Iris Telehealth, a behavioral well being firm, has acquired telepsychiatry supplier InnovaTel, the businesses introduced Tuesday.

Austin, Texas-based Iris Telehealth companions with hospitals, healthcare programs and community-based organizations (corresponding to group well being facilities and federally certified well being facilities) to assist them ship behavioral well being providers. The corporate connects organizations with behavioral well being suppliers of their communities, offering experience to enhance their psychological well being applications and offering ongoing help to make sure their telepsychiatry options are sustainable. Companions embrace Geisinger and Trinity Well being of New England.

InnovaTel, in the meantime, is a division of Quartet Well being, a values-based firm that powers behavioral well being care. InnovaTel additionally works with healthcare organizations to recruit and retain telepsychiatry physicians, create telebehavioral healthcare options on tight budgets, and enhance the effectivity and productiveness of telepsychiatric physicians. Companions embrace major care organizations, outpatient clinics and licensed group behavioral well being clinics.

With the acquisition of innovaTel, Iris Telehealth will now make use of greater than 650 physicians, mentioned Andy Flanagan, CEO of Iris Telehealth. He added that he has been eager to make this deal for about 4 years now.

“InnovaTel has been a colleague in our area for ten years,” he mentioned in an interview. “I met their founding group on my first day as CEO. They serve lots of the similar states: they're in 38, we're in 45. [They have the] the identical kind of license, the identical affected person journey, the identical concentrate on the identical market phase. They’re a powerful firm. We’re a powerful firm, worthwhile, money circulation optimistic, giant and quick rising. That is actually a narrative about two robust firms coming collectively.”

Christina Mainelli, CEO of Quartet Well being, added in a press release that “with a physician-led group like Iris Telehealth, our companions and sufferers can have even better entry to the sustainable, long-term care they’ve come to count on. The mixed group will supply a full spectrum of high-quality behavioral well being providers, appropriate to fulfill the wants of just about any affected person in search of digital care.”

Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The acquisition comes because the nation faces a severe behavioral well being disaster. In keeping with the Well being Assets and Providers Administration, almost 160 million Individuals stay in areas with a scarcity of psychological well being suppliers.

By buying innovaTel, Iris Telehealth hopes to in the end improve entry to behavioral well being care help, Flanagan mentioned.

“We’re working with a few of the nation's largest healthcare programs to remodel behavioral well being total, throughout all their affected person panels. We’re speaking about a whole lot of 1000’s of sufferers and that type of scaling for behavioral well being has by no means actually been carried out,” he said. “Buying innovaTel brings us nearer to that imaginative and prescient and the contracts we have now right now, as a result of we achieve scale. Scale issues. It allows effectivity. That is actually about taking behavioral well being to the following stage, like oncology, and cardiology, the place it’s a high-performing precedence.”

Picture: Andrey Popov, Getty Pictures