Virtual mental health provider Brightside Health raises $33M

The company added Trip Hofer, former CEO of Optum Behavioral Health Solutions, to its board

As the country continues to suffer from a mental health, while also facing a shortage of care providers, services like Brightside Health, a company that delivers virtual mental health care for mild-to-severe clinical depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders, become more important.

Brightside, which offers services to commercially insured and cash-pay patients in all 50 states, recently began expanding into Medicaid and Medicare in select states. To help continue to facilitate that expansion, the company announced it has raised $33 million in a Series C funding led by S32, along with Kennedy Lewis, Time BioVentures, and Anne Wojcicki (Redwood Pacific). Existing investors ACME, Mousse Partners, and Triventures also contributed, bringing Brightside's total funding to $110 million.

When a member goes to Brightside, they start with a free assessment leading to a personalized treatment plan. From there, members can make an appointment to be seen within 48 hours and get started working with the same care team from start to finish. 

Brightside's platform includes personalized psychiatry with PrecisionRx, which provides AI-driven recommendations based on over 100 data points, as well as real-time care management, which can track progress and identify risk levels in near-real time, allowing for automated risk escalation to the provider.

In addition, patients also get advanced quality management with ActiveSupervision, which scans charts to verify completeness and identify situations that a supervisor should review, and Crisis Care, a national telehealth program for treating individuals at elevated risk for suicide.

Within 12 weeks of using Brightside, 86% of patients experience clinically significant improvement, while that number is 88% for those reporting suicidal ideation at intake. The company also sees 71% achieving remission, compared to 69% for those reporting suicidal ideation at intake. Of the patients achieving remission within 12 weeks, 65% did so within 28 days, and 82% did so within 48 days. The mean time to remission was 31 days.

Brightside's expansion into the Medicaid and Medicare populations started with partnerships with Optum, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, Centene, and Lucet in October, before entering into new contracts with CareOregon to serve Medicaid and Blue Shield of California to serve Medicare Advantage and Commercial members in February, while also expanding its contract with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas to include Medicare Advantage; and an expanded contract with Traditional Medicare to include Texas, California, Delaware, Arizona,  New York, and Washington.

Currently, Brightside Health is able to provide in-network care to over 100 million covered lives, with more coverage being added every month, Brad Kittredge, CEO and co-founder of Brightside Health, told VatorNews.

"This funding round will help Brightside Health continue to accelerate our rollout and support of Medicare and Medicaid populations; deepen our partnerships with payers and health systems on high-value use cases such as Emergency Department discharge; and expand the ways that our technology and AI deliver industry-leading outcomes and care efficiency," he said.

"We’re constantly and uniquely focused on supporting populations with high severity and acuity, including Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. This includes ensuring they have access to our Crisis Care program, which is specifically for those with elevated suicide risk. To that, we are doubling down on our commitment to provide the best care available to those in the market who have the greatest need and often the hardest time finding timely and effective care."

Along with the funding, the company also announced that Trip Hofer, former CEO of Optum Behavioral Health Solutions, has been appointed to the Board of Directors a Brightside.

"Brightside Health is focused on working closely with payers to solve their hardest behavioral health challenges at scale. Trip Hofer is extremely unique in having leadership experience on both the mental health provider side as well as the payer side. His insight into payer priorities and value creation can help ensure that Brightside Health continues to deepen the ways we add value to our payer partners and their members," said Kittridge.

"All of this mission is far from over. You’ll see us continue to expand our offerings with underserved populations and the industry stakeholders whom we collaborate with, as well as the way we use technology and AI to ensure that care is safe, effective, and efficient."

(Image source: brightside.com)