MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, the national Ketamine Taskforce for Access to Safe Care and Insurance Coverage has been launched. The Taskforce has a mission to ensure access for pain and mental health patients to safe ketamine treatments through insurance coverage of the therapies.
Latest government estimates show that 50 million Americans are estimated to experience chronic pain and 50 million are estimated to live with a mental health condition (with much overlap between the two populations).
The great news for these patients is that ketamine, an FDA-approved anesthetic, has been used off-label for both mental health and pain conditions for decades with high efficacy and safety.
The unfortunate news is that insurance organizations around the country typically consider the use “experimental” and therefore do not cover it in its entirety or at rates that are fair to ketamine providers. This has left the tens of millions of Americans experiencing mental health conditions and pain with huge suffering and lack of access to affordable treatments. This presents a huge obstacle to the majority of mental health and pain patients who are forced to forego this life changing treatment because they cannot afford to pay out of pocket.
In light of this heartbreaking reality, the Ketamine Taskforce was created to increase access to lifesaving ketamine treatments. The Taskforce brings together patients, doctors, nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners and researchers from around the country behind this goal.
The Taskforce has built an Advocacy Clinic Consortium -- a network of clinics who are aligned in this mission and who plan to contribute aggregated, de-identified real-world data on the efficacy of ketamine for analysis and submission to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The Taskforce has already made progress on an application for adequate reimbursement coverage to CMS, who has requested real-world evidence to aid its diligence process. The Taskforce is proud to have chosen Osmind, the leading ketamine and treatment-resistant mental health electronic health record (EHR) software provider, to join this advocacy and endeavor as its technology partner. Osmind’s EHR is the only platform uniquely suited to both capture research data and tailor it to providers’ workflows and patients’ care journeys.
The Taskforce’s first target indication is Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), with mental health to come. The Ketamine Taskforce and Osmind are collecting real-world data through the Advocacy Clinic Consortium to prove that ketamine lowers patients’ pain levels and increases their mobility, consequently resulting in an increase in their active participation in activities of daily living and their overall quality of life. The outcomes from the consortium will be used to encourage Medicare to approve ketamine as a viable treatment alternative for CRPS patients and pave the way for coverage expansion into additional pain and mental health indications.
If you’re interested in learning more or participating, please reach out to ketaminetaskforce@gmail.com
About Osmind
Osmind is building the digital infrastructure for treatment-resistant mental health, unlocking novel therapeutic approaches and precision psychiatry. This infrastructure is anchored by Osmind's EHR and Engagement + Outcomes Platform, the #1 software suite for intensive mental health practices (such as those providing FDA-approved psychedelic medicine). Backed by General Catalyst and Y Combinator, Osmind’s team consists of healthcare veterans and software experts (e.g. AWS, Verge Genomics, Kaiser Permanente, Stanford Medicine, Stanford Graduate School of Business).
