Charlie Health

Mental Health Awareness Month gets a lot of posts. What it needs is a lot more action. Building Charlie Health has taught me how complicated behavioral healthcare really is. My own experience showed me how high the stakes are when someone can't get the right level of care at the right time. Sophia's story shows what happens when the system falls short, and what's possible when it doesn't. Christina's story is a reminder that outcomes come from the clinicians doing this work every single day. The throughline: we need to raise the bar for what "good" looks like in this industry. That means a few things: • Access is the floor, not the ceiling. Getting someone into care is step one. Whether that care actually works is the real measure of success. • Personalized care at the right time is everything. High-acuity patients can't be treated with low-intensity solutions. The one-size-fits-all model has to go. We need programs that meet complexity with rigor, in environments that don't restrict people unnecessarily. • Outcomes have to be measured, reported, and expected. Behavioral health should be held to the same standard as the rest of healthcare. If treatment is working, we should know. If it's not, we should be accountable. Measurement-based care should be the norm. • Invest in the people delivering the care. Clinicians need structure, support, and tools to do their best work. Better outcomes start there. At Charlie Health, this isn't a future-state vision. We've already built it. Now we're asking others to join us. Real change takes alignment across providers, payers, policymakers, and innovators. My hope is that we come together in pursuit of a world where life-saving behavioral healthcare is accessible, connected, personalized, and rooted in evidence. This month is a moment to reflect. It's also a moment to act. We don't have to accept the system as it is. Let's build one that works. If you haven't seen it yet, our full campaign is here: https://lnkd.in/eER3ntSt #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth

This week JAMA posted findings that in the two and a half years following the 2022 rollout of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline , the rate of suicides among young people in the United States dropped 11 percent below expectations. At a time when the news cycle is dominated by headlines about what's broken, this is about something that's working. Suicide prevention works. Thousands of young people are still here because someone picked up the phone. It's all further evidence that, in a moment of crisis, support from a caring, compassionate, informed specialist right away can mean the difference between life and death. Working with 988 to triage cases has shown us at Charlie Health what is possible when we turn crisis calls into intensive care. Now's the moment to double down on suicide prevention efforts, continue to build a 21st century behavioral healthcare workforce that is accessible to all in crisis, and prove that a world without suicide is possible. Suicide prevention works. Let's build more of it. https://lnkd.in/ehP_2HAW

Today we launched Charlie Health's refreshed brand and I am SO proud to have been a part of it! We've grown from an adolescent and young adult focused provider into a full behavioral health solution for kids, teens, and adults. And now we have a look that actually matches the work we're doing! New colors, new typefaces, new imagery, the whole thing. I've gotten to work alongside some truly incredible people on this: Brian Rhee Breanna Bianchi Adam Macaulay Trenton Ropp Joe Yevoli Clark DeWoskin Madison Waterman John Oettinger Kayla Levy Bridget Mooney Stephen Fee, Carter Barnhart , Dr. Caroline Fenkel, LCSW and honestly every single person at Charlie Health who shows up every day to do this work. Getting to work on how this story reaches the world has been one of the coolest experiences of my career. I'm proud of this team, proud of this brand, and so proud of the way Charlie Health shows up in the world. Go check out charliehealth.com and see the new look for yourself!

Last week at Becker's Healthcare Annual Meeting, I had the opportunity to join leaders from across health systems, payers, and digital health for a panel discussion about the future of ambulatory care. One theme came up again and again: we can’t keep layering digital tools onto broken systems and expect different outcomes. For high-acuity behavioral health, the gap between crisis and recovery is still where too many patients fall through. Expanding access matters, but access alone isn’t enough. Outcomes including successful treatment completion have to take priority. At Charlie Health , we’ve seen that when you pair speed to care with personalized, high-acuity treatment, you don’t have to choose between better outcomes and lower cost… you can deliver both and save lives. The next phase of digital transformation isn’t about more tools. It’s about building care models that leverage technology to deliver great outcomes for the patients who need them most. Thanks to Giles Bruce for facilitating such a thoughtful discussion. Also, shoutout to our Chicago-based Charlie Health team members who came out to celebrate my birthday with me. Spending time with the incredible people who are connecting the world to life saving behavioral health treatment is the greatest gift I could ask for! 🎉