Psychedelic Health Insurance Benefits with Sherry Rais

Sherry Rais: know, it’s a little different for everyone, but it’s, a dissociative, so it feels like an out of body experience. and you feel. Like you are transported or teleported, somewhere.

And for some people it feels not for everyone. For some people it feels like a near death experience where you can sort of like you lift up from your body and you can see your body beneath you. not the case for everyone, but for some people. it is dissociative and so there’s this kind of traveling component.

And ketamine works on the NMDA receptors in the brain, it affects things like memory and learning. It increases neuroplasticity. it allows your brain to sort of, reset a way.

Guest Introduction

Bruce Bassi: welcome to the Future of Psychiatry podcast, where we explore novel technology and new innovations in mental health. I’m your host, Dr. Bassi, an addiction physician and biomedical engineer. Today we are with Sherry Ra, is the CEO of Anthea. Anthea is a third party administrator of health insurance benefits a mission to provide safe and affordable psychedelic assisted therapies starting with Ketamine therapy. these benefits, other companies can cover this new and innovative treatment for their employees and families leading to lower medical costs a more engaged workforce. Anthea services currently cover ketamine based therapies will also include MDMA and psilocybin based as well as they become approved. Sherri believes in living and working in alignment with purpose is currently focused on expanding access to psychedelic assisted therapy to alleviate human suffering. she completed the certificate of psychedelic therapies and research from CIIS in 2021. Sherri.

Sherry Rais: Welcome. Thank you for having me.

Bruce Bassi: a lot. Appreciate it. So, I know recently Anthea announced, the nationwide availability of Ketamine assisted therapy as an employee benefit. I’m sure a lot of listeners, probably never heard of that, heard of their employers offering. How did you become interested in this and why do you feel it’s so important for employees to offer that to their employees?

Sherry Rais: Yeah, so how I became interested in this, is perhaps a longer story that I will try to condense. I spent about a decade in humanitarian international development work, 10 years consulting to the UN and the World Bank. In those 10 years, I worked primarily on poverty reduction, and worked, on the ground in the field, full-time and ended up designing and implementing poverty reduction programs the national level in 37 countries, through that experience.

And, just for context, I worked in countries Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, so very resource constrained environment. And that, experience, I saw firsthand the effects of intergenerational poverty and trauma on community, the effects of war and conflict on mental health, and really saw that my mission was to reduce poverty, I saw that we can’t fully address poverty without addressing mental health.

So I began to look for solutions to address mental health issues. And was really surprised. I’m from Canada, and studied, in Canada and England and I was working in countries all over Africa and Asia and South America, I assumed that in the West we would’ve, had solutions to address mental health issues, and I simply had to find a way to implement them in these resource constrained environments.

I was really surprised and disheartened to see the data that a lot of the ways we are currently treating mental health don’t work most people. So they work for some, not to say that not doing anything right, but there’s a lot of room for improvement and the data tells us that, I then stumbled upon what was happening in the psychedelic space.

I started to read the data coming out of clinical trials from reputable organizations and research coming from, top universities, showing the potential benefits of psychedelic assisted therapy. the more I read, more intrigued I became. I wanted to find a way for people to have access to these medicines as currently they are not covered.

by some of them are not FDA approved, so that’s a huge issue. the ones that are FD approved, like ketamine therapy, are not covered by major insurance carriers. and getting them offered in more resource constrained environments like the countries I was working in, is difficult to do through agencies like the UN and the World Bank if there isn’t a model to follow.

So no other has really done this before, it’s hard to sort of pitch in a more resource constrained environment. . that’s a long way of saying that’s what led me to create Anthea, along with my co-founders, but it was this idea helping people get access to these innovative evidence-based treatments a world where so many people are suffering and not getting the treatment they need or trying medication and coming off medication, they’re not finding it helps them.

Navigating Financial Wellness: The True Costs of Mental Health

Bruce Bassi: And I know Anthea is offering nationwide availability of Ketamine assisted therapy as an employee benefit. So employers can check that off alongside dental and vision insurance.

And we know the benefits of ketamine and treating depression and PTSD and you mentioned that employers who opt in can essentially reduce. Of, overall medical care those

patients and how did you analyze that data come to that conclusion? I think that’s obviously a very important one for employers to consider.

Sherry Rais: Yeah, so there are direct and indirect costs of mental health on employers, so thus direct and indirect savings for employers who are self-funded. So they are paying for the medical costs of their employees. there’s a direct three and a half to four x. ROI on offering ketamine therapy to their employee population because, the cost of a complete course of ketamine therapy can range from four to, let’s do a large range, four to.

To eight or even go to a higher range, four to $10,000 a year. But for a complete course, you don’t repeat this treatment year after year after year. You do it once and most people are actually, cured and don’t need to continue with ketamine therapy. as a result, they come off of their SSRIs, SSRIs and talk Therapy run employers a bill of 15 to $25,000 a year.

and that cost is repeated year after year after year. So there’s the direct savings of savings on the cost of medication and therapy versus ketamine therapy. And then there’s the indirect cost of offering something that’s gonna get to the root cause of people’s And for some people who are treatment resistant, it’s helping them in ways that traditional approaches just cannot help them. ’cause they’ve tried those approaches and they’ve failed. you’re getting to a more engaged workforce, more productivity, probably better retention, less sick days, less disability claims. those are sort of the indirect costs.

And then, I should have also mentioned . kind of in between direct and indirect costs. There’s something we call the multiplier effect, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, which is, the cost of treating someone for, you know, let’s call it diabetes or cancer, when they have a mental health condition, can be significantly higher when they have the mental health condition versus when they don’t.

So by treating the mental health condition, now, their cost of cancer treatment or diabetes treatment or a number of ER visits will also go down.

Bruce Bassi: Why do you think that happens for individuals who struggle with mental illness? Are they having more appointments or. Are somaticizing their

into other parts of their body that aren’t actually unhealthy

Sherry Rais: think it’s a combination. there’s the things you’ve mentioned and also, When you have a serious mental health condition, it makes it harder for you to follow your prescribed medication and regimen and whatever the doctor asks you to do for your diabetes care management or your weight management.

you’re struggling with a mental health issue, it’s, hard to follow, as well. So that’s a huge issue. and then the anxiety, like living with anxiety when you have . a mental health issue also leads to just more hospital visits, sometimes not even necessary ER visits, quotation marks on the word necessary, but, added visits to the ER due to anxiety and stress.

Then there’s the effect of stress on the body.

Bruce Bassi: Right? Yeah.

Hyper inflammation and cytokines and all that stuff. so obviously there’s a traction there from a cost savings, perspective for the employer. And then I think a lot of patients and individuals are interested in it. their level of interest high enough where they want this on their insurance policy or like, how do you take that cost savings translate it to, This is also good for all of your employees to have and be able to consider if they wanted to.

Sherry Rais: Yeah, so that’s what we’re essentially trying to create within Thea. By offering this as sort of an ancillary benefit to large employee populations. want it to be as normal as employees wanting and needing dental and vision coverage. They should have coverage for psychedelic healthcare as well. and there is, a lot of interest, like if you

Look at the numbers. 1 billion people in the world are suffering from a mental health condition right now in the us. One in two people will, experience a mental health issue at some point in their life. if we extend that to, say one in two people experience mental health issue, but then everyone is really affected.

If you think of . immediate family members, friends, people that you care about are affected by this. and the instance of treatment resistant conditions, like before I got into this space and working in in India, I had no idea that 30 to 50% of people with depression are actually treatment resistant.

And so there is a huge demand for options like assis therapy, which . Has evidence to work on treatment resistant populations it gives people the sense of hope that they sort of have lost.

Comprehensive Ketamine Therapy Benefits for Mental Health Care

Bruce Bassi: sounds like there’s a need, there’s a cost savings. why do you think more insurance

plans don’t include it? Is there like a lot of challenges that you ran into that are preventing insurers from covering it?

Sherry Rais: I think and hope they eventually will. large insurance companies tend to work with a lot more red tape and tend to work a little bit slower. the

idea is that anthea, like as we grow and like you mentioned, we have nationwide access and build our provider network and build our, customer base and have more data to show patient outcomes and the benefits.

The insurance carriers will spend more time paying attention. I think now it’s still a very nascent industry. And, while there is clinical evidence, a lot of clinical evidence for the benefits of Ketamine therapy, probably insurance carriers want to see, more evidence. then of course they’re, not to sound pessimistic, there is the case of

this may lead to them making less money because in essence people will spend less on SSRIs and other types of medications for mental health issues. there’s that kind of, uh. Push, pull on, motives there. yes, I do think large insurance carriers will, cover this. I think it’s a matter of time and really Anthea is here to fill that gap.

So let’s say it takes two to three years for large insurance carriers to really build out the policies, standards of care, the provider network in this space. In the meantime, there’s millions of people suffering, and I’m hoping we can help those people.

Bruce Bassi: it’s so cool to think about as a clinician, I don’t really get, ability to talk to somebody who has, information and of. Of how somebody fairly expensive type of treatment can lead to more savings on a population level.

an outsider’s perspective, seem hard to that spending 10,000 on ketamine treatment will necessarily lead you to more than $10,000 in savings, maybe in productivity. in improved. Reduction in, medical workups, but I guess if that saves one ER visit or

Sherry Rais: Yeah.

Bruce Bassi: probably one er visit of about

10,000. Right. then I guess it pays for itself in

savings right there,

Sherry Rais: even if it gets you off SSRIs. ’cause SSRIs alone, if you’re taking them every day, it’s about 10,000 a year.

Bruce Bassi: is it?

Sherry Rais: Yeah.

Bruce Bassi: For, vibe perhaps, Lone, some generics. I don’t know. Do they cost

the insurance company that?

Sherry Rais: Some generics might be a little bit cheaper, but if you look at the two year cost, then you’re definitely saving it. You’re definitely seeing savings. ‘ cause you’re, idea is you’re no longer taking the SSRIs.

Employee Pre-Authorization: A Guide

Bruce Bassi: Yeah. And that’s a win even regardless of cost, What is in Thea’s process in getting the approval for the employee? Like, do you need to do, pre-authorization

or anything like that?

Sherry Rais: So we do have pre-authorization and right now we cover six different indications for ketamine assisted therapy based on what we’ve seen in the literature. you mentioned some like, PTSD and depression, anxiety, social adjustment disorder. some people’s surprise, actually, ketamine assisted therapy can be very effective for addiction like alcohol abuse disorder as well.

so yeah, we do require pre-authorization have six indications that are covered. But after that, essentially the, patient works directly with the provider according to, in-network providers. So according to our standards of care and medical policies to complete their treatment.

I dunno if you saw, but we’ve had, really tremendous results like with our . pilot or proof of concept with Dr. Bronner, the soap company. we saw that in, a one year follow up. patients with PTSD, for example, had an 87% reduction in their symptoms, is really like of,

 similarly we saw a 67% reduction in depression symptoms and 65% reduction in anxiety symptoms. And this is like, again, a one year follow up

Bruce Bassi: that’s pretty incredible. And how was that like a survey that gets sent? Do you remember like the standardization or like the standardized test that was collected those? Is it PHQ nine that gets sent to them afterwards?

Sherry Rais: It is

PHQ nine. now you’re catching me because I’m not clinician, but PHQ nine. GAD seven and PCL five.

Bruce Bassi: got it. Yeah, that makes sense.

Sherry Rais: the standard I guess, wants for PTSD, depression and anxiety,

Ketamine Assisted Therapy: Anticipating the Journey Towards Healing

Bruce Bassi: that’s pretty incredible. what would a person expect in treatment? I mean, for individuals who aren’t familiar with Ketamine assisted therapy, you give

a little bit of background? I’m sure a lot of people are a little bit scared and of, ketamine, know, they don’t really know who to believe about it.

Sherry Rais: Yeah. So Ketamine, has been used in as an anesthetic 60 years. It’s on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines. as a result we have like data, even global data and data in the US of its safety, for, you know, over five decades.

and when used as a mental health treatment, we are, uh, it in sub anesthetic levels. So it’s a much smaller dosage. as an anesthetic, it’s even sometimes prescribed to children as an anesthetic. So it’s a medicine. We do feel comfortable prescribing to children as an anesthetic.

and it’s approved nationwide in the US and much anywhere in the world. I don’t know of a place where ketamine isn’t approved. and as a mental health treatment, it starts with in assessment. So a patient would approach. they’re Anthea member, they would look in our portal, log in, find a provider that’s in network, and do both a psychological and medical assessment to determine if they’re a good candidate ketamine assisted therapy.

And that’s when they’ll do the pre-authorization with us. Assuming we approve, they then start what is called preparation. So it’s not, a case of someone just. I wanna try some ketamine and go to the clinic and they get some ketamine and they, go home. And this all happens in two days now.

So it starts preparation and that’s working with a licensed mental health therapist. It could be one to three sessions of preparation. So separate occasions of really outlining what are your intentions, what are your goals? Why are you trying to do this? A lot like therapy sessions, but intentional, very intentional therapy sessions on what you’re hoping to achieve through the Ketamine probably there’s an education component there too. for the patient on the ketamine’s gonna entail, and then you will do what’s called the medication session. So depending on what the provider is the best course of treatment, it could be anywhere from one to six sessions of ketamine.

this ketamine would be administered. different modes of administration. It can be an IV or Im, or it can be administered orally, like through a lozenge. And you would, if you’re doing this in clinic, you would . take the Ketamine, you would have somebody there with you, like a licensed health professional there with you.

And, to sort of speak, I think you also wanna know, like, what does this feel like

Understanding the Experience of Taking Ketamine

Bruce Bassi: Right, million dollar question, how am I gonna feel?

Sherry Rais: know, it’s a little different for everyone, but it’s, a dissociative, so it feels like an out of body experience. and you feel. Like you are transported or teleported, somewhere.

And for some people it feels not for everyone. For some people it feels like a near death experience where you can sort of like you lift up from your body and you can see your body beneath you. not the case for everyone, but for some people. it is dissociative and so there’s this kind of traveling component.

And ketamine works on the NMDA receptors in the brain, it affects things like memory and learning. It increases neuroplasticity. it allows your brain to sort of, reset a way.

there are two options. In some cases, while you are under the influence of ketamine, you’ll also be talking to therapist and talking and they’ll be listening you’ll be talking about what you’re experiencing and what you’re going through and what you’re processing perhaps is past traumas.

Perhaps you revisiting a childhood memory, you may. Talk to your therapist while you are under the influence, there is also a scenario in which you don’t do that. You experience the ketamine, there’s somebody there beside you to make sure you’re okay, but you’re not really talking to anyone for that.

a duration of 60 to 90 minutes, so you’re not talking to anyone and you do the therapy after like. In the next day or so you kind of like process everything you went through. So are two ways and that’s kind of depending on what’s best for the patient and what the provider’s sort of style is as well.

then after those medications sessions, you do what’s called integration, and integration is more therapy. more speaking to your therapist about, you know, kind of processing everything that you went through and sort of like cementing . , those new connections that were made in your brain due to the increased neuroplasticity, and the whole thing.

Let’s say you did six treatments, it takes about months. it could be less if you’re doing less than six, three months. So one, one to three months. hopefully that answers kind of what feels like. unlike MDMA assisted therapy and psilocybin assisted therapy, are . Super powerful and transformative experiences.

Ketamine is also transformative, ketamine is a shorter duration, so you can do ketamine therapy and go to work the next day. You could do ketamine therapy after work still go to work next day. So that also makes it a little bit more convenient, psilocybin or MDMA assisted therapy. By contrast, you would probably want to,

Decompress for one to two, days afterwards because the duration of the medication is like six to eight hours.

Bruce Bassi: do you need to get a ride home after a Ketamine session

Sherry Rais: It’s recommended. Yes. Yeah.

Bruce Bassi: Gotcha. So it’s almost like a procedure in a way. Kind of like ECT or a tm, maybe. Actually TMS, they’re allowed to drive home afterwards.

Sherry Rais: I think you’re technically allowed to drive home as well with ketamine if you spend a certain amount of time just waiting in the clinic before you drive. I think that’s fine. but of the minor side effects from ketamine assisted therapy is like a little bit of or a little bit of a headache, so you might prefer not to drive home.

I guess it depends on the person.

Mitigating Racial Disparities

Bruce Bassi: obviously all of these little factors are into consideration by a patient. the cost and the convenience and you mentioned it can help mitigate racial disparity in diagnosis and treatment and mental health conditions. And can you talk to us a little bit about that? In what ways have you found it to mitigate any racial disparities?

Sherry Rais: I don’t believe I mentioned that, but,

Bruce Bassi: sorry.

Sherry Rais: No, no problem. I think to be very transparent, it is our hope that, this is something we’ll be able to achieve because the way we are building our network is we’re trying to. Build it across the country. We now have like 135 clinicians nationwide, serving in underserved communities and different zip codes regardless of like socioeconomic status.

So we’re being very mindful of the providers we are bringing in network. we don’t actually have, data to show, we’re mitigating these racial disparities yet. It’s very much a, a hope, and aspiration. And hopefully I can come to you a year from now with an update tell you what we’ve achieved.

But, um, we’re still super early, it’s, I think, too soon to say that. But I know we are, super thankful to my team building our provider network, very consciously looking at . You know, languages spoken and making sure that feel comfortable with the providers in our network.

Opening Access to the Network

Bruce Bassi: I appreciate that answer. You know, I think whenever we, open up access to care and reduce costs to care, You know, it’s opening up a treatment modality that was typically only for very wealthy individuals. And now any individual from Dr. Bronner’s, for example, or an employer can now, access that. so you mentioned that, clinicians will have to become in network, right? is there coverage for out of network or what if somebody is in maybe a smaller city from home for one of these employers? what’s that network like? And if it’s still growing, can somebody go to some or maybe they’re more comfortable with but isn’t in network yet?

Sherry Rais: we have different options. one, we’re very much constantly growing our network. We had one . clinician at the beginning of this year, January of this year. And now, like I said, we have over a hundred. we’re really trying to, grow it carefully, intentionally, but as well, across different, codes.

we are a startup, we have a very close, I mean, hopefully we can maintain this, but we right now have like a close relationship with all of our customers. have just over 10 customers to date in addition to Dr. Bronner’s. And so because of that relationship, our customers will, they give us, you know, an employee roster and they’ll tell us, we actually ask like, you have employees that are outside of the metropolitan area?

Are they’re working remotely? We’ve had a few cases recently, like in Arizona, somewhere remote, where we’ve had employees and then we will go and take the time to look for a provider that’s in that area. there are actually . Close to I think a thousand ketamine providers in the country now. So it’s a very quickly growing industry.

we’re being selective of who we bring in network ’cause we wanna ensure safety yes, we’ll definitely work with employers to try to accommodate wherever they have remote employees. then it is kind of . Up to the employer when we do the benefit design with them on how to handle out-of-network cases, similar to when.

An employer is picking dental or vision plan. They have a few options when picking that plan, like, do I wanna cover 75% or a hundred percent or 80% or have a copay? And what do I do with out of network, dentists if I was picking dental plans. So similar we have that conversation with employers as well, and it’s included in our benefit design.

it sort of depends on the employer. Some employers have decided they will like. I can say Dr. Broner said we will cover out-of-network providers. cause we wanna make sure people have access to treatment. And other employers will say no. And , we won’t cover it. And other employers will say, we’ll cover it, but let us know what the cost might be.

So maybe it’s conditional coverage. and then finally, sorry. Again, a long answer, but this is such an important question when it comes to access, we have included, just recently over the summer in our medical policies, the inclusion of at home, for ketamine therapy, which means that anywhere in the country people could receive ketamine in the convenience of their home.

They could do a virtual telehealth session with their . Therapist and they could do the ketamine therapy virtually. So that is an option as well that one is a lot more cost effective, but two more importantly, helps solve this problem of geographic access.

Bruce Bassi: Is there a higher degree of, scrutiny of the, policies or protocols that

they have

Sherry Rais: much.

Bruce Bassi: place for at home?

Sherry Rais: there’s a higher degree of policies that we impose on the at home providers we work with. So how they work with, other patients they have that don’t come through Inthe is really them. I mean, we of course look at their policies and, and make sure that they make sense, but then we have some added, Protection and safety mitigation measures, like for example, limiting the amount of doses of ketamine that can be sent to someone in the mail. Perhaps there are some at home ketamine providers that might send you six, but we will say, no, wanna limit it to one to two doses in the mail so that there’s no abuse.

Bruce Bassi: In light recent, news with Matthew Perry and finding out that Ketamine had some interaction or some role to play, I think when instances like that happen, it can cause of a shift of the sentiment, and concern about it. And, understandably, people tend to jump to conclusions before.

Having all the facts about something that is, safe. there’s always other factors at play that we probably don’t know about in those types of cases or instances, but I think like in person, there’s also, a wide variety of, protocols for companies that administer at home. Care. So

it doesn’t equate to saying like, this is not necessarily as safe because it obviously depends on company and how, aligned the therapist is with that patient monitoring them.

Sherry Rais: Exactly. like another, of something we require. For at home therapy is the presence of a sitter. this means like if I’m going to do ketamine virtually, at home with my therapist virtually, I’m still required to have someone physically present beside me in the room, make sure that I’m, you know, okay.

And I’m required to provide proof that this person is there. It’s like just an example of another measure to, ensure

safety.

Challenges to Overcome

Bruce Bassi: sense. What types of challenges, maybe from either a business perspective, public health perspective, a clinical perspective, like what is on your plate, you feel is, challenge that you need to overcome in the short or near term?

Sherry Rais: one, there’s still stigma, so I’m like, on the one hand. very excited about people’s openness and the shift that is happening around psychedelic therapy and ketamine therapy. Like even the fact that I’m here on your podcast, which is not a psychedelic specific podcast, it’s a psychiatry podcast.

there’s a shift happening, I’m grateful for that. And yet, in my day-to-Day, especially when talking to potential employers, there is definitely still . a stigma around psychedelics. and I tend to, get trapped in this bubble because I am in the psychedelics industry, and I think, oh, everyone knows about psychedelics and their benefits and how amazing they are and how they can change your life.

And then I, you know, go to an HR conference and I’m like, oh, wait, no, that’s not true. Not everybody . So there’s still this, stigma and I think, a lot of that stigma comes from . connections, to these medicines and recreational use. So it’s very common when I’m talking about psilocybin assisted therapy for someone to interrupt me and say, oh, you mean like shrooms what I did in college?

And I’m like, well, not exactly like yes and no. it’s hard to, especially if someone did have a recreational experience, it’s hard for them to now think of this as a medicine. and I am being very like transparent and open and honest with you. I get it. If someone told me that vodka was a medicine, I would struggle , to shift my mindset around vodka or alcohol.

Right. there’s that stigma that a challenge. we are making progress, but it’s still, difficult. And you, already mentioned like, tragic loss of Matthew Perry, but then. The medias and people’s sort of like jumping to conclusions around what happened, as like a current present, more acute challenge.

and then there is the fact that, since COVID, a, a lot actually, like I think 76% of employers, with more than a hundred employees America, invested in some sort of mental health. benefit, like, additional benefit, like an EAP or if they’re a smaller company, it might’ve just been like meditation classes or, different mental health, add-ons that are out there.

And course, , they invested in something recently. It was a big thing in their company to now offer this to their employees, whatever they offered since Covid. But in effect, the data shows that the utilization of these new mental health, . add-ons is fairly low, like seven to 9%. and, especially after the first year and not like again, just giving people access the same things we’ve had are not necessarily working for everyone.

So it’s great if I have a better way to access . a therapist to talk to. I’m not discounting that’s great that I have an easy way through an app to talk to a therapist because that’s really important. But if I have treatment resistant depression and I’ve been talking to a therapist for 10 years and it hasn’t helped me, I might need something else.

And this add-on won’t help me with that. this is a challenge because now when we’re talking to employers and we are . definitely presenting something new and something different and something unique. There’s the, business side of things of, well, we just invested in this like last year, so we can’t invest in another thing, even if it’s more effective.

that’s my biggest challenge. If you have a solution for this, I’m, all ears

Bruce Bassi: that part about the seven to 9% is really interesting. what percent, if there was like perfect utilization among individuals who needed it, what percentage do you think it would be? Like 20 to 30%. Like what is our gap here that we need to try to get it to?

Sherry Rais: Yeah, think, just based on data, like 25% are probably suffering from a serious mental health thing. So 25%.

Bruce Bassi: it’s partially, maybe they don’t know about it. So there’s a little bit of education piece. Maybe

time.

Sherry Rais: there’s cultural stuff too still around mental health.

Bruce Bassi: absolutely. which is harder, to overcome based on a person’s initial preconceptions about it. or they don’t necessarily, see or know about the potential benefits them getting help, necessarily. They might see it as kind of a. hindrance to, know, living their life in a way, based on stigma mental health clinicians or whatnot.

Or maybe they had a bad experience before in the past with therapy or seeing another clinician who didn’t listen to them. Why would I wanna repeat that experience with somebody who wasn’t listening or understanding me?

I think like, given the fact that it is multifactorial about why people are not utilizing it. it requires a multifactorial type of solution really to go about doing something like that and increasing utilization, to allow both the employers and the employees to see a benefit that utilization higher in order to have better savings and better quality of life downstream from that, set. One, what is like $1 of prevention equal to in terms of treatment in, healthcare industry? at least a few dollars worth of

savings, it’s hard. We have a cognitive bias against, spending initially. when we don’t know of the certainty of what that’s going to lead to in savings down the road.

Sherry Rais: this is why not to promote my own company too much, but in our model at int Thea, only charge on utilization. So, we don’t charge per employee per month if nobody uses this. It doesn’t cost the employer anything. And I think that we did that because we wanted to kind of, sort of combat this stigma that exists of, investing in something upfront.

There really isn’t an investment unless it gets used.

Bruce Bassi: Was that a difficult decision to make it that model? Because that’s not a typical model compared to United Healthcare and a.

Sherry Rais: Right. was it difficult? No. Was it wise from a business perspective to be determined? I think it was the right decision to make, at least for now. when we have, a lot more data on, like what I just shared with you about ER’s data. When we have more data on patient outcomes and we can make the use case of like, okay, with certainty, this is like definitely gonna save you, we can do all of the economic analysis on how much this is gonna save employers.

We might change that model. But right now the, real, for us is, not on, The business’s economic success like that will be important, but, we’re actually structured as a public benefit corporation, so our priorities first to the public, and to access and to helping people heal. Mm-Hmm.

Measure Employees Satisfaction

 

Bruce Bassi: As An employer, it does, make a lot of sense it leads to happier workplace environments and more productive employees. how does an employer, maybe, I don’t have any really, I don’t have an MBA background, so maybe I should just look this up online or something, but how do I measure productivity of employees other than just like of patients seen or. Even that metric can be pretty variable like throughout the year. So how do you, recommend that employer do that? Or is that just left up to like the HR team to monitor over time?

Sherry Rais: So that’s a really good question. and when you, Put this podcast up. If your audience like, puts things in the comments,

on ideas on this, like, I’m gonna be very excited, to hear about it. But there are different things, you can use as sort measures. one, not so much directly on productivity, but on like, uh, employee satisfaction is retention.

Like how many employees per year are leaving the company? as a percentage.

Bruce Bassi: Is there an industry standard? I don’t actually know is the industry standard?

Sherry Rais: Yeah, it depends on the size of the industry, but as like a very like, aspirational thing, you should have like 95% retention and every HR person listening to this gonna mad. I’m just putting a blanket statement out there because it does , it does depend on industry and the size of the company.

at certain stages, like very large companies will have more retention issues, than . companies, but, an aspirational goal is 95%. there are other measures that are important for employers like employee engagement. There’s something called, there’s different ways of doing this, but I think the leading survey is called the Gallup 12.

they’ve been doing this for decades and decades and probably worked with hundreds of thousands of employers. But this is a survey to measure how, engaged, employees are. There’s 12 questions on that survey, and some of them sort of cover, productive I feel at work. Not all of them.

They’re also about like, do I get enough positive feedback? Do I have a friend at work I can talk to? There’s a variety of questions, but overall engagement is important. and then, You’re really measuring productivity in, your company’s like performance evaluations and 360 feedback, whether you’re doing them annually or bi-annually.

if employees are, not to make it so transactional, but if employees are hitting individual goals versus if they’re not, um, progress.

Bruce Bassi: Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. It gives people, some inspiration as well for what to shoot for it. Definitely, you know, it’s a win-win situation both the employer and the employee.

if employer’s happy and the employee’s happy, feel like that’s, what everyone’s trying to strive for at the end of the day. Well, Sherry is awesome speaking with you about Tthe and I think you guys all are doing such great things there. In trying to move the needle and, and making progress in the insurance industry, which is a challenging one, obviously, and the psychedelic industry, which is another challenging industry fraught with a lot of stigma attached to it. it, works well and works to plan it, I think it has such great potential here and I think that makes me excited for you and your mission and in trying to get equitable access for more employers and more employees. To psychedelic assisted So I really appreciate you coming on and, talking to us today. give you opportunity have a last word with our audience if you’d like.

Sherry Rais: thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this. as a word, I would say if people have more questions or wanna learn more, they can reach out. They can go to the Tthe website, they can email us, at info@tthe.com, or email me directly@sherryattthe.com. also wanted to say that even if don’t have questions on, from a business perspective on becoming an employer, but just are more curious from a personal perspective on the benefits about psychedelic therapy or ketamine therapy, or they have a friend or family member then might be interested, I’m happy.

 and it actually brings me joy to answer these types of questions, so please. Feel free to ask and reach out. And then I guess finally we’re entering, the holiday period, which I know can sometimes trigger people’s anxiety and emotions, with family members. I dunno if this podcast will be released before or after the holiday period, but in, in any, event, just encouraging people to just, you know, be kind to yourselves, be kind to the people around you and, Take a few seconds to ask the people around you how they’re doing.

Bruce Bassi: that’s really well put and we’ll put your social media handles in the. The show notes as well for people to, find you all. it probably come out in February, so I’m trying to think about when the, next holidays

Valentine’s is triggering for people. it’s probably gonna be pushed out before, But, appreciate you so much and, and thank you for your time today.

Sherry Rais: thank you so much.

Bruce Bassi: That’s it for this episode. I’d appreciate it if you please like and share this podcast with your colleagues. It’d be especially helpful for us. And if you’d like, please leave us a rating on your favorite pod catcher. If you’re a clinician, I developed a course on how to start a private practice and for patients, I’ve also developed a course on acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive behavioral based therapy lessons for treating and helping anxiety.

You can find all these on our website as well, as well as the show notes and resources for each episode. Thank you so much, and I’ll see you in the next episode.