The pandemic has had severe negative mental health effects on people of all ages, especially children and adolescents. bright lineis a telemedicine company that provides pediatric mental health care. Before the pandemic, it was working to increase access to mental health services for children and teens, but now the startup is receiving more attention from health systems because of their Emergency departments are crowded with pediatric patients amid growing mental health conditions.
On Tuesday, the Palo Alto-based company Announce It got a $10 million investment Northwell Health, New York State’s largest health system, to expand its telehealth platform.This investment is an expansion of the $105 million Series C financing Brightline was announced in April. It brings the startup’s total funding to over $210 million. GV (formerly Google Ventures), KKR, Oak HC/FT, critical point and Boston Children’s Hospital is one of the other investors backing the company.
Brightline was founded in 2019 to help bridge the huge affordability and accessibility gap in pediatric mental health care. Most pediatric therapists in the U.S. are out-of-network and only accept cash payments, according to Brightline CEO Naomi Allen. There are also so many provider deserts across the country, she said, that 75 percent of U.S. counties have no child or adolescent psychiatrist, and about half of those counties have no trained pediatric therapist.
Brightline has established a clinical care network of pediatric therapists, psychiatrists, behavioral specialists and speech-language pathologists. Its platform provides pediatric mental health care services using telehealth appointments and digital engagement modules. The startup offers a range of specialist services tailored to each child’s needs, serving children from 1½ to 18 years old.
Once a parent signs up their child for Brightline’s platform, the family completes a questionnaire and receives a care management coach. Children will also be assigned to other clinicians, including therapists and psychiatrists, according to their needs. Care management coaches ensure children are progressing on the treatment path and guide them to additional resources on the Brightline platform, such as its digital modules for anxiety, depression, trauma, ADHD, speech delay, gender exploration and autism.
Families and carers of children who use the platform can also use it to discuss their child’s progress with their care team. Additionally, according to Allen, Brightline provides them with online educational content about how their children are feeling and why they need to seek mental health services, given the stigma that still prevails among some parents to seek mental health care.
She said it was important for Brightline to support binary therapy — which refers to treatments in which children and their parents are treated together — because this type of care is “more effective in achieving clinical outcomes.”
Brightline’s services are offered as an in-network benefit, so users of its platform don’t have to pay the full cost of pediatric healthcare that most families can’t afford.The startup also has direct-to-consumer options, but much of the platform’s care is provided to families covered by Brightline health plan partners — which include Antai, competitive health, Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield and California Blue Shield.
Recently, Allen claimed, the company “has been in the spotlight with many hospital systems.” She said these health systems came to her looking for ways to address the dramatic increase in anxiety, depression and suicide attempts among children and teens.
“Health systems are seeing an influx of emergency room demand and utilization because when kids don’t have access to care, they get sicker and sicker,” Allen said.
When Northwell invested in Brightline, it aimed to be a strategic partner in referring patients to the platform, Allen said. Brightline is still in the early stages of finalizing its partnership, but the two entities aim to increase access to pediatric care — especially preventive care — so families don’t have to wait for them on months-long waitlists children. Children are cared for.
Northwell will also receive valuable data from Brightline on which telehealth models work best with pediatric mental health patients and how their clinical outcomes have progressed over time. Brightline serves more than 50 employers, covering the health plan lives of more than 24 million people. Because of its size, Allen said the company “is leveraging the first nationwide datasets on clinical outcomes of pediatric mental health patients.”
But Brightline isn’t the only mental health startup gaining traction during the mental health crisis.The increase in mental health issues during the pandemic has led to investments in various virtual mental health care platforms such as frame, TheraTalk and starling mindBut according to Allen, Brightline is the only pediatric-focused national platform.
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