Behavioral health innovation and care is finally having the moment it deserves. Stemming from COVID-Era Momentum, where millions of Americans realized the need for more mental health care, the treatment and management of mental health conditions is on the rise. Yet, we are still in the early innings of what behavioral health access and care delivery can and should look like. 

In order to build on this momentum in a post-Covid era, we need to address the key drivers that increase adoption of mental health services for patients and providers alike. This comes from (1) building technology designed specifically for mental health clinicians and (2) embracing strong ecosystem partnerships. 

Clinician Burnout is still a real problem

Study after study shows us that behavioral health clinicians continue to cite burnout as the top reason for job dissatisfaction in the field. In the past three years, >50% of mental health clinicians reported a feeling of burnout. Time spent charting and EHR complexity is the top reason driving burnout, as existing technology that wasn’t designed for behavioral healthcare is forcing clinicians to spend too much “pajama time” on their computers. In fact, 75% of clinicians indicating burnout cite their EHR as one of the main sources of that feeling.

Access to behavioral healthcare in the US has increased, but there’s still much more room to grow

Depression rates nearly tripled between 2019 and 2023, jumping from 11% to 32% according to Forbes. Luckily, patient access has improved to partially meet this demand, but there is still a need to improve access. Almost half of patients that need mental health services are receiving them in some capacity, but we need that number to be 100%. We need to continue pressing the case forward for personalized, preventative, and longitudinal care that is tailored to the specific needs of patients, which includes preferred modality of access (e.g., in person vs remote vs a combination thereof).

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(source: Kaiser Family Foundation)

Behavioral Health clinicians require their own set of solutions to best service patients 

Funding for mental health startups boomed in recent years and potentially reached a hold-steady point of ~$500M/year, per Crunchbase. It’s important that the healthcare ecosystem matches that funding energy with a focus on providing clinicians the tools they need to succeed. Behavioral Health clinicians need specific tools for longitudinal, collaborative, virtual-first care. That includes last-mile solutions specifically designed for them - for example the ability to chart, chat, access patient records and collaborate with team members all on a secure mobile app. 

Healthie stands out as one of the few specialized tools for behavioral health clinicians, delivering virtual-first longitudinal care – making it the preferred infrastructure platform amongst digital health innovators including Two Chairs, Brightline, Marker, Brave, Cartwheel, and Plume. 

‍Brightline delivers virtual-first pediatric behavioral health services to children, teens, and families in all 50 states. After outgrowing their original EHR, Brightline leveraged Healthie’s platform and API to build a long-term, scalable solution. Read the full case study. 

Healthie emphasizes continuity and consistency in patient management through its virtual-first approach. It provides an integrated suite of tools that support long-term patient engagement and tracking, allowing clinicians to deliver more effective, personalized care. Just a few examples of this include:

• Auto-scoring of PHQ-9’s and specialty forms → reduces the manual labor and delivers faster clinical insights
• Routing to Therapist → each patient deserves the right care for them, making discrete data available through an API to enable such matching
• Easy Form and Chart Creation + automatic form routing based on appointments → gives providers the control they need without having to file a ticket with the EMR vendor
• Quick creation of care teams and record sharing → recognition that care is often a team sport; clinicians shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get access to what they need

On top of that, Healthie is designed with the patient in mind. More than 50% of Healthie’s 6M+ active patients use our mobile app as their primary mode of interaction. 

Patients deserve easy access to mental health services through technology. That means keeping design simple and ensuring they can conduct the essential actions with minimal effort. Here are some examples of what that means at Healthie:

• Patients do not need to download anything to conduct their therapy - they can launch video visits directly from Healthie’s web or mobile app
• The essential functionalities - appointments, chat, care plans and more - are all available in the mobile app in a simple way. Patients are on the go and their tech needs to support meet them where the yare
• One place for all your documents and forms. Behavioral health patients shouldn’t spend effort collating their information, and now they don’t have to. 
• Simple ways to pay. Behavioral health is still a plurality self-pay, and Healthie integrates that payments flow to the EMR experience ensuring transparency and ease of use on both sides of the clinical experience. 

Mental health as an industry needs to meet patients where they are. Additionally, reliability and scalability are paramount for care delivery orgs. Healthie recently reached a milestone of securing its 10 millionth appointment booked across our customer base. 

In an era when you can order a cab, groceries and book trips on your phone, healthcare is slowly inching towards modernization. But frankly, the tooling has not fully kept up with modern needs - 53% of mental health patients say they want access to online tools, and 40% say they want asynchronous care available 24/7. Healthie is proud to be a bulletproof solution for critical mental health care needs across many specialty areas including ABA Therapy, Families and Children, SMI and more. The mental health industry deserves not just triple-9 uptime, but scalable solutions that are flexible to meet clinician and patient needs. 

A single company can’t do it alone. Ultimately, empowering clinicians and patients through technology means embracing a growing ecosystem of partners building for behavioral health organizations. 

We are no longer in the age of one company doing it all. As Shopify, Stripe and many other world-class tech companies have shown us, building a partner ecosystem allows care delivery companies to focus on their core competencies and deliver on customer needs. Healthie’s “Harbor” has pre-integrated applications  for behavioral health clinicians that enables last-mile personalization of care, picked by clinicians based on how they want to build patient experience. Enabling a seamless experience for patients is part of what drives long-term adherence and ultimate outcomes. 

Just some of our behavioral health partners include:

• Kintsugi - clinically validated AI-powered voice biomarker software
• Cass.ai - a customizable mental wellness chatbot
• OPTT - gives providers real-time insights into patients' symptoms, treatment responses, and risk factors.
• Hopscotch - access a wide library of behavioral health content including therapeutic games, stories, interactive activities and mindfulness content 
• We are adding more behavioral health partners each quarter!

While the promise of AI in healthcare is exciting, the promise of AI in healthcare will materialize in hundreds of ‘micro-applications’ across the EHR environment and into the patient experience. Each one chips away at various clinician and patient experiences to ultimately increase efficiency, predict best practices, and reduce feelings of burnout. At Healthie, we are both building and partnering with incredible companies building AI-driven solutions for clinicians. We firmly believe that the clinician <> patient relationship is here to stay, and AI will certainly help foster the time that providers can spend actually delivering care to patients, and that solutions need to be tailored for the specifics of behavioral healthcare

‍Our industry is headed towards a supply and demand mismatch in mental health. Stronger technology, bespoke to our vertical, will play a key role here.

While just 4-10% of NP and Mental Health Therapist jobs are fully remote, there’s significant demand for more remote opportunities. Additionally we know there’s a clinician shortage in mental health that’s only going to get worse. For both of these issues, technology is set to play a key role in bridging the gaps and ensuring the industry has what it needs to continue to boom.

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About Erica Jain

Erica Jain (LinkedIn) is the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Healthie, where she builds healthcare infrastructure to power virtual-first healthcare delivery. Healthie is an API-first platform offering EHR, Scheduling, and Patient Engagement solutions for next generation digital health companies. Reach out to us here: info@gethealthie.com