Lightfully Behavioral Health Embarks on 30-Facility Expansion Plan to Become ‘DaVita of Mental Health’

Lightfully Behavioral Health is bucking the trend of entrepreneurs in health care going all-in on digital.

The Thousand Oaks, California-based company has launched a five-year plan to open 30 outpatient mental health facilities in California, Colorado and Washington. The company revealed Monday that it had acquired two facilities by acquiring Resilience Treatment Center in West Los Angeles.

“There’s really a massive lack of providers of scale with consistent, quality-oriented services in mental health. It’s just too young of a sector,” Lightfully Behavioral Health CEO Jennifer Steiner told Behavioral Health Business in an interview. “And we are seeking to basically be the DaVita of mental health — you will find us in every state and you will experience a consistent care quality experience across every site and we will be highly accessible.”

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Steiner said that Lightfully Behavioral Health plans to acquire and or open a total of 18 outpatient facilities in California over the next 18 months. The company has six potential new facilities that are currently in the works.

The company was founded and landed $30 million from the New York City-based health care-focused private equity firm Regal Healthcare Capital Partners in the summer of 2021.

So much of the startup space in behavioral health in 2020 and 2021 was defined by major deals around digital health companies. Funding for digital mental health startups specifically reached more than $5 billion in 2021

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Steiner maintains that digital mental health apps haven’t proven effective in the same way that in-person services have.

“I think we all have this wish that we can solve all of the world’s problems with an app and then there is the reality of it,” Steiner said. “The reality is that effective, evidence-based mental health treatment is generally provided in person and the leading indicator of therapeutic success for someone with a mental health condition is their therapeutic alliance with their caregivers.

“So, I struggle a bit with the idea that you do that through an app.”

Lightfully Behavioral Health focuses its clinical approach on a process-based therapy model.

Nicole Siegfried, Lightfully’s chief clinical officer, said in an interview that process-based therapy is a framework that seeks to integrate several of the most promising evidence-based treatment modalities for mental health disorders.

Steiner likened the acuity spectrum in mental health to a sandwich to explain the range of services that her company provides.

“At the top of the sandwich, the most acute solution is inpatient psych, a hospital-based, very short stay to keep someone stable,” Steiner said. “At the very bottom of the sandwich, the lowest acuity is your outpatient therapist … We sit in the middle of the sandwich with intensive outpatient program (IOP), Partial hospitalization program (PHP) and residential [treatment].”

Lightfully Behavioral Health is backed by Regal Healthcare also invested $20 million in walk-in mental health urgent care provider MIND 24-7, which is based in the Phoenix area.

He added that Lightfully Behavioral Health has the opportunity to bring a level of professionalization to the facility-based mental health space, especially in California. He is also keen on Lightfully’s opportunity to gain new and insightful data on the impact of the company’s programming.

Over the previous eight years, Steiner held CEO roles at the private-equity-backed companies InnerChange, a mental health provider based in Provo, Utah, and Alsana, an eating disorder recovery provider based in Thousand Oaks, California. Before that, she led the Northern California and Southern Oregon operations of the kidney care provider DaVita as division vice president.

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