HM meets… Noah Nordheimer

Mental health provider All Points North (APN) has opened its first facility outside of the US in London’s Harley Street Medical Area. President and CEO Noah Nordheimer talks to Maria Davies about the company’s rapid expansion and his vision for a future where mental health is no longer siloed but seen as an integral part of overall wellbeing.

Noah Nordheimer wants to change the way we think about mental health. The president and CEO of All Points North (APN), a behavioural and mental healthcare company, which opened its first UK facility in London’s Harley Street Medical Area in April, is as much an innovator as he is an advocate for a holistic and integrated approach to issues such as trauma and addiction.

APN might not have the immediate brand recognition of those Titans of US healthcare Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic, but it’s entry into the UK market is no less significant.

Still a young company – it opened its first facility, APN Lodge, in Edwards Colorado in March 2020 – it is already making waves as a positive disruptor in the US behavioural health space.

‘In the US, behavioural health has been very rigid. They have been doing what they’ve been doing for the past 65 years. And I think if I take an honest look at it, and you look at trends with depths of despair – suicides, overdoses – things are getting worse

“We’re not making the impact that we need so I think we really have to revisit the approach”

says Nordheimer.

APN clients are offered the full continuum of care from residential to day programmes and individual therapy. This is a key element of APN’s offer and differentiation.

‘Having clinicians being able to reflect back on that entire care record is such a powerful tool and it can get lost when people move between care providers,’ says Nordheimer.

The company is also embracing new modalities, including Ketamine assisted therapy, as alternatives to long-term medication.

‘Medication shouldn’t always be the first choice. I think we have to look at alternative modalities because too many times we’re meeting with clients who are now on their fifth antidepressant and they’re still depressed,’ he adds.

APN Lodge looks more like a five-star mountain resort than a mental health facility. It provides treatment for a wide range of mental health issues and addictions, but always with the same whole-person approach. The ‘campus’ includes executive suites, pool, fitness centre and spa alongside cutting edge treatments such as hyperbaric oxygen therapy and deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS). Some of the leading clinicians in the US are joined under one roof with therapists, dietitians, personal trainers and any other personnel required for care, making it efficient and agile.

Sadly, I don’t get to visit but even by video link, Nordheimer’s passion is palpable.

“‘My goal is that in five years we have changed the dialogue to be just about health – and have that be inclusive of mental health,’ “

he tells HM. ‘We’ve got to stop siloing the conversation because that’s when stigma and fear come in. The reality is that your physical health and your mental health are dependent on one another. We need to talk about mental health and physical health and nutrition and fitness under the same umbrella of health.’

However, it is not just about changing the dialogue. Nordheimer believes this integrated approach also provides the most effective treatment for patients. And he has a growing body of evidence to prove it. APN Lodge has ranked in the top 5% of treatment centres in the US for patient improvement outcomes two years in a row according to the Acorn Collaboration – an outcomes measurement tool used by mental health providers across the US, Australia and Canada.

‘When you look at long-term recovery in mental health, clients who are going to a primary care doctor or GP have an 80% chance of better outcomes. So, statistically it shows that when you’re taking care of your physical health when you’re in mental health recovery it goes a really long way,’ he says.

‘You can’t treat mental health in a silo. Your physical and mental health are interdependent on one another, and they have to be treated concurrently. I think that’s the challenge but it’s also the opportunity.’

And it’s an opportunity that is playing well with investors. As well as being the driving force behind APN, Nordheimer is the founder and managing partner of private equity company APN Capital, which along with SMB Bradley and others provided the original investment for APN Lodge in 2018. Since then, it has raised $20m in a Series B and is currently in the process of Series C fundraising.

Expansion is following fast on the foot. Since 2020, APN has opened new facilities in Colorado and California, launched its own telehealth product and is developing new sites in Texas and Florida. An impressive portfolio when you consider it is only a little over three years since the opening of APN Lodge.

Entry into the Harley Street Medical Area

However, London is its first and, to date, its only facility outside of the US. The state-of-the-art site on Upper Wimpole Street provides doctor-led, day programmes for a wide range of mental health conditions and addiction and includes 9x, APN’s group fitness and personal training alongside group and individual therapy.

According to Nordheimer, around 30% of APN Lodge’s original clients came from the UK, making London a logical next step in the company’s expansion.

‘Everybody has unique and different needs and we wanted to take our care model to London to support the clients who were coming to the US and returning there, but also for that broader market who I think are becoming more aware of mental health and wanting better care options,’ he says.

Over the past ten years, there has been an increasing trend for those who can afford it to travel to Switzerland and the US for mental health care.

Nordheimer says this is because despite ‘the unbelievable wealth of talent in therapists and psychiatrists in the UK’, many of the larger UK facilities have been slower to adopt new technology and innovation.

A full range of innovative and emerging treatments are already on offer at the London facility, including dTMS, ketamine-assisted healing, and lifestyle psychiatry.

“‘We think that for more than half of our London clients, their treatment journey will remain in the UK.”

However, for maybe 30% or 40%, they may need to take some time to go to a residential setting and at that point, we would get them over to Colorado,’ Nordheimer explains.

The key, he says, is providing an integrated service to clients regardless of where they are treated. ‘Our teams are all in constant communication and it is all APN,’ he adds.

However, APN is keen to develop partnerships with mental and physical health providers in the UK. In the US, it has partnered with hospital groups, including HCA, and Nordheimer says it is already talking to ‘large hospital systems’ and GPs this side of the Atlantic.

‘We’re also talking to other mental health providers who have established relationships with clients, whether they are therapists or psychiatrists, and are looking for other modalities such as deep TMS or ketamine assisted therapy or even just fitness or group therapy,’ he says.

“‘I think that there is also potential that we could be a partner and help be a solution to some of the issues and challenges within the NHS.’”

Nordheimer started his career in the development of affordable housing across the US before setting up behavioural health business Concerted Care Group in 2014. The APN Capital-owned company focuses on delivering mental health services for a similar demographic.

‘I still feel passionate about working with people below the poverty line. That’s where my heart really lies but as I worked in that sector, I actually saw the opportunity to innovate care and use new modalities which weren’t necessarily available across the population,’ says Nordheimer. ‘The only way I could do that was to move to the upper end of the market where people have the ability to pay but I am hopeful that what we learn at this end of the market will become more widely available to all populations.’