The VA Has Picked 10 Sites for Psychedelic Therapy. Its Own Advisor Says Demand Will Outstrip Supply.
Psychedelic Alpha reported from the Psychedelic Healthcare Forum in New York, moderated by POLITICO's Deputy Health Care Editor Erin Schumaker, where the Veterans Health Administration gave its clearest numbers yet on how it plans to roll out psychedelic therapy.
Andrew Gradison, a Senior Advisor to the VA, said the agency has chosen ten sites to go first — selected for having clinical trial experience with psychedelics already, though he wouldn't name them — after presenting a phased implementation plan to VA Secretary Doug Collins three weeks before the forum. The scale of what those ten sites are up against: the VA covers roughly 9 million veterans, 6.4 million of whom receive regular care, and about 2.1 million of those carry a diagnosis of PTSD, major depressive disorder, or treatment-resistant depression — all conditions with active VA and Pentagon psychedelic research behind them already.
Gradison said that if a therapy becomes available in January or February of next year, the VA would start treating patients immediately, but was candid about the ceiling: "I think, to manage expectations, it'll be a challenge in the first year to treat four digits' worth of patients," he said. "Demand will exceed our ability to supply these therapies." Group therapy formats came up as one of the few realistic ways to expand capacity without expanding staff. The same forum also covered ibogaine's separate, slower regulatory path and FDA risk-mitigation (REMS) requirements for psychedelics broadly — both still open questions the VA's own timeline depends on.