CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NowPow, the personalized community referral platform powering care across the nation, is expanding its digital footprint in the state of Washington. NowPow is launching a new, first-of-its-kind partnership with Educational Service District (ESD) 105, a state agency serving 25 public school districts and over 20 private and tribal schools. The company is also furthering its work with Ideal Option, one of the nation’s largest outpatient medication-assisted treatment providers for substance use disorder.
This means hundreds of thousands of Washington residents can now be connected with personalized services that are highly matched to both their health and social needs, as well as age, gender, eligibility, location, languages spoken, and insurance coverage. ESD 105 and Ideal Option will also work closely with community-based and government organizations to “close the referral loop,” utilizing NowPow to track engagement throughout the process so that providers and community-based partners are able to monitor the outcome of referrals and follow-up as needed.
“Often the biggest obstacle to resource access is a knowledge gap. People don’t know what’s available to them or how to find it. Our mission at NowPow is to support community health and wellness by powering those connections,” said Rachel Kohler, CEO, NowPow. “Thanks to these unique cross-sector partnerships, NowPow is now able to connect vulnerable populations, like students and people with behavioral health needs, to community-based organizations throughout Washington.”
NowPow’s partnership with ESD 105 has the potential to connect more than 66,000 K-12 students and their families to behavioral health resources in the community. Even before the pandemic, 93 percent of school districts in the state had insufficient systems to address behavioral health needs, which have now been compounded by the crisis. After the initial launch, ESD 105 also plans to utilize NowPow’s referral network to address things like food and housing insecurity.
“During these unprecedented times, it is critical that our students have access to behavioral health services to facilitate learning and support overall wellbeing,” said Kevin Chase, Superintendent, ESD 105. “Our partnership with NowPow will help our students and their families address social risk factors and overcome systemic barriers to these critical resources.”
“Knowing the available resources is a challenge. NowPow makes this an easier and more personalized process,” added Chris De Villeneuve, Division Director, Behavioral Health and Integrated Care, Catholic Charities Serving Central Washington.
Ideal Option has seen the value of the NowPow platform at work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, Ideal Option and its sister company, Ideal Balance, have leveraged NowPow’s platform to administer comprehensive screening to more than 420 patients with opioid use disorder in the Greater Columbia region and match them to more than 3,600 critical community resources like housing and job assistance. On the heels of this success, Ideal Option brought the NowPow referral network to patients in five more counties in the North Puget Sound region.
“NowPow has been a lifeline for our clients with substance use disorder. Our NowPow referral network has helped many patients get the resources they need to remain in recovery, even during the pandemic,” said Yuki Yang, VP Behavioral Health & Partner Operations, Ideal Option.
NowPow supports referral networks across the nation. Community-based organizations that would like to learn more about participating in a network can visit www.nowpow.com/cboplugin.
This announcement follows news of NowPow’s partnership with Illinois Health Practice Alliance, a clinically-integrated behavioral health network.
About NowPow
NowPow’s personalized community referral platform reflects the current COVID-19 operating status for more than 65,000 community services in 15 geographies. NowPow’s referrals are highly matched and filtered, making it easy to connect people to the right community resources so everyone can stay well, meet basic needs, manage with illness and care for others. NowPow’s population health solution provides deep community resource and referral insights to support process improvement, network health and quality, and care access and experience. www.NowPow.com
About Ideal Option
With 65 clinics in 10 states, Ideal Option is one of the nation’s largest outpatient providers of evidence-based medication-assisted treatment for addiction to opioids, alcohol, methamphetamine, and other substances. Founded in 2012 by two emergency medicine physicians, Ideal Option’s mission is to provide underserved populations with low-barrier access to evidence-based addiction treatment – saving lives, healing families, and helping communities.
About ESD
Educational Service District 105 supports the learning success of more than 66,000 students who attend the 25 public school districts and more than 20 state-approved private and tribal schools we serve in South Central Washington. As a service agency, our purpose is to meet the expressed needs of local school districts by coordinating and conducting cooperative programs that benefit the educational needs of the young people in the four counties we serve.
