Two Chairs, a San Francisco-based firm providing hybrid behavioral well being care, introduced the shut of a $72 million Sequence C funding spherical on Tuesday. The financing spherical, led by Amplo and Fifth Down Capital, brings Two Chairs’ complete funding quantity to $130 million.
The startup was based in 2017 to increase entry to top quality psychological well being care. It gives each digital and in-person psychotherapy for adults with a variety of psychological well being points throughout the acuity spectrum.
“We all know there’s a widespread want for psychological well being care on this nation, however fixing the psychological well being disaster is about extra than simply entry to care — it’s about entry to the fitting, high-quality care,” CEO Alex Katz mentioned in an interview. “I noticed this clearly greater than eight years in the past, when my associate ended up in remedy with a clinician who wasn’t an excellent match, and it did her extra hurt than good.”
As a few of the stigma related to psychological well being care fades away culturally, extra individuals than ever are searching for out these companies, he identified. However the suppliers individuals find yourself discovering usually don’t ship measurement-based psychological well being care, nor do they “have accountability round high quality,” Katz defined.
He declared that from day one, Two Chairs has been targeted on bettering the standard of psychological well being care by prioritizing the experiences of each sufferers and therapists — beginning with the fitting match.
The title Two Chairs is a reference to the patient-therapist relationship, generally often known as the therapeutic alliance, Katz famous.
“Analysis exhibits that therapeutic alliance is the most effective predictor of sturdy outcomes in remedy, which is why matching is on the coronary heart of our medical mannequin,” he said.
When a affected person begins their care journey on Two Chairs — usually after they have been referred by their physician — step one is to e-book an identical appointment, Katz defined. The startup’s matching course of combines medical perception with a proprietary algorithm that pairs sufferers and therapists based mostly on components which might be more likely to result in a tight-knit therapeutic bond, he mentioned.
Two Chairs is usually capable of get sufferers an identical appointment inside two days, Katz added. He described the appointment as a 45-minute video session with a licensed therapist who’s skilled in matching sufferers with the fitting therapist for them. Throughout this session, the matching skilled learns concerning the affected person’s wants and preferences, solutions their questions and educates them about how remedy works.
“Utilizing their medical judgment, the matching skilled will then translate and prioritize the affected person’s expressed preferences, unstated wants and nuanced emotions into information we feed into our algorithm to match the affected person with the most effective therapist for them,” Katz defined.
He highlighted this matching course of as one thing that differentiates Two Chairs from different psychological well being care suppliers, resembling Headspace, BetterHelp and Develop Remedy. He famous that 90% of Two Chairs sufferers make it to at the least the fourth session with their therapist — in comparison with an trade common of simply 36%.
Two Chairs’ deal with measurement-based care additionally helps it stand out, Katz mentioned.
Each morning {that a} affected person has a Two Chairs remedy session, they full a digital check-in that takes not more than 5 minutes. The check-in contains questions from the PHQ-9 and GAD-7, two clinically validated assessments of hysteria and melancholy. As soon as a affected person completes this check-in, Two Chairs tabulates leads to a standardized medical dashboard the place therapists can view any adjustments to sufferers’ PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores.
Then sufferers obtain a snapshot of their progress in areas resembling vanity, temper, sleep, restlessness and consuming. Sufferers additionally obtain reflection prompts and insights from their clinicians, which assist them in growing a greater understanding of their psychological well being progress. For instance, a immediate might ask a sufferers why they suppose their sleep patterns have modified or why they’re turning into extra irritable currently.
These snapshots encourage sufferers to take a extra concerned function of their care and brazenly speak with their therapists about how the remedy goes, Katz remarked. In his view, measurement-based care is essential as a result of it’s confirmed to assist sufferers obtain higher outcomes from remedy. Analysis exhibits an almost 75% enchancment in remission charges amongst sufferers whose behavioral well being suppliers use measurement-based care in comparison with these whose suppliers don’t, he identified.
“At Two Chairs, 100% of our therapists use measurement-based care, which helps give us clear insights into the medical outcomes our care is attaining. In the meantime, fewer than 20% of behavioral well being practitioners have built-in measurement-based care into their practices, and few, if any, use a system that may persistently floor indicators to each therapists and their sufferers concurrently,” Katz said.
Two Chairs’ dedication to measuring outcomes and care high quality assurance are two key components which have contributed to the startup’s success, he famous. Katz mentioned that the corporate has grown eightfold over the previous three years. It now serves greater than 20 million coated lives by a nationwide partnership with Aetna and partnerships with Kaiser Permanente in Northern California and Washington.
The startup employs a workforce of greater than 500 full-time and part-time therapists. Almost half of those therapists determine as Black or Indigenous individuals of coloration, 24% determine as LGBTQ, and 16% are multilingual, Katz mentioned.
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