Treatment Effectiveness Now (the TEN Project) is a private, non-profit policy action organization, affiliated with Georgetown University Department of Psychiatry, dedicated to ensuring access to effective health care for patients with co-occurring physical and mental health conditions.

The TEN Project was created to respond to the crisis in access to services as it impacts those persons who have the greatest illness-related morbidity and mortality: persons who have co-occurring psychiatric and physical health disorders. Morbidity and mortality associated with the co-occurrence of physical, mental and substance use disorders is greater than the morbidity and mortality of each disorder separately. Yet there remain significant gaps between what we know to be effective treatment for these patients and access to those services. The barriers to care are many and include benefit design and reimbursement as well as longstanding stigma relating to mental illness, substance abuse and its treatment. Over the next two years, pending fiscal, legislative and policy initiatives in state and federal governments will determine whether or not citizens who have co-morbid illnesses will gain or retain access to life-saving and recovery-enhancing treatments.

The TEN Project Provides New Focus and Builds on Success

The TEN Project believes that successful advocacy for these patients can and will occur through the use of existing strengths within the advocacy, academic and policy communities. Given the existence of many strong players in all of these sectors, and the presence of significant clinical and economic evidence, we believe that the greatest success will be in linking that expertise using the strength of the leadership team and advisors to develop strong strategic alliances in order to drive effective, creative strategies. The TEN Project is currently employing this strategy in order to respond to the issues for mentally ill patients in the Medicare pharmacy benefit and is a partner with other leading mental health organizations in the www.mentalhealthpartd.org web site. It has supported development of a specific set of data analyses that are required to best outline the reasons for an alternative formulary management strategy, has developed a consensus from professionals, advocates and state officials about the solutions, and has employed legal and policy consultants to revise and devise strategies. The advocacy community has used its political access and powerful constituencies to communicate its strategies and messages to officials successfully to Congress, CMS, NIH and other stakeholders and policy makers.

Our organization is comprised of experts in the fields of advocacy, academic and policy communities.