Grow Therapy, a platform for therapists to launch their own practice, raised $75 million in series B funding.
The round was comprised of $45 million in equity and $30 million in venture debt, led by TCV and co-led by Transformation Capital, with support from existing backers SignalFire and SVB. The round follows 13x year-over-year growth for the platform that aids mental health therapists in launching private practices covered by insurance.
Currently, Grow Therapy houses over 3,500 providers, serving patients in 12 states, with more expected to join in the near future.
“We’ve been fortunate to enable providers to succeed,” said Jake Cooper, co-founder and CEO of Grow Therapy. “Because we help providers partner with us to start their own practice, they've been joining us en masse, often referring their colleagues. Today, 40% of the therapists who join our platform do so purely organically, just from word of mouth. Part of that is because we operate with significant lower revenue shares. Providers earn substantially more money working through us.”
Grow Therapy’s share of insurance reimbursements is far lower than the 40% to 60% skimmed off the top of revenue in the average practice, according to Cooper.
The platform also helps providers expand their practice through insurance coverage by all major payers, including Medicaid, and virtual support for admin tasks from scheduling and billing to health records and marketing.
“Providers are able to achieve their professional ambitions: run their own practice, have that end-to-end autonomy, secure schedules, assign which patients are a fit for them to find their niche,” Cooper said. “They're able to do so without the administrative work that's generally inherent, even in group practices, whether there are clunky EHRs, there's billing back and forth that the provider is handling on behalf of the patient, there's outcome measurement that is done manually. For us that’s all automated.”
While private practices can enclose providers in a silo, Cooper says Grow Therapy provides a collaborative community of providers supporting one another’s work. This collaboration, Cooper said, can help providers find and define their specialty niche.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that adults ages 19-64 be screened annually for anxiety, depression and suicide. The task force said that the risk of misdiagnoses and potentially unnecessary follow-up care is well worth the danger of missing a chance to administer effective treatment.
Depression and anxiety rates in America have shown marked increase, from 11% of adults reporting related symptoms before the pandemic to 40% in recent months. Mental health stigmatization has also waned faster than licensed therapists can meet demand. Platforms like Grow Therapy and Motivo Health, which aids in the licensure process, have assisted in clearing the path between mental health professionals with those seeking care.
Destigmatization is notably ebbing in communities of color who are seeking individualized care through apps like Hurdle for the Black community and Therapy for Latinx. Big players like Ginger are expanding their services to Spanish language platforms.
“So today, 45% of our providers identify as non-white, BIPOC which is not because of how we were targeting, it was a function of solely the fact that by enabling providers who were otherwise marginalized to succeed, we end up indexing to folks who traditionally have less support,” Cooper said. “Most therapists that aspire to start their own private practice face huge barriers preventing them administratively from doing so. By partnering with providers to start their own practice from scratch and enabling them to serve underserved patient populations, we’re achieving our mission of massively expanding the accessibility of high-quality mental health.”
Providers are screened through the platform’s NCQA-certified credentialing committee before being interviewed. Following integration into the platform, Grow Therapy keeps a series of metrics on providers to ensure they are helping improve patient outcomes and prioritizes speed to make certain that patients avoid long waits to receive care.