Brave Health, the largest virtual mental health provider and engagement platform focused on serving Medicaid populations, today announced a $40M Series C funding round led by Town Hall Ventures, with existing investors Union Square Ventures, City Light Capital and others joining as well. Brave Health is the first investment from Town Hall Venture’s newly-announced $350M fund. The company has raised a total of $60M to date, and this most recent funding will support their continued expansion into value-based care arrangements and into new and existing markets.
Since launching with health plans in Florida in 2019, Brave Health has rapidly grown. The organization now serves over 65M covered lives across more than 200 health plan contracts through their unique approach to patient engagement, treatment, and integration with plans and other providers. Earlier this year, the company announced its first value-based contract with Molina Healthcare of Texas. Brave Health also recently signed a value-based contract with Sunshine Health, bringing the total number of potential Medicaid members under Brave Health’s care in a value-based arrangement to more than one million.
“The team at Brave Health has demonstrated a commitment to doing the hard work of engaging the most vulnerable populations at their most vulnerable moments and getting them into ongoing care. And they’re taking on the accountability to improve patient outcomes and ultimately reduce the total cost of care,” said Andy Slavitt, general partner, Town Hall Ventures. “We are thrilled to support Brave Health’s expansion as they work to revamp the way mental health services are delivered and paid for on behalf of Medicaid populations across the country.”
Brave Health will use these funds to continue to build the technology and data infrastructure that powers their industry-leading patient engagement and outcomes engine, as well as to further expand into new states and accelerate the closing and activation of new value-based contracts in the 18 states in which they operate.
“Innovation in Medicaid care delivery and reimbursement models is critical for our healthcare system,” said Anna Lindow, co-founder and CEO of Brave Health. “Today, we’re energized by the enthusiasm from our forward-looking investors and health plan partners around this aim.”
Today, access to mental health services for the nation’s most vulnerable populations is a public health crisis. The percentage of psychiatrists that accept Medicaid has fallen to 35 percent, according to previous research reported by JAMA Psychiatry. With nearly one in four Americans now receiving healthcare benefits through Medicaid, this gap leaves many without the ability to get ongoing, critical care. Access, though, is not the only component needed to change health outcomes. Engagement is a crucial, and often elusive, first step.
Brave Health plays a critical role in driving engagement among Medicaid beneficiaries through a number of data-driven, tech-enabled approaches and interventions that leverage the company’s integrated model and generate a more than 80 percent contact success rate. In practice, this approach allows Brave Health to drive results around closing care gaps and reducing wait times for first-time appointments to as soon as the same day, which represents a radical improvement over the national average of 48 days. Once individuals are engaged, Brave Health care teams composed of therapists, psychiatric providers, and peer support specialists work in close partnership with patients as well as other stakeholders like health plan case managers and other providers. By working within the system and sharing data and insights, Brave Health is able to drive better short- and long-term outcomes and reduce costs associated with events like potentially-preventable hospitalizations, driving as high as a 66 percent reduction in readmission-related costs.
Partnership with the broader system drives tangible results: year to date in 2022, over 23,000 individuals have been referred to Brave Health for care, representing exponential growth since beginning work with health plans in 2019.
Brave Health (www.bebravehealth.com) is the largest virtual mental health provider and engagement platform focused on serving Medicaid populations. The company offers outpatient services (therapy, psychiatry, peer support) for mental health conditions through its platform. Brave Health’s 200+ health plan contracts cover over 65M lives across 18 states, including Florida, New York and Texas.
