The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you by Behavioral Health Business, a WTWH Media health care brand. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of behavioral health, home health, hospice, senior housing and skilled nursing care. To see this year’s Future Leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.

Robert Krayn, co-founder and CEO of Talkiatry, has been named a 2024 Future Leader by Behavioral Health Business.

To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for those in need of behavioral health services, along with the committed professionals who work across this important corner of health care.

Krayn started Talkiatry in 2020 as a New York City-based telepsychiatry provider. The company has since grown to provide care in 43 states and employs over 300 psychiatrists. In June, Talkiatry announced it had raised $130 million in an equity and debt financing round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. 

BHB spoke with Krayn about why he started Talkiatry, the future of psychiatry and measuring behavioral health outcomes, among other subjects. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

BHB: What drew you to this industry?

Krayn: Personal experience. In 2016, I had a home invasion in my apartment in New York City. A good friend of mine, his wife is a psychiatrist, and she suggested that I go and see someone.

And so I went through the normal patient journey, which was very broken, and I still think is fairly broken, and that just got me really interested in the space as someone trying to get care. At the end of the day, I was not able to find a psychiatrist who accepted insurance, and ultimately was forced to go out of pocket and have a very limited set of options.

What is the biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?

There are no shortcuts. And you have to really choose. Are you building a consumer company, or are you building a health care company? And I think there’s a lot of people who find it very difficult to straddle that line appropriately.

But ultimately you have to make a choice, which one comes first. And so I said the health care company comes first.

Your organization really has to be rooted in high-quality clinical care, and then you kind of have to build the things that are attractive for patients.

If you could change one thing with an eye towards the future of behavioral health care, what would that be?

I’d love to have more psychiatrists in the United States. Without having more psychiatrists, we’re really forced to figure out ways to solve the gap in medication management.

I’ll give you another one. I’d love a longer history of connecting physical health with behavioral health, and more data around that. I think the industry is moving in that direction, which is very positive, but far behind other specialties in looking at total cost of care and really understanding the benefits there.

What do you foresee as being different about the behavioral health industry looking ahead to 2025?

I do think there’s a big push to measurement-based care, and I think that’s a precursor to value-based care. The industry has gotten to a point where access is easier than it previously was.

Payers are valuing simply access less than they used to, as they’ve gotten much more robust networks than they’ve ever had before for behavioral health providers. They’re being much more thoughtful on how they’re building their behavioral health network.

In a word, how would you describe the future of behavioral health?

Exciting.

There’s a lot of opportunity on data access that wasn’t there before, whether it’s through [electronic medical records], whether it’s through pulling out information through unstructured data, which has always been a big problem in behavioral health.

I see a lot of regulatory tailwinds in behavioral health. I see a lot of focus on it from employers and from payers, and I see a lot of people doing interesting things in the space.

What qualities must all future leaders possess?

I think you have to be able to adapt.

If the behavioral health space is changing in a material way, which I believe it is, then you have to be a leader who is capable of changing as well to meet that new environment.

That might mean that you need different people around you. It might mean that you have to start looking at consolidation in an industry. It might mean that you have to start shifting to more of a value care-based mindset.

If you could give advice to yourself looking back to your first day in the industry, what would it be and why?

I would tell myself I’m doing the right thing and keep focusing on it.

When Talkiatry started, A lot of people were saying, “Hey, there’s other people doing what you’re doing, and you shouldn’t necessarily be doing that.”

And I think that’s what is proven is that Talkiatry is ahead of its time in terms of focusing on psychiatrists. It was a little bit contrarian earlier on, but it has been proven to be very fruitful and kind of the right way to do it for insurers and patients as well.

To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit: https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.