When Tech Helps Ease Mental Health Delivery

“I expect it to be maybe 80% or more” - Yale’s Seth Feuerstein, MD, Faculty of Psychiatry, Yale University Center for Biomedical and Intervention Technology, on the portion of all psych encounters to address conditions like anxiety and depression that will be delivered through a telehealth platform in 6-10 years.

The telepsych wave continues as more companies are partnering to create interesting models. Quartet, an analytics company, has acquired telepsych provider Innovatel in the latest example of tech meets service delivery. The mental health analytics company has brought in the psych provider known for serving community mental health clinics. “You need to have both service and tech to be successful, so this isn’t surprising,” Dr. Feuerstein says.

Quartet has had a string of payer partnerships, most recently with BCBS in Philadelphia, and can now leverage its new crop of providers to link demand with one of its own providers. Quartet will develop care delivery capabilities to complement its existing group of clinicians who practice in-network on behalf of service plans. Innovotel will also expand its reach to serve members through this partnership. Innovatel currently has 130 clinicians on staff, 51% who are prescribers and 27% who are clinicians of color. The company is trying to build out its “sub-specialization” to meet the growing forms of addiction and mental health, like gambling. The company’s model of working with community mental health centers to get patients in-network mental health care has improved the capacity to treat patients between 5-10 times.

As a result of the acquisition, Quartet will scale to more than 30 states by the end of 2022.