SonderMind, a hybrid mental health provider, has expanded its virtual services to all 50 states.
The company, previously in 48 states, has added New York and Michigan to its roster. The announcement comes on the heels of a rapid year of expansion for the company. Since the start of 2024, SonderMind has expanded to 35 new states, primarily with telehealth offerings. The company is looking to expand its in-person footprint in several markets, though executives did not specify where.
Core to SonderMind is its app, which offers on-demand resources, like meditations, breathing exercises, neurotunes and brain training. It also helps users track their daily progress and reflect on their mental health. SonderMind also uses AI to streamline the process of scheduling appointments. In 2024, the company launched a free consumer-facing app on iOS and Android.
“You can deliver better care when you’re engaging with your patient asynchronously, as well as synchronously,” Mark Frank, co-founder and CEO of SonderMind, told Fierce Healthcare. Having the app track daily progress makes therapy sessions more efficient, allowing therapists to launch straight into the deep therapeutic work that makes the most impact, he added.
“We really built our care model around enabling the therapist to deliver the highest quality care without requiring that therapists do a bunch of extra work, and then meeting the patient where they are,” Frank noted.
SonderMind treats patients, both kids and adults, of varying acuity. When needed, it refers to local partners, including health systems, primary care groups or specialty behavioral health providers. “We take an approach that ultimately healthcare is local and so we partner with a whole variety of other care delivery organizations in those local ecosystems,” Frank said.
SonderMind, started in 2017, soared to unicorn status with a valuation “well north” of $1 billion in July 2021. The bulk of SonderMind’s offerings is psychotherapy. It also offers psychiatry in 27 states. It accepts major commercial payers, Medicare, Medicare Advantage and VA plans. It also takes Medicaid in a few markets. Across the board, about a fifth of SonderMind’s care happens in-person.
Additionally, the company practices measurement-based care, the gold standard for tracking progress in mental health that is used by fewer than 20% of therapists across the U.S. SonderMind sessions are typically preceded and followed by various patient-reported outcomes questionnaires, the results of which are then fed back to the therapist.
Leading up to its expansion over the past year, SonderMind made a series of acquisitions intended to strengthen its tech and clinical care models. “We were very heads down on operationalizing and integrating and building out the product offering,” Frank said. At the same time, payers were interested in high-value, high-quality offerings. Going national was a way for SonderMind to meet the growing need for mental healthcare.
While SonderMind does not yet have full-risk contracts, it has several value-based arrangements with national and regional payers. “They're really a great way to align obviously incentives, but also align with the work and the offering that we’ve created that is really differentiated in this market.”
The company is open to moving to full-risk, but wants to do it in a thoughtful way that does not reduce the appropriate level of utilization and that truly rewards strong outcomes, he added.