Headlight (a tech-forward mental health practice committed to offering patients convenience and a simplified care journey) announced $18 million in new venture funding led by Matrix and EPIC Ventures. This funding round will help the company expand into additional states and add hundreds of new licensed therapists to its team by 2025.
Before the transaction, Headlight added new executive leadership, including Chief Executive Officer Geoff Swindle, former Chief Business Officer of PillPack and Amazon Pharmacy. And in this role, Swindle led teams that developed thriving relationships with payers and built an acclaimed customer care function. With new venture funding and a refreshed brand, Headlight is creating a dynamic model that makes it radically easy for clinicians to practice and for patients to access the individualized care they deserve.
Created by Drs. Manish Sheth and Shashita Inamdar, both MD-PhD’s, Headlight’s philosophy is to prioritize and optimize the clinicians’ experience and not just the patient experience. And the current venture funding will enable the company to prioritize efficiency through technology, simplify workflows and enable clinicians to focus on delivering top-quality care to their patients.
The company’s organizational structure drives collaboration among clinical staff and actively involves them in key company decisions. Clinicians are all W-2 employees and creating a connected culture that prioritizes community between practitioners and ongoing training and credentialing.
This model enables clinicians the time to stay current with the issues facing their patients. And Headlight has significant flexibility within the full-time employee model, which empowers clinicians to manage their work life balance.
Along with being clinician-centric, Headlight is designing a patient experience that is simple, accessible, affordable, and delivers exceptional outcomes. For example, Headlight recognizes that the onboarding experience for many mental health services is often traumatic. And patients must complete multiple pages of health information and revisit their reasons for seeking support. In response, Headlight is utilizing the team’s deep pharmacy experience to launch secure onboarding flows that streamline and simplify the process.
By importing and aggregating the patient’s available medical and prescription history data Headlight will provide more holistic care of the patient and make clinical progress faster. And similar data-driven approaches will support the therapeutic alliance by better matching a patient’s requirements with the clinician that best meets their needs.
Patients are able to seek care via telehealth or in-person and Headlight works to make the insurance cost as transparent as possible. And Headlight is currently in-network and has dedicated credentialing with most payers in the states that they serve (Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Texas, and Washington).
KEY QUOTES:
“Despite a proliferation of virtual services, 60% of adults in the U.S. who have sought mental health services still struggle to meet the most basic need[1]: a qualified clinician who accepts their insurance and understands their unique situation. Headlight focuses on helping patients get from initial interest in counseling to a well-aligned therapist and prescriber match faster and with less friction than existing options.”
– Geoff Swindle, CEO
“As an actively practicing Clinical Psychiatrist, I know patients want to connect with their clinicians and feel understood on a personal level. Our goal at Headlight is to make it as simple as possible for both clinicians and patients to form those connections.”
– Manish Sheth, MD, PhD, Headlight’s Chief Clinical Officer and co-founder
