Times are tough, which means business is booming for virtual behavioral health providers like Talkiatry – a telepsychiatry startup that just hauled in $130M in Series C funding.
Since launching in 2020, Talkiatry has built a network of over 320 psychiatrists, who serve patients with conditions ranging from anxiety and depression to OCD and PTSD.
- Talkiatry operates in 43 states, and is in-network with more than 60 payors, reportedly covering 70% of commercial lives in the US.
- It’s also begun leaning in on partnerships with health systems, and recently scored a major contract with HCA Healthcare.
Unlike most behavioral telehealth companies that got their start at the onset of the pandemic, Talkiatry’s physicians are W-2 employees, rather than contractors.
- This allows Talkiatry to standardize the quality of physician care and influence patient outcomes over time, crucial ingredients to any recipe for value-based care success.
- That model also makes Talkiatry one of the few companies that can demonstrate superior outcomes to major payors. A recent cohort study showed that Talkiatry led to a 68% reduction in hospitalizations, 32% fewer ED visits, and $700 lower monthly care costs.
The benefits of Talkiatry’s model compound with scale: as its full-time psychiatrists continue demonstrating superior outcomes, it can sign more partnerships with payors and reach more patients. That puts it in a solid position to take on additional risk.
- Talkiatry earmarked the fresh funds to scale up its VBC offerings and begin taking on more downside risk, a move that few behavioral health companies have been willing to make given the difficulty of proving performance. “There’s no blood test for depression.”
The Takeaway
Demand for behavioral health resources only continues to climb, yet there are still significant barriers to delivering the care that’s being called for – particularly a shortage of providers and a lack of technology to help fill the gap. Talkiatry overcomes both of these hurdles by offering virtual treatment from in-house psychiatrists, and it now has $130M to continue scaling its model for patients in need.
