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Welcome to The Census, your weekly roundup of what matters in behavioral health care.

Today, we’re breaking down:

• Psychosocial oncology 

• Your latest news headlines in under two minutes

Let’s dive in.

- Shân

P.S. Thank you to everyone for filling out our reader survey! It’s great to hear directly from you :) 

Reading time: ~3.5 minutes.

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On our radar

What we’re watching this week 

🩺 Cancer patients need behavioral health care

Behavioral health services for oncology patients also make financial sense, yet few specialist providers exist.

Oncology is one of the most expensive diagnoses for employers. On top of that, about a third of all cancer patients also have anxiety, depression, or an SUD. 

This (obviously) negatively affects their clinical outcomes, not to mention their well-being.

• Oncology patients who do not receive behavioral health outpatient services are twice as likely to have an avoidable emergency room visit as those who do

Yet psychosocial oncology — cancer care that focuses on the psychological, behavioral, emotional, and social issues that arise for people going through cancer — isn’t something we hear much about. 

Even though cancer affects every aspect of patients’ lives.  

There are a few cancer centers that specialize in psychosocial oncology, but they’re few and far between. 

Hopefully, we’ll see a lot more attention paid to this space. Tech-based solutions that help connect cancer patients to virtual specialist support, and training programs for existing providers, are good places to start. 

Especially considering that one in five of us will develop cancer in our lifetimes.

🤍

Let’s get to your news headlines. 

Catch up quick

This week’s top stories

Latest news

🤯 Fraudulent hospices in California are inflating their censuses by promising homeless people and methadone patients a steady supply of opioids in exchange for enrolling.

😳 Acadia Healthcare lured patients into its psychiatric facilities and held them against their will, a New York Times investigation found.

📊 Statista and Newsweek released their list of top addiction treatment centers in America based on reputation scores, SAMHSA accreditation data, and Google Reviews.

👀 Talkspace allegedly unlawfully installed tracking software designed by TikTok on its website, per a new class action lawsuit. 

🗣️ The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is calling on Biden to beef up regulations on residential treatment facilities that care for vulnerable youth.

🤔 UnitedHealth upended how doctors practice after buying a Connecticut medical group, despite pledging to be a hands-off owner.

❤️‍🩹 Hard drugs are illegal again in Oregon after the state’s decriminalization experiment failed — partly because there weren’t enough providers to care for drug users.

👉 Using subtle social cues, or nudges, to guide people’s decision-making is making inroads in health care, with mixed results.

🏫 Vocational programs are growing in high schools across the country, and they may help fix the chronic health care worker shortages.

👋 Sanford Health is leaving Humana’s Medicare Advantage plan network, saying the health insurer delays patient care and denies coverage.  

💊 When it comes to opioid treatment programs, some gaps aren’t being filled from a pharmaceutical perspective — and operators need to address them.

💡 SUD providers hoping to craft new reimbursement arrangements must establish robust internal measurement systems, says BHB.

⚕️ Curative’s $0 copay, $0 deductible health insurance solution is now available in Georgia, with comprehensive coverage of behavioral health services. 

💸 The three largest US drug distributors have agreed to pay $300M to resolve claims that they helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic.

💻 Collaboration, not fines, is key to healthcare cybersecurity, say IT experts. 

🐕 Giving up pets to seek rehab can worsen trauma, but a Colorado group is working to provide solutions. 

🚨 New event alert: Behaven Kids will hold an Applied Behavior Analysis Summit for professionals, psychology students, and mental health therapists in the Heartland area on September 17th. 

Expansions, launches, & partnerships

🎉 Inner Haven Wellness opened an Adolescent Partial Hospitalization Program to treat teens with eating disorders in Madison, Wisconsin. 

🤝 Affiliated Network Providers and Aurora Behavioral Health partnered to enhance behavioral health services and care collaboration in Maricopa County.

🏥 Purpose Healing Center expanded its comprehensive care options for people seeking Phoenix rehab support.

🎾 Talkspace partnered with the Professional Tennis Players Association to give players and their families year-round access to mental health support.

🤖 Medscape launched a free AI medical scribe for US physicians to transcribe patient conversations and generate a synopsis. 

Funding rounds & investor moves

🤑 Soar Autism, an ABA and autism diagnosis provider, landed $20M.

🧒 Autism Testing 4 Kids (AT4K), an in-person autism evaluation provider, raised $2.5M.

🤖 Slingshot AI, a mental health chatbot startup, raised $30M in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

💰 Release Recovery, an SUD treatment provider, acquired MANUAL, a personal development and wellbeing platform tailored for young men.

Studies & opinion pieces

🧑‍⚕️ Treating and screening for non-substance-related mental health disorders could help drive down overdoses (study).

👭 The importance of the twin relationship for eating disorder treatment engagement, healing, and recovery (study).

⚠️ Mental health care in underserved populations is in crisis, and it’s not just a provider resource problem (opinion). 

👷 Construction workers can find it difficult to talk about mental health problems, and suicide among colleagues often comes as a shock (study).

💡 Regardless of drug use, giving naloxone to patients experiencing out-of-hospital heart attacks is associated with increased survival (study).

That’s it for this week! See you next Wednesday with the latest headlines.

- Shân

P.S. You can email me here if you want to share any feedback, or let me know about a business I should be featuring.

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