Behavioral Health Innovation Beyond Technology

While shiny new technologies have historically defined behavioral health innovation, transforming the industry requires reimaging its fundamental operating models and care delivery systems.

Behavioral health founders are now looking at changing payment structures, care models, and payer networks to help move the compass on behavioral health care.

Payer contracting is one of the main areas of behavioral health that is ripe for transformation, according to panelists at Behavioral Health Business’ INNOVATE event.

“I think one of the things that can be innovative in the space, from a model standpoint, is also how providers work with payers,” Robert Krayn, CEO of Talkiatry, said at INNOVATE. “I think those models can be very innovative without necessarily changing how care is delivered. And one of the ways that we do that is really looking at what’s the impact that the care we’re delivering has on the physical health side of things, which the dollars are way bigger there than they are in behavioral health.”

Talkiatry is a New York-based startup that was founded in 2019 and provides digital access to behavioral health clinicians, including psychiatrists. In 2022, the company landed $37 million in funding to scale its platform.

Still, it can be difficult to parse out which provider should get credit for the physical health outcomes.

“It’s not standardized yet. It’s not one size fits all. I think there’re many, many ways of also structuring a value-based care agreement,” Sonia Priscilla García, co-founder and chief product officer of Amae, said at INNOVATE. “We’re deploying a couple within Amae with Blue Shield of California, also seeing that within Houston and getting an attributed lives population, and I think you’re trying to understand as well, from the payer’s point of view and needs, what’s the right thing to do for the patient, and then also making sure, to … figuring out the right metrics the right whether it’s HEDIS scores or you’re also doing the reduced re-hospitalization rates and readmissions, all of that matters. And I think we’ll start getting into more sustainable, repeatable, scalable practices for actual, value-based care implementation.”

Amae is a Los Angeles-based provider that uses an integrated model to care for patients with serious mental illness.

Behavioral Health Business

Despite the digital push, some startups, like Amae, are leaning into brick-and-mortar facilities as a foundation to propel innovation then.

“We do have actual clinics, physical clinic spaces, where folks come in and really do engage in their care with their clinicians, all in-house, and build community,” García said. “Amae means in order to be able to thrive and build yourself back up, you need to depend on those around you. So dependency is actually healthy. Relying on a community that you can count on works and really helps. And so I think a lot of that structure, I think a lot of that human connection, are the things that form the foundation to then be able to leverage technology and apply that on top of it to create some really good efficiencies in some clinical standardization protocols, or helping to do a lot of the transcription services, or helping to do clear documentation, systemic data gathering and outcomes reporting.”

While technology isn’t necessarily the answer to all of behavioral health’s challenges, it could help lift some of the burden for providers.

“I’m a little bit old school; I think that ultimately, therapy is about two people connecting and someone who’s a trained professional helping you get through a difficult time,” Sandeep Acharya, CEO of Octave, said at INNOVATE. “I think the role of everyone on stage and everyone who works in this industry is to enable the patient and the provider to be successful. So I think AI’s role in this is potentially to help improve the back end understanding and make life easier for clinicians.”

Octave is a hybrid behavioral health provider that treats depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, chronic insomnia, eating disorders and substance use disorders.