Radial, a management services organization (MSO) for brain medicine clinics, is acquiring the non-clinical assets of Mindful Health Solutions.
Specifically, it is acquiring TMS Health Partners, the MSO managing Mindful Health, a leading interventional psychiatry group with 20 brain medicine clinics. The acquisition brings Radial’s total number of clinics under management to 27 across seven states. These clinics offer cutting-edge brain medicine treatments, including rapid-acting medications and neuromodulation.
“Brain medicine is a newer discipline in medicine that's predominantly today in an academic context. We're one of the first companies bringing this category to the consumer in an outpatient setting,” Radial’s co-founder and CEO John Capecelatro told Fierce Healthcare in an advance interview.
These clinics rely on targeted treatments for complex, high-acuity conditions like PTSD, OCD, treatment-resistant depression and suicidality. Besides medication management and therapy, these clinics offer transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), Spravato—a prescription nasal spray—and ketamine infusion therapy. These treatments aim to treat the underlying conditions in the brain.
“Historically, psychiatry has mostly been focused on treating symptoms, and they’ve been treating symptoms with things like medication or therapy,” Capecelatro explained. “What’s fundamentally changed over the last decade is that we now are better able to identify and diagnose these conditions truly at the circuit level.”
Radial, backed by General Catalyst, supports brain medicine clinics by helping them procure expensive drugs and devices, streamlining billing and guiding providers with RadialOS, an AI clinical decision support tool. Its clinical network accepts most insurers, including Medicare, TRICARE, the VA Community Care Network, Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare and Blues plans.
“We’ve always wanted to deliver or support delivering the widest variety of services to the broadest number of people possible,” Capecelatro said.
While treatments like TMS and Spravato are not cures, they offer highly effective treatments. About half of people with depression who have tried and failed to benefit from medications see a clinically meaningful response with TMS. These benefits can last up to a year or so, then require additional sessions.
Radial’s clinical network has long been a leader in peer-reviewed research, with over 360 peer-reviewed pieces of research published and supporting early study sites for a number of devices. A New York City clinic that Radial supports focuses on research into biomarkers, devices—like accelerated TMS (aTMS) and EEG-guided TMS—and is exploring supporting pharma trials. Radial also has a research collaboration agreement with Compass Pathways, which makes synthetic psilocybin currently in trials for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.
“It allows us to really understand and identify what the potential next generation set of treatments are, so that we’re in a position clinically and operationally to broadly support those…as they become FDA-approved,” Capecelatro said.
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According to Capecelatro, brain medicine isn’t more popular for a number of reasons: patients are unaware these treatments exist; clinics struggle to operationalize these treatments; and payers don’t offer broad coverage. Without coverage, these treatments are not affordable to patients, but contracting with payers isn’t easy. Complex protocols and compliance requirements also require these treatments to be delivered in person, demanding a specific type of workflow. Finally, the capital costs of acquiring devices and therapeutics can be a lot for a clinic to front. Radial aims to help with all of these pieces, starting with awareness.
“As we think about the network and the opportunity that we’re supporting here at Radial, it’s about first and foremost building the best possible consumer brand … so folks understand there’s a wholly new set of things available for them,” Capecelatro said.
Additionally, Radial provides tech layers to help patients understand what treatments they may be clinically eligible for and what they may cost, manage their care journey and take outcome surveys. It also focuses on providing a warm, engaging environment within clinics “in an otherwise really fraught moment in their experience.”
With the acquisition, Radial’s co-founder Owen Muir, M.D., will become chief scientific officer, while Mindful Health Solutions’ CMO Tobias Marton, M.D., Ph.D., will serve as CMO for the entire Radial clinical network. Mindful’s CEO, Mark Kehoe, will transition into an advisory role supporting the integration of the two companies.
Radial’s long-term goal is to study how neuromodulation and other brain medicine innovations can improve outcomes across broader neurological and neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s. Radial is also supporting research into wearables that may eventually bring some brain medicine treatments into the home. “The expectation is that the pipeline of treatments continues to expand over time,” Capecelatro said.