What You Should Know:
– Talkspace, a virtual behavioral health provider, and Express Access, a referral platform funded by the National Institutes of Health, have announced a new partnership to reshape how Americans access mental healthcare.
– Talkspace is the first national digital provider to adopt the Express Access TOP Match™ system at scale. This integration will allow for scientific provider matching and real-time patient progress tracking to be embedded directly into its care model.
Scientific Approach to Provider Matching
The partnership addresses a major issue in behavioral healthcare: the referral crisis. Over 28 million Americans seek help for mental health concerns each year, but many struggle to find effective care due to long waitlists and mismatched providers. Express Access, which was developed with over $30M in federal and foundation grants, uses its AI-enabled decision support tools to match patients with clinicians who have a proven track record of success for their specific needs.
Patients can now access Express Access through their employer or by scanning a free QR code from their primary care physician, which instantly connects them to a matched Talkspace provider. According to a study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association and funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the TOP Match™ system has been shown to quintuple recovery rates and reduce relapse.
“Matching the right providers with the core patient needs has always been the center of driving Talkspace outcomes, and this partnership extends our foundational research that the right provider to right patient drives the best outcomes,” said Erin Boyd, chief growth officer of Talkspace.
