Alleva, an EMR platform for behavioral health providers, raises seed funding

The company saw its number of customers double in 2020

While EMRs are meant to create more efficiency in the healthcare system, providing digital records of patient health information, that isn't always the case. They can sometimes require even more work from physicians, who have to spend time inputting data, and they can result in a lack of communication between systems.

EMRs are especially not useful if all they are doing is digitizing a manual process, but that's exactly the case in the behavioral health space. That's why Steven McCall created Alleva, an EMR software platform for addiction treatment and behavioral health providers and facilities.

"We founded the company because we saw a huge technological need. People we talked to in the industry were piecing together different systems to try and run their business. We saw an opportunity to streamline all of that," he told me.

"EMRs are clunky and stuck in the 90s. We're bringing 2020 technology to the space, streamlining how care is provided to patients."

Not only is it inefficient to not have an EMR that can bring together systems and generate insights, it's can have potentially deadly consequences; the other reason behind McCall's decision to found Alleva was from when his friend's son overdosed shortly after treatment.

"Upon learning that it was not his first overdose and that this was a common occurrence, we set out to change the treatment world. We genuinely feel the opposite of addiction is not sobriety but connection. We built Alleva to better connect patients to their treatment, care, and recovery."

On Tuesday, Alleva announced what it calls a "significant addition to its seed round of funding," led by Jonathan Ord, founder of DealerSocket and investor in companies such as Filevine, GuideCX, Enerflo, Automotive Broadcasting Network and NeoGov. This round brings Alleva's total funding to about $3 million.

"We spoke with several VCs about investing in Alleva. Ultimately, we partnered with Jonathan Ord because of his SaaS space experience and the interest he takes in helping his portfolio companies grow," said McCall.

Alleva's platform includes a smart dashboard, which keeps users up to date and compliant with tasks and notifications. Users are able to access and edit client and shift notes and add prospects, as well as access single-screen medication management, which allows them to record vitals and withdrawal symptoms The company also provides advanced analytics that give its clients insights to manage their business better.

The platform also includes a client app, a family portal and a telehealth solution.

The company provides its software to addiction recovery, primary mental health, and adolescent treatment facilities, and its clients have seen their operational efficiency improved by 30 percent while reducing financial risk by over 20 percent. There are currently about 200 clients on the platform right now, as Alleva's customer base increased by over 100 percent in 2020; that was at least in part due to COVID and lock-down orders, which studies found led to an increase in overdoses.

"COVID was an opportunity for us to showcase the system we've been building. We were able to leverage several tools we had built, including the telehealth feature we've had since 2017, to help our clients stay in business," said McCall.

"Because of telehealth, we saw an uptick in engagement. Virtually all our clients were able to transition their programs online in real-time rather than close down. In just the first month after COVID hit, our customers spent millions of minutes on our telehealth platform."

The company's seed round of funding will be used to build out its product and sales teams, growing its employee base from 30 to 45 over the next year or so. Alleva will also use it to continue to build new feature sets for the behavioral health space, with a focus on building and scaling its CRM, Family/Client Portal, and Alleva Insights platform so that EMR interaction continues to be more streamlined, efficient, and compliant.

The ultimate goal for the company is to own the behavioral health software market, and success for the company would be providing the highest quality software to its existing space with a product-led sales model. 

"Alleva is all about helping the helpers. We're passionate about providing the highest quality of service to a severely underserved space. The new funding will allow us to continue to build our teams out, so we can provide the highest quality of care. We genuinely believe in being a product-led company. The main focus of this round is to scale our R&D so we can provide the best product to our customers," said McCall.

Also Register for our May 19 Future of Mental and Behavioral virtual event. We'll have top-level VCs and C-level executives from the leading mental and behavioral companies, such as Ginger.io, Teladoc's BetterHelp, Amwell, Doctor on Demand, Kaiser Permanente, Bessemer Ventures and more.