A Collaborative Path Toward Care: Our Shared Comments to HRSA

Four of the country’s mental health organizations came together last month to shape a response toward helping to define how psychedelic-assisted therapy reaches patients: who is prepared to deliver it safely, and how do we get them ready?

BrainFutures, Mental Health America, National Council for Mental Wellbeing, and Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute jointly submitted comments to the Health Resources and Services Administration in response to its Request for Information on training and care delivery models for the safe administration of potential FDA-approved psychedelic therapies. Each organization brought a different vantage point on the behavioral health system — advocacy, provider networks, policy research, program development — and arrived at a shared set of recommendations for federal leaders to consider as approval and implementation move closer.

Bringing organizations like these to common ground, and then translating that agreement into concrete policy recommendations, is the kind of work BrainFutures executes. The recommendations draw upon work each organization has already published, including BrainFutures’ Professional Practice Guidelines for psychedelic-assisted therapy, parity resources, and a CPT/HCPCS coding guide developed to help clinicians and health systems navigate reimbursement. The letter creates a shared recommendation directly out of work these organizations had already done independently.

At the center of the recommendations is a call for training that is interdisciplinary and competency-based: standards rigorous enough to protect patient safety and quality of care, but not so rigid that they lock out the providers and settings where most people will actually seek treatment. The letter also urges HRSA to make room for community-based and non-academic organizations in that training infrastructure. These are the organizations closest to patients’ day-to-day needs, and often the first point of contact long before any specialty referral.

That same approach is driving BrainFutures’ consensus-driven interdisciplinary core competencies workgroup, now underway. FDA approval alone won’t be enough to get safe, effective psychedelic care to the people who need it — policy, practice, training, and implementation need to be developed and connected before the workforce is asked to respond at scale.

Read the Joint Response to HRSA