Dear NOCD Community Members,
I hope you are enjoying your holiday season and getting ready to kick off the new year! It might sound cliche, but I can’t believe that it’s already the end of 2021. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what transpired over the past 12 months.
At NOCD, it has certainly felt like a whirlwind. There were highlights: we grew our team, enhanced our operational processes to serve the global OCD community, supported our therapist network in doing hundreds of thousands of ERP Therapy sessions this year, and raised capital to more quickly serve more people in need of effective care.
There were also some challenges. We’re human, like you, so it was tiring at times trying to keep up with the rising community demand for help, despite our best efforts. Observing the incredible transformation many people made in treatment fueled us to persevere though. That’s one of the best parts about offering evidence-based therapy to people with OCD: the treatments are extremely effective, and people actually experience life-altering improvement. There is nothing like seeing someone reach a point where they’ve regained mental freedom.
The outcomes are what push us to keep going, and they’re also what inspire us to consistently improve our offerings each day. Our core company value is to be “member-first,” meaning everything that we do each day is for our members. To that end, I’d like to highlight three updates that you can expect from NOCD in 2022.
1. We’re launching two new services to serve our current community: NOCD Telepsychiatry and NOCD Intensive Therapy.
Today, we offer NOCD Therapy, but sometimes people need additional forms of care. That’s why we’re partnering with Array Behavioral Health to launch NOCD Telepsychiatry, and why we’re creating a new line of service called NOCD Intensive Therapy.
It’s really tough to watch some people have to go outside of NOCD’s umbrella to search for psychiatric and IOP (intensive outpatient program) services, even though both have been proven effective virtually over the course of the last two years for OCD and related conditions. We’d like to remove that hassle for all of you.
This is also a hassle we’d like to solve for our therapists, who deeply care about getting our members the right treatment. In an effort to meet each member’s unique needs, our therapists have to spend considerable time today referring some people out to other providers when they need a higher level of care. Our goal is to create one clear referral pathway that will help each person receive the right care as well as allow each of our therapists to coordinate efficiently and best serve our members.
2. We’re partnering with additional insurance providers.
Our mission has always been to create a world where anyone can access effective OCD therapy, no matter where they live or how much money they make. Today, we provide affordable options for treatment and accept many insurance plans, including UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Humana, many Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, and more.
But we’re not stopping here. We’re in the process of bringing in additional insurance providers so that even more folks can access NOCD Therapy as a covered benefit. Our team knows that the more insurance providers we bring in, the more we’ll rip down the barriers that prevent people with OCD from getting effective and affordable care. It’s a big priority for us – one that we’ve invested heavily in too.
We’ll also make it easier for therapists who treat OCD to make an impact. Today, the administrative costs of taking insurance are brutal, and therapists shouldn’t have to manage it. Our team does it all, removing the hassle completely.
3. We’re going to be doing major OCD awareness campaigns, to help redefine OCD.
The NOCD team is probably sick of hearing me make this point, but I’ll share it with each of you because I find it fascinating: OCD is a very unique term in our vocabulary. Everyone in our society seemingly recognizes it when heard, and many even use it casually to describe their spouse or some of their cleaning tendencies. Yet, rarely do people actually know its meaning.
It’s bizarre that hundreds of millions of English speakers globally consistently use “OCD” inadvertently without realizing its true definition; at the same time, it’s because people at least recognize the term that there’s actually a chance to redefine its meaning. NOCD is committed to doing just that this year. We’re going to redefine OCD, so people can truly #KnowOCD and realize it’s far from a joke. In the next year, be on the lookout for billboards, commercials, and even partnerships with different celebrity influencers that help define OCD’s true, crippling, nature.
I truly believe that there never has there been a greater time to be alive than right now. I have a feeling we will be saying that in a few years too. It’s easy to see the negativity in society, especially with the widespread reach of social media, but let’s take a step back and see the good for a second.
Personally, I’m grateful for my family, friends, our team at NOCD, each of you, and the opportunity to define the future – an opportunity we should all embrace. Life is never perfect or easy, but waking up each day with those items is truly special. Thank you for being a big part of my life.
I wish you and your family a fantastic close to 2021 and a happy, healthy start to 2022. Let’s make it the best year yet.
Sincerely,
Stephen