UpLift, a behavioral well being firm, introduced Monday that it has acquired TAO Join, a psychological well being firm for greater training organizations.
Tampa, Florida-based UpLift provides digital entry to speak remedy, psychiatry and medicine administration providers. It has a nationwide community of practically 2,000 suppliers and accepts insurance coverage, together with from Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare. Clearwater, Florida-based TAO Join offers greater training establishments with on-line interactive applications and instruments designed to deal with psychological well being. It provides modules on quite a lot of subjects, together with easy methods to handle the primary 12 months of school, easy methods to enhance focus, and sexual assault prevention.
UpLift’s acquisition of TAO Join was a mixture of money and inventory, however the firms didn’t share the acquisition worth. The businesses are actually launching TAO by UpLift, which supplies establishments “entry to a complete greater ed psychological healthcare resolution, and the continuity of care designed to enrich establishments’ counseling service choices, all coated by insurance coverage,” in response to the announcement.
With the acquisition, UpLift now serves over 170 enterprise prospects within the U.S. and Canada. It covers 4 million individuals, together with greater than two million college students at greater than 120 greater training establishments.
“The shortage of entry to inexpensive behavioral healthcare is a key driver in America’s psychological well being disaster and our college students are struggling — more and more anxious, depressed, and battling loneliness all whereas going through the strain of academia,” stated Kyle Talcott, founder and CEO of UpLift, in an e-mail. “TAO is already on the bottom, a 10-year-old, tried and confirmed, greater ed firm with a clinically validated psychological healthcare resolution offering self-guided instruments and assets for college kids that enhances establishments’ counseling service choices. “
When requested how TAO Join will match into UpLift’s operations, Talcott stated the corporate is “desirous about it as business-as-usual in that we’re sustaining the nice momentum the TAO workforce has had with serving TAO’s greater training purchasers.” He added that UpLift has retained many of the TAO workforce.
“We do have plans for each close to and long-term product integrations — for instance, creating synergies via seamless pupil referrals and care escalation processes — which our Product and Engineering groups are scoping,” Talcott stated. “We’re after all starting to supply UpLift’s medical providers to greater training establishments.”
The acquisition comes at a time when 77% of school college students battle psychological well being issues and 53% are unable to obtain care, in response to the American School Well being Affiliation. As well as, a current survey seemed on the causes college students didn’t search care and located that 51% thought it was too costly, 27% stated wait occasions had been too lengthy and 27% stated they couldn’t discover care.
Dr. Sherry Benton, founding father of TAO Join, stated the corporate has shared objectives with UpLift, and the acquisition helps obtain these objectives.
“Like UpLift, TAO Join was conceived to satisfy the rising demand for extra accessible and higher psychological healthcare therapy choices and options, together with telehealth,” Benton stated in an e-mail. “As a part of UpLift, we are able to now be simpler in servicing the upper ed market’s unmet wants, offering a continuum of psychological well being care that features team-based remedy and psychiatry.”
UpLift’s acquisition of TAO Join comes after the corporate acquired Minded in November. Minded is an internet psychiatry supplier centered on girls. In July, UpLift additionally introduced it raised $10.7 million in Sequence A funding, bringing its complete funding to greater than $22 million.
Different firms are additionally offering psychological well being care to school college students, together with TimelyCare and Lightfully Behavioral Well being.
Photograph credit score: Bohdan Skrypnyk, Getty Photos
