Until recently, adolescents only had two treatment options for depression. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for adolescents in March, now represents a safe and effective third option. While TMS is relatively expensive compared to treatment modalities like pharmaceuticals, payers are increasingly covering the service for teens. Health Care […]
Category: Commercial
The rollout of the final parity rule feels like a much-needed win in an industry that has been muddling through ever-increasing challenges for years. That’s as long as the final rule goes unchallenged in the courts, of course. Savoring this positive regulatory development is important: Behavioral health professionals need to find proverbial rays of sunshine […]
The Biden administration’s new parity rule puts health plans and regulators on the same page when it comes to parity enforcement. In many instances, that’s quite literally the case. Finalized on Sept. 9, the new rule focuses on updated requirements for health plans to generate reports comparing how they treat behavioral health benefits compared to […]
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 […]
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 […]
Don’t give up hope just yet on the parity fight in the courts following the latest development in Wit v. United Behavioral Health. But don’t forget this: No shortage of the collective troubles of the American political and business worlds come from expecting the courts to see things a certain way. If behavioral health care wants […]
Fee-for-service reimbursement models incentivize behavioral health providers to deliver more services – in some instances, even when medically unnecessary, some would point out. Value-based care – paying for quality and outcomes instead of volume – has been heralded as the behavioral health industry’s path away from fee-for-service models. Challenges, including tension between health plans and […]
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is becoming a more viable option for the treatment of depression in youth and adults, providing hope for those with treatment-resistant depression. Of the roughly 22 million American adults who experienced a major depressive episode in 2023, about 30% have treatment-resistant depression, meaning that multiple medications have failed to alleviate their […]
Many behavioral health providers have traditionally operated in silos, leaving patients to navigate a fragmented system of care for substance use disorders (SUDs), mental illnesses and other co-occurring conditions. SUD providers are now working to break down these barriers and offer more comprehensive, holistic treatments that address the full spectrum of a patient’s needs by […]
The behavioral health industry is constantly seeking to bolster its clinician supply to meet raging levels of unmet mental health needs. Access to care could improve significantly if more providers offered group therapy. Group therapy is a rare behavioral health modality that promises benefits under both value-based care and fee-for-service reimbursement models, largely due to […]


