Thank you Greg Williams for a great Pathway Session

I’m grateful for Greg Williams sharing his insights yesterday, May 12, 2021, during our Pathway Session. The replay is here: https://bit.ly/3ofwVl5. 

To sum, Greg first discussed his film projects.  He is firmly convinced–as I am–that the key to opening hearts is through authentic storytelling.  I personally loved watching The Anonymous People, Greg’s first full-length documentary. In it, authentic recovery stories by Michael Askew, Patrick Kennedy, Chris Herren and Kristen Johnston are highlighted. Greg’s current film project, Tipping the Pain Scale, is in post-production. This film highlights community change agents, like NFL player Darren Weller, Mayor Marty Walsh and hip hop artist Ryan Montgomery.

The topic for most of the session was Greg’s quest to use new disruptive payment models to deliver behavioral health and addiction-related services to patients in a cost-effective way.  Currently, fragmentation and inefficiency among payors, insurance companies, and providers means that the system is broken.  A continuum of care approach is the way to go, and currently Greg has brought many players (including Anthem and Nuvance Health) to pilot alternative payment models (APM). In the APM approach to addiction treatment, the incentive is for achievement of successful patient outcomes–not number of visits to providers.    Several questions after Greg’s talk were about appealing insurance claims decisions and mental health parity, which is the equal treatment of mental health conditions and substance use disorders in insurance plans.  During the discussion, several websites were referenced.  See links below. 

Our next monthly Pathway Session is on using EMDR therapy to treat addiction and trauma.  This session will be in-person.  Linda Rost, LCSW will be the speaker, and the date is June 9, 7-8pm.  Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/emdr-therapy-for-trauma-addiction-with-susan-rost-lcsw-tickets-152148996745?ref=estw.

 
Here are some links that Greg referenced during his talk:

  • To learn more about mental health parity: https://parityispersonal.org/
  • To learn more about disrupting the addiction payment model: https://www.incentivizerecovery.org/
  • To access the Office of the Healthcare Advocate: https://portal.ct.gov/OHA
  • The Surgeon’s General Report, 2016 which highlights in Ch. 6 the need to disrupt health systems to efficiently address substance use disorder: https://addiction.surgeongeneral.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-generals-report.pdf.
  • Info about Tipping the Pain Scale: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gregwilliams/tipping-the-pain-scale  
  • To view The Anonymous People on Vimeo: https://bit.ly/3ofwVl5