Valera Health Goes All-in with Comprehensive Tele-Mental Health Services
[Music] lauren thank you so much for taking the time with me today to really talk about what you’re working on with valera health thank you you know i’m really inspired by the work you’re doing you know bringing the technology of telemedicine to to mental health um but really doing it in a unique way because it’s more comprehensive um and so i wanted you to start by just talking about that what’s what’s the mission and vision at valera sure absolutely so valera is a virtual mental health clinic and we have therapists psychiatrists and case managers who take a team-based approach to care and what’s really unique is that we do have a comprehensive model where we take diagnoses from the mild and moderate end all the way through serious mental illness like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia which often you’ll see in virtual health and mental health that those populations aren’t served in a virtual model so we intentionally you know treat and don’t turn away the high acuity complex patients compared to an app that we might find here that was more about mild and moderate cases anxiety depression is sort of a different model it is yes and we also treat ages six and up so we do treat children and adolescents as well as adults so it’s really comprehensive in that age range and the diagnoses that we treat um and we intentionally work across commercial medicare and medicaid insurance lines so that even more people have access um and that cost is not a barrier a lot of innovative companies have gone direct to consumer trying to help people wellness apps you’re working with obviously health systems providers you know going that route how have they responded to this kind of technology and your approach i think very well we partner with over 20 health plans now and because we do work across all lines of business we work with commercial medicaid and medicare plans the large national plans as well as regional plans in the different states and markets that we’re in and it’s very well received because they don’t have partners filling this gap of serious mental illness and it’s one of the highest cost portions of the population and hardest to treat so it’s really filling a big gap that they’re seeing you know in these conversations it’s easy to stay very high level and stay pretty pretty macro and yet what we’re really talking about is you know human beings struggling with some of the you know toughest challenges that you could really imagine so is is there a is there a patient or a patient profile that really comes to mind that inspires you to keep going when it’s tough definitely we’ve had so many meaningful patient stories that i think keep all of us really motivated and mission driven at our company there is one that comes to mind we had a patient who was a woman in her 40s she had been negatively impacted by the pandemic and that she was laid off by from her job in the service industry due to coved so she was really going through some hard times struggling with depression and had some passive suicidal ideation where she had thoughts of maybe you know people would be better off if i wasn’t here anymore and that’s kind of where we came in and started working with her and it’s kind of an example of the team-based approach that we have because she had therapy with a licensed therapist who was delivering evidence-based therapy for coping with depression symptoms she had medication management with our psychiatry team and a case manager who was you know coordinating and bringing all her her care together and also referred her to community resources that she needed so she was linked with accessoride for transportation and got to appointments that she couldn’t get to before so she really expressed that appreciation that we were treating her holistically and she got all those services in one place from a team that was you know working together um so i think in that case you know she started to really improve and um is still with us in our program and doing much better you know it’s fascinating that all those different pieces are handled on the same dashboard i assume that’s sort of like the technology piece of what you’ve developed obviously in many ways you’re delivering care that already existed you didn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of those different um silos of care whether it’s a you know ride share or it’s a you know therapy appointment but to figure out a way to coordinate it is that sort of the secret sauce yes so we have a hipaa compliant proprietary platform the valera health platform and that is what our provider network uses to provide the care and coordinate the care so we have a care management dashboard for our over 400 providers and we also have a patient-facing app so the patients can chat with their care team see content and educational materials and do their video sessions right in the app got it what are you most excited about about what you’re developing next for valera um so what i’m really excited about are some of our new partnerships we just announced a partnership with multicare health system in washington state so we’re very excited about that and partnering with them to expand access across washington including those more vulnerable populations um those who might have medicaid plans um or live in kind of you know rural areas where it’s hard to find care forty percent of our patients actually live in areas that um the government has set our health care provider shortage areas so people who can’t normally access care and we’re you know reaching those populations got it uh just to clarify you know you’re able to deploy the platform using the providers that are in that network versus uh i assume you’re not deploying your own provider network in the region we are actually do both or is it one or the other we can do both okay um yeah we do both so we are now in seven states and you know growing and expanding with several more states to come but in those states we actually recruit our own provider network and 40 of our providers are full-time employees with us um so we have you know licensed social workers mds psychiatric nurse practitioners the case managers and care managers they all make up our own valera network and they practice the valera model which is also very focused on quality and measurement based outcomes that’s a key strategic decision you know and something that’s different between different sort of health innovation companies some some want to be just a pure platform play as they as they say and you know i’m guessing and you can correct me but by keeping it coordinated and in-house you’re able to have sort of quality control over that character coordination that’s so true when you see these kind of network aggregators that are bringing together private practitioners those people are all still kind of practicing their own way it’s very hard to measure but what we do is we bring in valera model valera providers who practice our care model and have supervision and report up to our clinical leadership and through that we’re able to really focus on quality measures we measure things against hedis ncqa like quality standards in the industry as well as report to our partners on depression outcomes anxiety outcomes patient satisfaction so that’s a huge piece of what we do as well so the valera way so a piece of that is obviously you know to to teach providers to to work in a team-based way so that’s obviously a piece of it what’s another element to what the valero way represents yeah another element is you know we do evidence-based care so we use a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy in our therapy practice and then we have a great you know clinical leadership team who are you know psychiatrists who you know come from backgrounds where they’ve worked in hospitals they’ve worked in acute care settings and they’re really dedicated to bringing that into a virtual setting so everything from managing high risk to you know how we prescribe and how they work together as a team and really making sure that the providers have a resource and a place to go if there’s a complex patient we always have you know supervisors available ready to do you know a conference on that case and make sure we can deliver the best care possible to this patient lauren thank you for taking the time with me today i i think that that you know in-house coordinated model is really powerful i’ve seen that as a trend elsewhere um versus just this distributed network a platform uh where you can really control the quality and and create um yeah a replicable model that you know works yes so thank you for doing this work and for really bringing care to these populations thank you so much thanks for having me you
Valera Health brings a team-based approach to telemedicine for mental health, covering the spectrum from mild issues to serious conditions. Unlike most tele-mental health apps, Valera is equipped to help patients with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other more serious disorders.
In this interview Lauren Mills, Director of New Markets at Valera, also shares details on how their team-based care coordinates all the different pieces to make a real difference to patients and how Valera’s new partnerships bring care to even more people.
—
Connect with the team at Valera Health: https://wwwstartuphealth.com/valera-health
Invest in Health Moonshots: https://healthmoonshots.com
Connect with StartUpHealth:
Website: https://www.startuphealth.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startuphealth/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/startuphealth
Podcast: https://startup-health-now.blubrry.net/