SimplePractice of Santa Monica, which provides software support for health and wellness practitioners, is making a more concerted push into the mental health treatment and psychiatry market.
In August, the company – a wholly-owned subsidiary of Braintree, Massachusetts-based EngageSmart Inc. – acquired some of the assets of Luminello Inc., an electronic medical record and practice management platform for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.
Then, last month, SimplePractice launched a program for mental health practitioners to integrate measurement-based care into their treatment plans.
SimplePactice purchased the assets from San Francisco-based Luminello in August for up to $19.6 million: $16 million up front and up to $3.6 million in payments over the next two years provided certain terms are met. The assets included a newly launched electronic prescription program tied into patient electronic medical records, as well as workflow management for more complex mental health treatment programs.
SimplePractice also has the ability to license some of the assets back to Luminella, in effect granting SimplePractice direct access to Luminella’s customer base.
“We are excited about the opportunity to bring the value of SimplePractice to this important segment and we look forward to bringing the benefits of SimplePractice to Luminello’s customers,” Jonathan Seltzer, SimplePractice’s president, said in an announcement at the time.
“Demand for mental health care, particularly in the psychiatry segment, is unprecedented,” Seltzer continued. “We will continue to innovate on behalf of this critical group of medical professionals within the healthcare system.”
With the purchase of those assets under its belt, SimplePractice last month rolled out a new software service suite for mental health practitioners – including those it is serving through the Luminello asset purchase.
The software allows these practitioners to integrate measurement-based care into their treatment plans through the use of more systematic assessments of patients’ progress. This includes improved scoring methods, visual charting, streamlined appointment scheduling and more use of automated reminders.
“The launch of our measurement-based care solution is a critical resource for the more than 185,000 practitioners we support,” Seltzer said in the latest announcement.
“SimplePractice remains committed to removing barriers that practitioners face in providing quality care, and integrating measurement-based care directly into our platform is an exciting next step for further quantifying the impact our practitioners have on millions of patients,” he added.
The announcement noted that in a recent survey, nearly half of the clinicians that incorporate scoring measurements into their treatment protocols still used pen and paper to collect data. That often creates an additional layer of work, because at some point, that data must be entered into patients’ electronic medical records.
SimplePractice’s software platform not only integrates the measurements but also performs calculations with the measurements to make the data easier to work with for prescribing medications and other purposes.
SimplePractice’s parent, EngageSmart, is primarily in the business of providing customer engagement software and payment platforms across a wide variety of sectors, including health and wellness, government agencies, utilities, financial services and nonprofits/philanthropy. The company serves roughly 120,000 customers and recorded third quarter revenue of $98 million.
