Chris Appleton With Art Pharmacy

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Chris Appleton with Art Pharmacy. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Appleton: [00:00:43] Good afternoon.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Art Pharmacy, how you serving folks?

Chris Appleton: [00:00:50] Sure thing. Art Pharmacy is a solution for health care payers and providers to increase the availability of behavioral health and mental health treatments for their patients and members. We connect patients to community based arts and culture resources with protective and therapeutic benefits to their mental health.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:07] What’s the backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Chris Appleton: [00:01:11] I spent my career working in the arts and culture field and coming out of the pandemic, we saw an enormous, enormous demand for mental health services and mental health crisis in America, especially amongst adolescents and older adults. The pandemic exacerbated social isolation and loneliness. You know, social media utilization, there’s just a real need for these two age groups to be more connected socially and and really thought that putting the arts to work, you know, artists have been healers since the beginning of time and putting artists to work to help address mental health seemed like a really great opportunity in need.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:49] Now, is there kind of research and data to support your hypothesis?

Chris Appleton: [00:01:54] There is the arts and health research field has been well established 40 plus years. There are Centers for Arts and Health, Arts and medicine research coming out of Johns Hopkins, Stanford University of Florida, UCLA. World Health Organization. Really the list goes on. And we’re taking that research that makes very clear that engagement with arts and culture can improve health outcomes and and, you know, have really developed a delivery mechanism for the health care industry to connect their patients to these life improving health, improving arts activities.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:29] So can you share your process and how it works for people that want to participate?

Chris Appleton: [00:02:34] Absolutely. So the name of the business is Art Pharmacy. In many ways, we work like a pharmacy. You go see your primary care provider or a your oncologist, your behavioral health provider, and they screen you for mental health concerns. They’re typically already doing this. If there is a diagnosis or risk factors for anxiety disorders, depression disorders, social isolation, they write a prescription for six months participation in arts and culture activities, and then call that prescription into us. The art pharmacy. On the on the other end of the equation, Art pharmacy has gone out and identified the thousands of instances of arts and culture activities that have these protective and therapeutic benefits and our software smart matches that patient profile to the highest efficacy arts engagement for the patient. So we like to say all art is good, but the right art at the right moment for the right patient is best. And and our care navigator works with the patient connects that then to that right. Arts and culture activity and then helps get them through that journey of attending and participating in these arts activities. And so, you know, maybe it’s helpful for me to kind of describe what these types of arts activities are. They’re they’re activities that your local theater museum or maybe going to a theater performance, a show on a on a Saturday evening with a friend or going to a painting class or a dance workshop. Both receptive and participatory experiences have benefits to mental health and well being. And, you know, really sort of depends on the specific patient health goals for what type of artistic discipline, what delivery mode or participation mode is, is right for them. So the patient participates in these arts activities. We help make sure there’s a strong adherence or compliance to the prescribed treatment and then we bill a third party payer to to make sure that it’s accessible for people that otherwise may not be able to access these types of resources.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:39] And then do you do an assessment prior and then post to make sure that it was beneficial?

Chris Appleton: [00:04:46] That’s exactly right. We’re we’re monitoring the patient well-being outside of the clinical settings. So everywhere from intake, when the patient first connects with with our care team to to after each instance attendance at at the arts and culture activities, we assess how the patient’s doing, screen them, monitor them, provide all that data back to the referring provider so that the primary provider, the referring physician, can monitor their patient outside of the clinical setting. And if there’s ever a need for a crisis intervention, an escalated medical issue or pharmacy gets involved and is really helping to to prevent emergency department utilization when when there are other ways of of getting people to resources that they need.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:30] So the prescription that they’re filling and the deliverable that’s being given to them is it might be just watch a play or it could be participate in a play like it doesn’t. It could be anything related to the arts.

Chris Appleton: [00:05:45] That’s right. So so not. That’s exactly right. So so not all arts and culture engagements have all benefit for every health concern or every health need. It’s the it’s the specific type of art activity is useful to the specific patient profile and what they have. So our technology, our algorithm builds a profile on the patient that, you know, you think about primary diagnoses, comorbidities, access barriers, health goals, experiences and preferences around arts and culture. All of those are variables that are taken into consideration when we match the patient with the arts activity that’s best for them in mental health and behavioral health patient agency is incredibly important. And so you really want to make sure that you’re meeting patients where they are and that it’s that precision personalized medicine and so that patients are able to participate in the types of arts activity that’s that’s most useful for them, whether that’s going on a guided walking tour of an exhibit at a museum or being in a class or a workshop at that museum.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:52] And like if somebody. Depressed and they say watch, you know, binge watch the office is that.

Chris Appleton: [00:07:01] I will say binge watching the office is not a part of a treatment plan that that we have available right now. So, you know, we we vet all of the arts and culture partners there. There’s a standards of care to which they have to adhere to remain in our platform. If a patient scores an arts and culture experience below a certain rating, the availability of that offering is paused until we’re our team is able to go and do the due diligence to figure out what’s going on, to get them back online. And and so no binge watching. The office is not a treatment.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:41] But watching a comedic play might be a treatment.

Chris Appleton: [00:07:46] That’s right. Much of the benefit of participating in arts and culture activities is the social connection and sense of belonging that’s created as a result of having an emotional experience alongside other people. Now, that’s not to say that we don’t have any activities that are individual activities, because we certainly do. But largely when you’re trying to address mental health concerns, especially what we’re doing is really focused on social isolation and loneliness. And so, you know, binge watching the office at home is is probably not, you know, the most beneficial thing, though I have certainly been binge watched the the office at home. So we’re trying to get folks activated and connected to others and create a greater sense of belonging, which has a tremendous impact, positive impact on health.

Chris Appleton: [00:08:41] In fact.

Chris Appleton: [00:08:43] You know, as many of the listeners may have recently seen, US surgeon general just last month issued issued a notice around the social isolation and loneliness epidemic in the United States. Research showing that being socially isolated is as bad for our health as smoking 15 cigarets a day. And so this really is something that the health care system in the United States is trying to wrap its arms around.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:14] Now, can you share a story? Obviously don’t name the person, but maybe share their challenge and and how and explain kind of what art they were using and how they were able to kind of resolve maybe some of their issues.

Chris Appleton: [00:09:29] Absolutely. One of my one of my favorite stories. I won’t share the individual’s name, but we have a great partner here in metro Atlanta. The name of the company is Ginn Care, and they’re a primary care practice for older adults. They refer a good number of their of their patients to us. And there was an older, older woman who just lost her husband and she was understandably, she was struggling with depression and feeling isolated. And and we sent her to a playwriting workshop and she ended up connecting to a handful of other attendees at that class. And they’ve gone out and created their own playwriting workshop. That is not art Pharmacy facilitated, paid for. Et cetera. And so one of the one of the things that we want to make sure that we’re doing is sort of creating this off ramp, right? So that with enough new habit building and healthy behavior, that healthy activity that that patients are able to go and and engage in this type of activity on their own, which is which is largely what we’re focused on doing is building that strength and that resilience, strengthening those muscles for patients to be involved in these in these kinds of activities.

Chris Appleton: [00:10:57] The the kind of analogy that I like to give is to what we’re building is, is something that started about 30 years ago, a company that many listeners are probably familiar with, if you’re not familiar with and name certainly familiar with in concept. There’s a company called Silver Sneakers and Silver Sneakers started 30 years ago as a network of physical activity programs and and fitness programs for for seniors. And you know, a couple of generations ago, it wasn’t so broadly accepted that our physical activity level impacted our health in the way that we all understand it to today. And at that time, 30 years ago, when when silver sneakers emerged, they were getting older adults access to to fitness programs and getting them engaged in physical activity. Well, now everybody that’s on a Medicare plan in the United States has access to silver sneakers paid for by their health plan. And and I believe a generation from now we’ll all be sitting around saying, oh, you know, it’s kind of funny that that 20, 20 years ago we didn’t know that our mental health and emotional well-being was so closely linked to our engagement in arts and culture.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:17] Well, I, um, I was involved in fitness for a while at the beginning of my career, and I remember it made so sense, made so much sense to us to have, you know, your insurance pay for a gym membership or some sort of fitness and like you mentioned, you know. The speed of government is from understanding value and then to actually writing checks. It isn’t the quickest partner in these kind of initiatives.

Chris Appleton: [00:12:49] That’s right. It takes time and it takes it takes partnerships with the private sector, the public sector policymakers. You know, we we work with Medicaid, managed care organizations. We work with large health systems. We’re focused a lot on student health. We’re in 32 school based mental health clinics. So students are able to access our pharmacy as a as a mental health resource. So it takes a lot of different partners to build the evidence base and make the case So that policy ensures that people get access to the quality of care that they need.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:22] Now, I think I understand kind of that moment at the beginning where you’re like, Hey, this by giving people that are struggling access to the arts can really make a difference in their kind of mental health. I kind of get that. How did you kind of start getting traction and buy in from these health plans and health systems, bureaucracies that tend not to take fliers on this kind of stuff?

Chris Appleton: [00:13:52] You know, we’re really solving. So I think there’s there’s two reasons for that. The coexistence of these two things. The first is, is as I shared, the research is really clear, right? When we walk in and we talk to clinical directors, medical directors, at health plans or at health systems, we do not hear from them. We’re not sure if this is good for patients health. Everyone knows that engaging in arts and culture can be good for patients health. And so that’s been a pretty a pretty low barrier for us, largely because of the great research that that folks have been doing for decades now. Really, I think the other reason is the pain point that we’re solving. So what the for for health systems and for for payers. So what happened during the pandemic is you had an entire a huge number of behavioral health providers leave health systems. And and go into private practice where they only take self pay. From maybe individuals like you and me that pay the 200 bucks an hour to go to the 55 minute therapy session. But they’re not enrolled in network by choice. They’re not enrolled in network with these health plans. And so the health plans as a result and the large health systems then have a shortage of mental health services or behavioral health services that they can connect their patients and members to. And so by framing the problem that we’re solving for them, as as that what we’re doing is increasing the availability of mental health resources. We’ve been able to cut through some of the bureaucracy and, you know, just lengthy sales cycles that are required to sometimes get things off the ground in health care.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:54] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success and the momentum. If somebody wants to learn more, where should they go?

Chris Appleton: [00:16:02] Go to Art.

Chris Appleton: [00:16:03] Pharmacy Coco to learn more about how you can partner with art pharmacy and get connected to the great work that our team is.

Chris Appleton: [00:16:12] Doing.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:13] And that’s both health systems and individuals.

Chris Appleton: [00:16:17] Health systems, individuals. Health care payers and public health programs.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] Good stuff. Well, Chris, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Chris Appleton: [00:16:28] Thanks a lot for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:29] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.