Interventionist Brad Lamm in Wellness Therapeutics Play

Addiction Treatment Industry Newswire

12/19/2013 –ATIN – In a continuation of the trend of interventionists holding on to their considerable client flow, client flows that are often of the most desirable demographic and economic type, Brad Lamm has opened a bi-coastal treatment operation in which on the business side he has moved up the addictions food chain while at the same time affording the opportunity clinically to build a “wellness” therapeutic model Lamm believes will give his clientele access to addictions care on the very cutting edge. Brad Lamm joins high-profile interventionists like Ken Seeley and others who have opened their own addiction treatment operations, in Seeley’s case a major redevelopment of hotel/motel properties in Palm Springs into IOP and sober living called Ken Seeley Recovery Community.

“Insurance Friendly”

With Breathe Life Healing Centers Lamm has just in the last few weeks opened a property in Laurel Canyon in the Los Angeles area that sits on 22 acres, a gated community with three homes he has converted into a PHP and IOP operation. “The goal is to be insurance friendly,” says Lamm, adding that he and his partners – Lamm is devoted mostly to running the clinical side and controls 80 percent of Breathe – are accepting whatever benefits clients have for PHP or IOP along with the client co-pay. He says that so far, and he has for almost a year been running another Breathe in New York City out of a townhouse and brownstone in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, the flexible, sliding scale-style approach to payment has been working as a revenue model, with reimbursement sufficient for financial success.

California ObamaCare

While ObamaCare has, to say the least, overall had a highly shaky and dubious initial rollout, in California participation by local officials in the roll-out of the state exchange has been enthusiastic and has led to a VERY successful launch, with millions expected to sign up within the next year or so. Lamm says he anticipates that addictions benefits under ObamaCare should be sufficient to feed successfully into his flexible reimbursement approach, leading possibly to the expansion of Breathe centers in the state.

Obesity

Joining those who have for some time thought that addictions therapeutic models might be applied to dealing with the national obesity crisis, players like CRC Health Corp and treatment entrepreneur Michael Cartwright at American Addiction Centers, for example, Lamm says that a third to half of Breathe clients have weight issues as either a primary or co-occurring diagnosis that includes obesity but also often life threatening weight self-image problems like bulimia and anorexia. With the DSM-5, the latest update of the bible-like Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that is used by pretty much everyone from the courts to commercial insurers to establish baseline definitions of behavioral health diagnoses, over-eating has been upgraded and defined as an official affliction which Lamm anticipates down the road may loosen up the purse strings of the commercial insurers when it comes to paying for obesity related theraputics, previously traditionally an overwhemingly private pay preserve.

READOUR STORY ON KEN SEELEY

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