UpLift, a behavioral well being firm, introduced Monday that it has acquired TAO Join, a psychological well being firm for larger training organizations.
Tampa, Florida-based UpLift affords digital entry to speak remedy, psychiatry and drugs administration companies. It has a nationwide community of almost 2,000 suppliers and accepts insurance coverage, together with from Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare. Clearwater, Florida-based TAO Join gives larger training establishments with on-line interactive packages and instruments designed to deal with psychological well being. It affords modules on a wide range of matters, together with methods to handle the primary 12 months of faculty, 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 value. The businesses at the moment are launching TAO by UpLift, which supplies establishments “entry to a complete larger ed psychological healthcare resolution, and the continuity of care designed to enrich establishments’ counseling service choices, all lined by insurance coverage,” in keeping with the announcement.
With the acquisition, UpLift now serves over 170 enterprise prospects within the U.S. and Canada. It covers 4 million folks, together with greater than two million college students at greater than 120 larger 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 stress of academia,” mentioned Kyle Talcott, founder and CEO of UpLift, in an e mail. “TAO is already on the bottom, a 10-year-old, tried and confirmed, larger ed firm with a clinically validated psychological healthcare resolution offering self-guided instruments and sources for college kids that enhances establishments’ counseling service choices. “
When requested how TAO Join will match into UpLift’s operations, Talcott mentioned the corporate is “fascinated by it as business-as-usual in that we’re sustaining the nice momentum the TAO crew has had with serving TAO’s larger training purchasers.” He added that UpLift has retained a lot of the TAO crew.
“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 mentioned. “We’re in fact starting to supply UpLift’s scientific companies to larger training establishments.”
The acquisition comes at a time when 77% of faculty college students battle psychological well being issues and 53% are unable to obtain care, in keeping with the American Faculty 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% mentioned wait instances have been too lengthy and 27% mentioned they couldn’t discover care.
Dr. Sherry Benton, founding father of TAO Join, mentioned the corporate has shared targets with UpLift, and the acquisition helps obtain these targets.
“Like UpLift, TAO Join was conceived to meet the rising demand for extra accessible and higher psychological healthcare remedy choices and options, together with telehealth,” Benton mentioned in an e mail. “As a part of UpLift, we will now be more practical 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 a web-based psychiatry supplier targeted on girls. In July, UpLift additionally introduced it raised $10.7 million in Collection 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 Photographs
