Concert Health Raises $14M to Integrate Behavioral Health into Primary Care Settings

Concert Health — a virtual behavioral startup focused on collaborative care — has raised $14 million in Series A funding, bringing the company’s total funding raised to just under $17 million to date. 

The funding round was led by Vertical Venture Partners with participation from Town Hall Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank and early investors. 

Concert will use the money to expand its team while also scaling its behavioral health services into more markets and facilities. Specifically, the company plans to double the number of states it’s been operating in during the year ahead, bringing collaborative care to more patients, according to Concert CEO Spencer Hutchins. 

“We’ve been operating in four states, and over the course of 2021, we’re going to be launching in an additional four,” Hutchins told Behavioral Health Business. “So [we’re working on] a lot of building infrastructure out for both clinical and administrative teams in those markets.”

Headquartered in San Diego, California, Concert partners with dozens of primary care and women’s health providers across the country to identify and address patients’ behavioral health needs. It uses collaborative care management to help medical doctors treat conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Here’s how it usually works: Primary care doctors at Concert’s partner facilities screen their patients for anxiety and depression, then pass those who need additional help off to Concert care managers, who are remotely located. After the warm handoff, care managers develop a plan for the patient and serve as a liaison between the primary care physician and a Concert psychiatric provider, who is also remote.

To make it all possible, Concert has a technology platform and more than 100 employees, with the majority of those being behavioral health professionals. The goal is to give patients immediate access to high quality behavioral health support in primary care settings, ultimately treating people who might otherwise be unable to access mental health care.

Currently, Concert partners with medical groups and health systems in Arizona, California, Connecticut and New York. This year, it has also started to expand its reach into Florida, North Carolina and New Mexico, as well as a fourth state, where Hutchins said he’s just waiting for the contract to be signed.

The geographic expansion will mean new partnerships for Concert. Currently, the company has agreements in place with 44 partners, including CommonSpirit, the second largest nonprofit hospital chain in the country.

“We really are excited to partner with both the giant Goliaths, who frankly are taking interest in our model faster than we expected them to, and also the [smaller] physician practices that are proudly independent,” Hutchins said, noting that most of Concert’s partners are in the latter camp. “We can offer them a partnership that allows them to expand their service line in a way that they would almost certainly not be able to do if they tried to do it internally.” 

For current partners, Concert’s model has proved to be a measurable success: More than 60% of patients see their depression or anxiety symptoms reduce by half within 90 days of being introduced to Concert, according to Hutchins. He said he hopes to improve patient care even further in the year ahead, in addition to bettering Concert’s data tracking and technology infrastructure.

While Concert’s business model is gaining national attention and new funding, the idea of behavioral health integration isn’t unique to the company. In fact, Medicare has for years been reimbursing for the Collaborative Care Management (CoCM) model, which Concert uses. 

The idea is that addressing both behavioral and mental health improves outcomes and cuts costs. Plus, it can help address the national shortage of behavioral health providers, who are often overrun with patients and underpaid for their services.