHCs- behavioral health counselors) are Master’s level degrees or higher. I would highly recommend this program for any level of care.
Leslie, Any chance you can give an updated review on the Residential side? I saw you mentioned being in both and I’m interested in going but as with any new program I’m skeptical. I’ve been to Montenido in California, Castlewood in St. Louis, Renfrew Florida and Mirasol in Arizona. If you can compare to any that you know that would be helpful, I’m mostly interested in understanding phone and computer privileges and visitation schedule/passes. As well as any privileges you have/don’t have and if their weight range you felt was realistic. My experience at Castlewood was terrible when it came to the target they had vs. the one I had. All other programs were realistic with their expectations. Finally, I don’t know if you had any experience with medication management, but I suffer with chronic pain and thus typically daily have to take pain medication and am worried they would try to get me off the medicine. Id rather tackle one thing at a time so if I’m there to weight restore then not mess with meds. At the same time due to my chronic pain I do absolutely no exercise, which just makes the chronic pain worse, so I’d like to find a place that can introduce exercise again. One last note, I have a medication which sucks up all my sodium so I have to add a lot of salt to all my meals, did they make accommodations like these as well as accommodate milk & cheese alternatives for lactose intolerance?
I will try to do a review on the res site when I have time! At Pine, IP, PHP, and residential are all mixed together. So the table level rules and schedule is the same for both. I’ve also been to Renfrew and ERC is also a large program but NOT a factory like Renfrew. At Pine you could have your electronics 6pm-10pm but my friend was there recently and now electronics you can keep overnight 6pm-7am. You are supposed to keep your cell phone locked in your room during programming (but most people just keep it on them and try not to get caught- lol). I think visitors are weeknights 6pm-10pm and weekends in the afternoon and evening. You can get I think 2-3 passes a week once you reach residential (no passes in inpatient). You go on passes with peers before you go on passes alone. First few passes are snacks and then you work up to meals. I believe they can accommodate your dietary restrictions I don’t see why they couldn’t! I’m not sure about the pain meds, I am not in a situation like that but I assume they would be willing to work with you. It’s very individualized. I wasn’t impressed with the exercise portion of the program. A lot less focus on reintroducing exercise than other programs. You need to do a physical activity group that meets twice a week for two weeks before you can get exercise passes. So you process your feelings about exercise in group for 2 weeks first. Then they give you passes like going hiking, going to a fitness class, going rock climbing, etc. and you come back and process the exercise experience. I didn’t like how they just sent you on a pass and left you to your own devices. Usually they didn’t even allow this until PHP. And if you only got 2-3 passes a week so if you wanted to exercise you would have to use all your passes for it, it didn’t seem fair it wasn’t a part of regular programming. Other programs introduce exercise on campus and have a much better approach. This was the only part of ERC I Wasn’t impressed with.
We have had a horrible experience with the Denver Eating Recovery Center. Months later we are still battling to receive a refund as we had met our maximum out of pocket. No one will answer my emails or my phone calls, you can never speak with a live person in the billing department. Would not recommend this program.