The evidence that unlocks reimbursement for psychedelic care.
Project Overview
UC Berkeley · UCSF · Sheri Eckert Foundation
02 Why this matters
Psychedelic care has shown real promise. But without evidence on costs and outcomes, it remains out of reach for most people. Health payers need to understand how this care performs in the real world, and ORCHID is designed to generate exactly that evidence.
With your support, we have a rare opportunity to make psychedelic care accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford it.
03 The reality
Psychedelic care works.
But millions can’t access it.
Millions are suffering, current treatments often fall short, and psychedelic care remains out of reach without coverage.
The scale
people worldwide live with depression
World Health Organization
What clinical trials show
of treatment-resistant depression patients responded to psilocybin
Johns Hopkins
patients don’t achieve remission with their first treatment*
Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine
PTSD remission rate with MDMA-assisted therapy in Phase 3 trials
UCSF
*From their first treatment option
05 Introducing ORCHID: the first study of its kind
The first study to track people before and after psychedelic care, link their experience to real medical records, and show whether it actually reduces health-system costs.
What we expect to rise: wellbeing, preventive care use, and quality of life.
What we expect to fall: crisis visits, hospitalizations, and total health-system costs.
First
First study linking psilocybin services to real medical claims.
Real-world
Real populations, not clinical-trial cohorts.
Timely
Preliminary results in 24 months; full evidence in 42.
08 Impact
ORCHID unlocks three pathways to access
The evidence ORCHID generates is the key that opens many doors to reimbursement, simultaneously.
State-Funded Access
Near-term public investment
Data like this strengthens the case for adopting and resourcing state-regulated programs. New Mexico has already committed $630,000 to subsidize psilocybin treatment for low-income and rural residents.
Employer Health Plans
Already available, waiting on data
Employers can already choose to cover state-regulated psychedelic services through Enthea. ORCHID gives companies the real-world outcomes and cost data they need to evaluate, expand, and sustain coverage.
Insurance Coverage
The long game
Insurers cover treatments when real-world data shows reduced costs and improved outcomes. ORCHID will provide supporting evidence for coverage of FDA-regulated care.
10 The team behind ORCHID
Health economists, trial leaders, and the people who built the field.
12 Voices from the field
The people who opened the door agree on what comes next.
Every state weighing public coverage of psychedelic care is running into the same wall: the fiscal case. Legislators want to know what it costs, what it saves, and whether the outcomes justify the spend. ORCHID is the kind of research infrastructure that can answer those questions with payer-grade evidence from Oregon and Colorado… If we want to move psychedelic care from an out-of-pocket service to a covered behavioral-health pathway, this is the evidence base that gets us there.
This project is meaningful because it looks beyond whether psychedelic care can help and asks whether it can change healthcare utilization, costs, and access. Those are the questions that will determine whether this model reaches the people who need it most.
For state-regulated psychedelic care to become accessible beyond those who can pay out of pocket, we need evidence that payers, policymakers, and public programs can trust. ORCHID is the kind of research infrastructure that can help translate real-world psychedelic care into coverage, policy, and access.
ORCHID could be a turning point for the state-regulated model. By producing payer-grade evidence from Oregon and Colorado, it can help move psychedelic care from an out-of-pocket service toward a more equitable healthcare pathway.