What You Should Know:
– Brave Health, a Miami-based virtual behavioral health provider for Medicaid, today announced it has closed a $10M Series B round ($20.75M in total) led by City Light Capital, Union Square Ventures and Able Partners, bringing its total funding to $20.75M.
– Today, access to basic behavioral health services for the nation’s most vulnerable populations is a public health crisis. The percentage of psychiatrists accepting Medicaid has been cut in half in the past decade. With nearly one in four Americans now using Medicaid, this gap leaves many without access to the critical care they need.
– Brave Health offers a virtual alternative to traditional outpatient services (therapy, psychiatry, case management, medication-assisted treatment) for mental health and addiction that have traditionally been hard to access in local communities. The company offers same-day assessments, reduces wait times to less than a week, and works closely with Medicaid case managers, providers and major Medicaid plans across the U.S. to increase patient engagement and lower overall costs of care.
Recent Traction/Milestones
Since launching with health plans in Florida in 2019, the company is rapidly scaling to serve more than 65M covered lives across 113 health plan contracts in 10 states, including North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, New York, Ohio, Michigan and Alabama. In the first 10 months of 2021 alone, health plan case managers, primary care physicians, and hospitals have made over 11,000 referrals to Brave Health. Of the referrals sent, approximately two-thirds of patients opted into care.
By partnering with Brave Health, Medicaid plans are improving overall member health outcomes and reducing costs. For example, one large national Managed Behavioral Health Organization reported that patients who had at least one encounter with Brave Health had 90 percent fewer readmissions and 66 percent lower costs in approximately a one-year period.
“As demand for behavioral health care continues to grow, the gap between people who need services and those who are receiving services has continued to widen, especially for those with Medicaid,” said Anna Lindow, CEO and co-founder, Brave Health. “At Brave Health, we’re focused on changing the narrative about Medicaid-based innovation and delivering sustainable solutions designed to improve behavioral health outcomes for millions of people.”
