How Mindpath is Scaling to a National Behavioral Health Brand

Since the beginning of 2021, Sacramento, California-based Mindpath Health has been making a play towards becoming a behavioral health provider with a national reach. After a year of building its profile through de novos and facility purchases, the company has more expansion plans on the horizon for 2022.

This May, the company established a foothold for itself in the Southeast through its first major acquisition. Since then, it has expanded into Texas, Florida, Ohio and Arizona, setting the stage for more growth to come in the new year.

“2022 will be a pretty big year for us,” Mindpath Health CEO Christopher Brengard told Behavioral Health Business.

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Mindpath Health was previously owned by private equity firm New Harbor Capital, which sold the provider last year to Centerbridge Partners and Leonard Green & Partners (LGP). The provider was founded as Community Psychiatry in 1995 by Mark Levine, who would serve for almost two decades as its CEO.

Over time, Community Psychiatry would grow to 44 locations throughout California and become an early telehealth adopter in the state. Most recently, the provider rebranded itself as Mindpath Health.

The new name follows the May purchase of Durham, North Carolina-based MindPath Care Centers, which operated over 25 centers throughout North Carolina and South Carolina for outpatient mental health care and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment.

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The name change, according to Brengard, is meant to signify a shift in direction and ambition.

“Community Psychiatry, I think we all felt was somewhat limiting in the description of the services that we were actually giving to our patients, as well as any expansion of services that we continue to strive towards going forward,” Brengard said.

Brengard, who was appointed to his CEO role in January, feels that Mindpath Health more accurately captures the tenor of the company’s national ambitions.

“We were really drawn to the word ‘Mindpath,’” he said. “That was much more descriptive and meaningful around what we were trying to share with our patients.”

New name, new plans

Mindpath Health’s corporate rebrand is being done as the provider is looking at expansion opportunities in 2022 by a combination of de novos and existing facility acquisitions. Just prior to the start of 2021, Mindpath Health would lay the groundwork for its expansion strategy by receiving strategic capital investments from Centerbridge and LGP.

Not long after Community Psychiatry’s purchase of MindPath Care Centers, Brengard spoke of the deal as being a key driver for future growth.

“We’ve spent a lot of time … looking at different companies [and] different provider groups across the country,” Brengard told BHB in May about the decision to buy MindPath Care. “[We are] two very similar companies, both 20 to 25 years in the making, … [with] very similar clinical models and … plans on growth.”

With 2022 beckoning, Brengard believes the rebrand is just as integral to the company’s expansion focus.

“It’s going to play an important role for us as we continue to grow across the country, to be known under one name and leverage that recognition,” Brengard most recently told BHB.

Since the acquisition, the company has expanded into Florida and Ohio through existing facility acquisitions. Mindpath Health also has big plans for Texas, as it has opened up over a dozen new locations in the state and has more than a dozen under development, by Brengard’s estimation.

Recently, Mindpath Health expanded into Arizona as it acquired Chandler-based provider Metropolitan Neuro Behavioral Institute, bringing nine facilities in the Grand Canyon State into its fold. Mindpath Health made another big splash last week, as the company announced the purchase of four outpatient treatment programs in Ohio from Vertava Health.

Mindpath now has in excess of 80 locations across the country, employing a staff of more than 500 clinicians that provide in-person and telehealth services to over 70,000 patients.

Overall, Mindpath Health has a target of being in at least 15 states and having between 60-75 de novos opening for business in 2022.

“We’ll continue to be acquisitive and look at opportunities to buy strong regional providers, and build around those acquisitions through de novo growth,” Brengard said.

Mindpath’s move into value-based care

Undoubtedly one of the biggest trends now occurring among behavioral health providers is the move away from fee-for-service reimbursement to value-based care.

It is widely recognized across the health care sphere that more work needs to be done on establishing consensus regarding effective health outcomes, which is a hallmark of value-based care. However, more payers and providers are leaning into the payment model, with approximately 41% of all health care services being reimbursed by some form of value-based payment arrangement, according to the Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network. 

“Value-based care is going to be an important part of all health care, now and in the future, and it’s only going to get more intricate and more detailed,” Brengard said.

He said that Mindpath Health was an early proponent of value-based care in California, and added that it will be an integral part of their care delivery and reimbursement structure going forward.

“We’re having numerous conversations and have entered into some recent contracts that include value-based care initiatives,” he said. “I think that it’s still in its infancy, as this is a very [subjectively] measured part of health care. There’s just a lot of work from the industry standpoint around how best to measure these patients.”

Mindpath Health’s current payer mix is 85% commercial insurance plans, with the rest being government plans spread across Medicare and Medicaid, according to Brengard. Part of Mindpath’s expansion strategy involves buying existing clinical practices — some of which might not take insurance — and rolling them into the company’s brand.

Brengard acknowledged that as Mindpath spreads to new markets, the company will be tasked with getting existing practices on board with accepting new payer streams.

“Many of these clinicians are cash-only providers,” he said. “The entire challenge of the industry is to work with clinicians in these markets and get them to open up into new payer sources.”

With demand for behavioral health assistance continuing to rise nationwide, Brengard is optimistic that Mindpath’s expansion will meet that need through its relationship with payers.

“We’re going pretty broad at the payers and trying to figure out how we best fit into their world and help patients,” he said.

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