Behavioral health providers are increasingly expanding care continuums to include teenagers and meet the growing need for age-specific care. Virtual behavioral health provider Brightside Health is the latest to do so.
Announced Tuesday, its expansion into care options for teens aims to address what Brad Kittredge, founder and CEO of Brightside, calls a “teen mental health pandemic.” The strategic expansion is also to provide more value to Brightside’s health system and payer partners.
“The need is obvious from a clinical standpoint,” Kittredge told Behavioral Health Business. “We know that. We hear all the time and we get asked, ‘Will you please support teens?’ We knew that the time was right to lean into it. The reason it took us until now to do it – we wanted to for a long time – is that it’s hard.”
Care protocols and techniques are similar for teens and adults, Kittredge said, though elements including state regulations, informed consent, including parents and accessing health records all posed hurdles to branching out into teen care.
Brightside services are currently available for teens in 15 states. The provider aims to complete a nationwide rollout by early 2025. The process of expanding teen care across multiple states involves working with differing regulations across geographies, Kittredge said.
Teens will be able to access Brightside’s psychiatry and therapy services as part of the initial program launch, but the provider plans to expand the program to include other services including intensive outpatient programs (IOP) and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment.
The expansion into teen care is one way Brightside is seeking to ensure it is a high-value partner to health systems and payers. The provider also ensures its own value by offering care for high-acuity patients.
“When I look at the offerings that we have built in our building, I would contend that Brightside is the most comprehensive and most rigorous mental health platform in the industry,” Kittredge said. “That allows us to work closely with payers and health systems to solve more their problems, to be that one-stop partner that can help them from mild through severe [behavioral health conditions], support their acute needs, [and manage] their chronic condition comorbidities, screenings and their suicide risk prevention.”
San Francisco-based Brightside offers virtual treatment for people with mild to severe mental health conditions and covers almost 150 million lives. The provider expanded into SUD treatment with its acquisition of LionRock Recovery in June.
The deal represented Brightside’s first acquisition, with the company still completing integration, Kittredge said.
“Everyone will tell you acquisitions are hard. I believed them, and it’s even harder than I imagined,” he said. “There are multiple layers and levels to that integration. There are logistical considerations, regulatory and operational considerations, and there are a lot of people considerations.”
Despite the challenges, Brightside ensured that the patient experience continued uninterrupted, according to Kittredge.
Other behavioral health providers have also expanded their patient demographics to include teens. Talkspace (Nasdaq: TALK) expanded its services to teens in February. Opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment provider Bicycle Health did the same in July.
Investors have also signaled interest in teen-focused behavioral health providers. In August, virtual teen mental health care provider BeMe raised $12.5 million. Mental health provider Blackbird, which provides care to children and young adults aged 2 to 26, raised $17 million in February.
Brightside has no plans to expand treatment to individuals younger than 13, Kittredge said, but the CEO does see opportunities for expansion in Medicaid, Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans.
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