Trend: Growing interest in digital mental health among insurers and medical care providers

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In Men­tal Health Play, UnitedHealth’s Optum May Buy Vir­tu­al Provider Able­To (Forbes):

“Unit­ed­Health Group’s Optum med­ical provider unit may increase its invest­ment in Able­To, a provider of vir­tu­al behav­ioral health­care services.

Such a deal, which some reports say could be an out­right acqui­si­tion, would be sig­nif­i­cant because it’s fur­ther acknowl­edge­ment by health insur­ers that man­ag­ing med­ical care isn’t enough to make sure patients are get­ting the right care, in the right place and at the right time.

Insur­ers and med­ical care providers increas­ing­ly are work­ing to address social deter­mi­nants of their cus­tomers out­side of tra­di­tion­al med­ical care and an esti­mat­ed one in five Amer­i­can adults suf­fers from men­tal ill­ness, accord­ing to the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health. Amid the spread of the Coro­n­avirus strain COVID-19, insur­ers and med­ical care providers are also step­ping up their efforts to address iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness as Amer­i­cans com­ply with state “shel­ter in place” orders.”

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