Access to mental healthcare is a big issue: only 62 percent of psychiatrists take any type of insurance or Medicare at all. It's even worse for people with Medicaid, as only around a third will accept new patients in that population; with nearly one in four Americans now receiving healthcare benefits through Medicaid, this leaves a lot of people without the ability to get the care they need.
On top of access, the other only component needed to change health outcomes is engagement, said Anna Lindow, co-founder and CEO of Brave Health, a virtual mental health provider and engagement platform focused on the Medicaid population.
"Engagement is a crucial, and often elusive, first step," she explained.
"Brave Health plays a critical role in driving engagement among Medicaid beneficiaries through a number of data-driven, tech-enabled approaches and interventions that leverage the company’s integrated model and generate a more than 80% contact success rate."
On Tuesday, the company announced a $40 million Series C funding round led by Town Hall Ventures, with existing investors Union Square Ventures, City Light Capital and others joining as well. This new round brings its total funding to $60 million.
Brave Health partners with health plans to engage and treat Medicaid members with mental health conditions, thereby improving access and engagement. Members are often referred from Medicaid case managers or local providers, such as hospitals or primary care physicians; Brave Health then works to engage the individual and get them into virtual care with its team.
The company first launched with health plans in Florida in 2019, and it now serves over 65 million covered lives across more than 200 health plan contracts, reaching patients in 18 states, including Florida, Texas, New York, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Alabama, Kentucky, and Georgia.
Brave Health has also begun to expand into value-based care: earlier this year, the company announced its first value-based contract with Molina Healthcare of Texas, and it also recently signed a value-based contract with Sunshine Health, bringing the total number of potential Medicaid members under Brave Health's care in a value-based arrangement to more than one million.
In terms of ROI, Brave Health is able to drive a 66 percent reduction in readmission-related costs, thereby improving outcomes and reducing costs associated that come with potentially-preventable hospitalizations.
"Brave Health has built trusted partnerships with local providers and Medicaid plans over the last three years. Those deep partnerships have led to our first three value based care contracts, two of which we’ve announced recently with Molina of Texas and Centene’s Sunshine Health," Lindow said.
"Plans understand that 'you can’t treat who you can’t reach,' and have come to value our unique engagement model. We take on the responsibility of getting members into care and supporting them through their care journey. As a result, plans can expect better short- and long-term outcomes and improved ROI."
Now that it has this new funding, Brave Health says it will continue build out is technology and data infrastructure, while also expand into new states and accelerating the closing and activation of new value-based contracts in the 18 states in it already operates.
Ultimately, success for the company will be, "when every Medicaid member is able to receive critical mental health care quickly and effectively," said Lindow.
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