Growing Network Expands Access to Addiction Treatment and Mental Health Care to Those in Need

Recovery Ways announces the addition of Idaho Behavioral Health (IBH) to its family of programs, a growing national network that brings more accessible, high-quality, and high-value care to those who struggle with addiction and mental health. IBH is a full-service outpatient and treatment health program focused on providing quality behavioral health services.

“We are delighted to welcome Idaho Behavioral Health to Recovery Ways’ Family of Programs,” says Jaime Vinck, CEO of Recovery Ways. “Alcohol and drug abuse, overdoses, and suicides are at an all-time high. Our network of top-tier behavioral health programs better equips us to address the ongoing addiction and mental health challenges of our time.”

With clinics located in Boise, Mountain Home, Caldwell, and Nampa, IBH provides a full array of mental health services, including telehealth, community-based recovery services, peer support, medication management, and case management for adults, families, adolescents, and children.

This news follows the creation of Recovery Ways Family of Programs in April and the addition of Omega Recovery, Breakthrough Recovery Group, Colonial Clinic, and Alpine Recovery to the network.

— Source: Recovery Ways

Oscar Health Launches New Functionality for Transgender, Nonbinary Members

Oscar Health, Inc, the first health insurance company built on a full-stack technology platform and a relentless focus on serving its members, announces the launch of its new MyIdentity functionality as a part of its ongoing efforts to ensure that members get the access to care they need in an equitable way. This new functionality, which is available nationwide, allows all members—including those who identify as transgender or nonbinary—to freely input their name, pronouns, and gender identity in the Oscar app.

For many people in the transgender and nonbinary community, the identifiers that appear on their birth certificates, and by extension in their medical records, do not reflect their lived experience. A study by the National Center for Transgender Equality shows that discrimination and misgendering have led to nearly one-quarter of transgender people in the United States reporting they’ve avoided going to the doctor when they were sick because they were afraid of being mistreated.

MyIdentity empowers all members to provide Oscar with information—including their first and last name, pronouns, and gender (as distinguished from their sex assigned at birth)—that accurately reflect their identity. These identifiers will then be used by the Oscar team when members are greeted upon logging into their digital accounts and whenever engaging with the Oscar Care Teams. Members are presented with this feature during onboarding and can also access it at any time via settings on the web.

“Since day one, Oscar has been focused on building a system of health care that is centered around our members,” says Mario Schlosser, cofounder and CEO. “While there is still more work to be done, I am proud of our team of engineers who, through our unique full-stack technology, are able to quickly and proficiently meet the needs of our transgender and nonbinary members to help them feel both seen and heard.”

Because of Oscar’s full-stack technology platform, the company is able to build end-to-end experiences for members that can be quickly customized and optimized to meet their individual needs. To learn more about Oscar’s unique technology platform, +Oscar, and how it is empowering others in the provider and payer space, visit hioscar.com/plus-oscar.

— Source: Oscar Health

Social Media App Launched to Help Kids’ Mental Health

Actor, author, and tech entrepreneur Blondy Baruti has launched a new social media platform called BePerk, now available in the App Store, to give full power back to the user to decide how they want to be represented on social media. Baruti was inspired to build an app that offers users full control of their content to minimize social media bullying, anxiety, judging, comparison, depression, loss of self-esteem, social media addiction, stress, and pressure. He believes parents will like BePerk's parental control features to have more power to keep their children away from social media.

Users can choose to have their Followers and Following Public or Private. BePerk gives the user overall control to combat negative social media pressure. Users can post their thoughts without making an entire post. They can control how long others can read their thoughts by using the TIMER. Users can make their comments, likes, and views public or private. Users will be able to view who read their thoughts. After posting a thought, the end-users will see BLUR lines which they have to tap to read.

— Source: Anderson Group Public Relations