Digital behavioral health company Quartet Health has launched a new virtual clinic focused on treating patients with moderate and serious mental illness (SMI).
The new clinic employs an integrated approach to care and uses multidisciplinary teams to treat patients. Teams include psychiatric nurse practitioners, licensed clinical social workers, nurse case managers and patient care coordinators.
New York-based Quartet is joining a number of digital-first behavioral health providers looking to treat SMI. Access to care is one of the major obstacles in getting patients with SMI into treatment. In fact, 130 million people live in a designed mental health care professional shortage area.
Many are pitching digital tools as a way to increase access and availability of care.
“Over 65% of mental health organizations have had to cancel, reschedule or turn away patients,” Christina Mainelli, Quartet’s COO and president, told Behavioral Health Business. “And many patients during the pandemic, who were maybe moderate in severity, became seriously mentally ill, or their acuity increased. So you’ve got this risk of patients that are fairly high on the acuity spectrum, their condition worsening and [then] having issues with access to care.”
Founded in 2014, Quartet partners with health plans and systems to connect users to virtual behavioral health services. Its technology is designed to help match patients to providers that can meet their specific needs and preferences. It has raised at least $219.5 million in venture capital funding.
The new clinic’s launch comes less than a year after Quartet acquired InnovaTel Telepsychiatry, a behavioral health platform made up of psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners and licensed clinical social workers.
The acquisition was instrumental to the launch of the new virtual clinic.
“InnovaTel Telepsychiatry has deep expertise in treating high-needs members and working closely with [Federally Qualified Health Centers] and community mental health centers, and within a community, even though they’re virtual,” Mainelli said. “So this expertise absolutely helped to inform our new strategy and refine it around focusing our clinic on moderate- to high-needs patients, and also moving towards value-based payment models for the seriously mentally ill.”
Patients coming to the virtual clinic will be served by Quartet’s in-house clinicians. Quartet is looking to more than double its clinician team in the next year. Currently, it employs over 200 licensed clinicians, but the goal is to reach 500 clinicians by the end of next year.
While Quartet’s clinic is entirely virtual, the provider prioritizes community partnerships.
“The care that we provide is virtual, however, we partner very closely with in-network providers and community resources to ensure that we are treating the whole person,” Mainelli said.
Quartet is putting an emphasis on measurement-based care. The company’s digital tools are able to track a number of measures across a patient’s mental and physical well-being. It is also able to track a patient’s progress over time.
Measurement-based care is expected to help the company move towards value-based care contracts in the future.
“While we do have some contracts that are fee-for-service today, we are moving towards [per member per month] PMPM, and full-risk models, or value-based payment models in particular for that seriously mentally ill population,” Mainelli said. “That is really where we’re headed and actively building that out this year.”
Other digital providers with offerings for patients with SMI include firsthand, Vanna Health and Valera Health.
And it’s not just providers exploring the intersection of digital and SMI.
Private equity firms such as Vistria Group have been likewise keyed in on the topic. Additionally, new venture capital accelerator programs are starting to pop up, with a prime example being One Mind Accelerator, which launched earlier this year.
“I do think that there are parts of digital solutions that can actually be really excellent for serious mental illness,” Carmine DiMaro, director of One Mind Accelerator, previously told BHB. “We’ve been talking to a few startups that are doing peer support and family support education, and the digital model is really great for that. So I think it can actually facilitate doing these more high-touch solutions for people.”
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