MJBiz - July 2023 - 10

FIVE QUESTIONS with Rebecca Abraham
Cannabis, RN
Entrepreneur applies clinical and nursing methodology to MMJ referrals
By Kate Lavin
N
ew studies are published
almost daily about the
medical use of cannabis.
Yet most physicians say they don't
know enough about marijuana
to recommend the plant, not to
mention appropriate consumption
methods or specific products.
That gap between need and
knowledge prompted Rebecca
Abraham, a registered nurse with
15 years of health care experience,
to create Acute on Chronic.
" In educating doctors about
cannabis and what we do, we're
saying, 'You don't have to manage
this; we can manage it.' That has
gotten us quite a bit of traction, "
Abraham said.
The Illinois-based company has
treated more than 400 patients to
date and is conducting a seed raise.
" Right now, we are looking to
scale and grow. We have a lot of
partnerships in the pipeline, we
just need a little bolus of cash to
execute them, " Abraham said.
She recently sat down with
MJBizMagazine to discuss
navigating insurance, selecting
products and clinical findings
related to managing delirium and
dementia with cannabis.
How do you identify brands
and products to recommend?
The secret sauce is things I've
learned from critical-care nursing,
nursing pedagogy and education.
Our botanical care plan is very
tailored toward the patient.
We do an assessment to gather
the information, and I typically
ask patients: Do you have taste
10 July 2023 | MJBizMagazine
Rebecca
Abraham
education and risk reduction, so we
have found reimbursable codes to
pay for our services.
I can show them, " Hey, you
preferences? Do you have product
preferences? Is there a dispensary
that you're willing to go to? Are you
OK with mail order? Do you only
want mail order?
We really meet the patient where
they are at in all ways.
We get Certificates of Analysis
and look for things like heavy
metals and fungus. ... If there is a
formulation change, we look into
that formulation change. We do a
pretty deep dive.
How does Acute on Chronic get
paid? Do you take insurance?
We have a couple different streams
of revenue. Our main stream of revenue
is one-to-one patient care and
counseling that is self-paid by the
patient. At this point, we can take
health savings accounts (HSAs) and
flexible spending accounts (FSAs).
We're currently talking to
commercial health insurance
payers about reimbursement
because we aren't plant- or
product-touching. We're only
making recommendations, and
those recommendations are rooted
in a nursing methodology and
are losing a lot of money on
(emergency room) admissions
that ended up in observation.
Our services prevent people from
hanging out in observation for two
days, and that saves you $24,000.
What do you think about OK'ing
this CPT (medical billing) code that
I found? "
There's a little bit of red tape that
we're still going through, but that's
how we cracked the code.
How do you stay on top of
new cannabis health studies?
Our team has access to (medical
software program) UpToDate.
Anytime anybody goes to a
hospital, anytime you see your
doctor, we look at UpToDate on the
clinical side to see what the newest
compiled, clinical application is.
We also use resources like
PubMed, where you can read
any medical study that comes
up. We also use a resource called
CannaKeys; it's an aggregate
database of just cannabis studies.
And then we use other databases
traditionally used for medicine:
Medscape for drug-checking,
Epocrates, Drugs.com.
Every single time we get a
patient, we do a new lit(erature)
review. Even though we've had well
over 100 patients come to us for
chronic pain, that pain is different
for every person. There's a different
underlying cause, a different
pathology.
http://www.Drugs.com
MJBiz - July 2023

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