Creating and Sustaining Transformative Products Requires Dynamic Leaders

These are heady times for our field. Investors are pouring billions into mergers and acquisitions. We are one of the leading specialties in healthcare technology. For better or worse, our services are being absorbed into large health plans and health systems. Funding is one sign of success.

A prerequisite of success is having good solutions, and strangely, they are often waiting and readily available. The exciting new products and companies today are not necessarily trailblazers. In many cases they are taking established solutions or models and formulating them in commercially viable ways.

Our field is witnessing the rise of successful products in everything from digital technology to outcomes monitoring systems to community-based clinical programs. Longstanding problems are finally being addressed with these products and programs. Passionate new leaders have been part of this process.

Anyone who has listened to the founders of today’s new companies can hear the passion. They are driven (often by personal experience) to create something new, hoping to correct fundamental problems. They have raised funding from angel investors, institutions, bankers, or all of the above.

The passion of these entrepreneurs is undeniable, and yet probably no greater than that of other business disruptors through the years. Many are attracted by the allure of applying new technology to our field, most often leveraging the internet.

Passionate people with good ideas need sustained financial support for the products they launch. This inevitably turns them into students of our 2 commercial payers, large employers and health plans. Investors may fund a promising idea, but a healthcare payer must agree to its long-term promise.

If our major healthcare institutions do not sustain new products, for whatever reason, the exciting investment period will seem like a brief financial sugar high. Yet that should not obscure the value of new product development. Enduring problems can be solved with a combination of money and savvy.

Investors Can Change a Field

Here are a few noteworthy products solving key problems:

1. Many people need to access care as soon as problems are recognized. They are easily deterred by inconvenience and obstacles. Businesses have created solutions. Digital resources are available 24/7. Virtual contact by text, chat, and video can provide ready access at the time of need. These modalities had been available, but several start-up companies emerged to productize them.
2. Behavioral healthcare has long struggled to gauge appropriate outpatient utilization. Some people end treatment after only a session or two, while others continue for years. A simple and clinically robust way to address this issue is to track clinical outcomes during treatment and make measurement-based care (MBC) norm. A basic sort of MBC is built into the new digital therapeutics sector, and the big healthcare companies acquiring our clinical programs insist on measuring clinical results whenever possible. Entrepreneurs see the tide turning, and companies like Mirah are now productizing MBC. However, this advance is too new to know its long-term prospects.
3. Clinical programs are also changing. Luxury substance use disorder programs have proliferated from the Malibu to Florida, providing care far from the homes of most clients. This heightens prevailing risks for discontinuity in treatment. Both private capital and insurance funding (post-parity) have tackled this challenge. The SUD treatment industry is still fragmented and disconnected, but problems are being addressed. Investors and clinical leaders have collaborated to promote community-based care. Programs like Recovery Centers of America focus on continuity through each level of care locally.

Taking the Long View

One weakness of recent investment in our field is that technology drives most of it. Hopes for transformation through technology attract both eager startups and giants like Google and Amazon. Improvements not based on technology (e.g., SUD) exist, but have stiff competition for funding.

Why is this discouraging? Many critical healthcare reforms are not technology-based. For example, structural changes like integrating primary and behavioral care require development and testing, not to mention better integration of our major clinical domains—mental health, SUD, and health behaviors.

Once investors achieve their ROI, the focus shifts to health plans for long-term funding. Large employers may support discrete new products, but system reform will be largely driven by health plans. For example, health plans will need to implement comprehensive, lasting solutions for poor access to care.

Just as passionate people cannot succeed without funding, our field cannot succeed just on the basis of fundraising campaigns. Collaboration with health plans is critical to the future state of our field. It gets fewer headlines, but it is where more of our attention should go.

That focus will uncover the need for a new type of leader, specifically behavioral health leaders ready to manage the complexities of health plans. Let us start investing in our topnotch managers on a career path to becoming health plan executives. The long-term success of our field depends on it.

Ed Jones, PhD is currently with ERJ Consulting, LLC and previously served as president at ValueOptions and chief clinical officer at PacifiCare Behavioral Health.

The views expressed in Perspectives are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Behavioral Healthcare Executive, the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network, or other Network authors. Perspectives entries are not medical advice.

Reference

Jones E. Let us adopt measurement-based care at long last. Behavioral Healthcare Executive. Published online March 28, 2022.