BasePoint Academy is a father-son business whose start was inspired by a family tragedy.
Twelve years ago, Brittany Serpa, the sister of BasePoint’s CEO Blake Serpa, and daughter of company chairman Roy Serpa, completed suicide after struggling as a teen with bipolar disorder.
Then in 2019, Roy Serpa, a longtime health care executive, began to form with his son a company that would provide intensive outpatient therapy and psychiatric services to adolescents with mental health problems, otherwise known as partial hospitalization programs (PHPs) and intensive outpatient program (IOPs).
The idea was to prevent other young people from having their condition escalate to a trip to the emergency room, or a long-term hospital stay.
“It’s very challenging to run additional lower levels of care while you’re running a residential or inpatient business,” Blake Serpa said. “And so what we want to do is build something separate and distinct, that is focused solely on this PHP and IOP environment.”
BasePoint began with four patients and one staff member, Serpa said in an interview with Behavioral Health Business. Since those early days, it has helped several hundreds of patients, including 1,200 in 2023 alone. BasePoint focuses its treatment on 11 to 18-year-olds, though it did launch a program in March to serve young adults up to age 28, Serpa said.
“In the mental health industry, there are, at times, jacks of all trades and masters of none,” said Serpa who, prior to building BasePoint, was an executive at a large substance use disorder (SUD) treatment provider, where Roy Serpa also spent part of his career. “We really wanted to focus on age-specific care.”
The company is based in Forney, Texas, which is 30 miles east of Dallas. In addition to Forney, BasePoint has treatment locations in Arlington and McKinney, which are also part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area. BasePoint is also licensed to provide virtual services throughout the Lone Star state, Serpa said.
Besides a $5 million debt-financing in 2022, BasePoint has not made announcements about raising outside capital.
“We enjoy where we sit as a private, family-run organization,” Serpa said. “When we make decisions about strategic planning, or speed, or pace of growth, we get to make those decisions at our own comfort level.”
For revenue, BasePoint relies on reimbursement from insurers including Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare. The company does not presently accept Medicare or Medicaid.
BasePoint “really sits in that middle level” of mental health care, Serpa said. PHP and IOP treatments both require multiple hours a day and days per week of therapy and medication management. BasePoint also employs psychiatrists to work with each patient.
Though the treatment program is demanding on patients and their families’ time, Serpa noted it is a “step down” from a trip to a psychiatric ward or fully hospital-based care.
As something of a vast middle ground between hour-a-week talk therapy and residential care, PHP and IOP programs have been called the next “golden egg” for mental health providers. Behavioral Health Business reported last March that such treatment plans are “gaining steam in the mental health space as payers look to help patients stay out of the hospital and patients seek ways to return to the community.”
But Serpa said that PHP and IOP, along with age-specific care, remain an “afterthought” among the major healthcare payers, and that providers may not immediately grasp the financial benefits.
“Of all the crisis assessments we do, only 5% go to inpatient or residential, so catching them at even an outpatient level is a total cost of care savings,” Serpa said, adding that providers have “got to do a good job communicating the data in the way the payer wants to see it, which is dollars.”
Insurers are starting to see the value of age-specific care, though. For BasePoint, that means the company can invest further in staff, including promotions and raises, Serpa said. Along with its team of health workers, the company employs drivers to transport patients between a treatment center and home.
Going forward, Serpa said he wants to continue building out a case management team, with a case manager staying connected to patients for one to two years after their completion of a PHP or IOP program. Besides helping patients reintegrate into their communities and prevent relapses, Serpa envisioned “outcome data” that can demonstrate the cost efficiency of BasePoint’s program.
Serpa’s biggest long-term goal? Improve children’s mental health care in Texas from “dead last in access to top five by 2030.”
That mission is “something we rally around as a team,” he said.
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