Grow Therapy, a hybrid mental health provider, has launched a new care coordination program to streamline provider referrals to higher levels of care.

Grow providers who need to refer patients to higher levels of care can now initiate the process with a care coordination team. The coordinator evaluates a patient’s needs and insurance coverage to determine the best referral. They oversee a warm introduction to the higher level of care provider and help guide the patient into their first appointment, keeping the Grow provider in the loop. If it isn’t the right fit, the coordinator helps find another provider and, if appropriate, helps the patient reengage with Grow when they’re ready.

The care coordination program lives within Grow’s clinical excellence team. Cynthia Grant, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., VP of clinical excellence, has more than two decades of clinical and research experience. Grant knows how missed opportunities for treatment can lead to preventable crises in healthcare. About 1% of people in outpatient therapy will ever need intensive or specialized care, per Grant. These patients are much more likely to have an adverse outcome if an intervention is not timely, such as being hospitalized or having a suicide attempt. 

Historically at Grow, referring providers had limited access to higher levels of care. They had to spend uncompensated time finding the right provider or leave patients to look on their own. More often than not, patients simply dropped out of care. Enter care coordination.

“The numbers are really small, but this small group accounts for a lot of healthcare spend, and, obviously, they also present a lot of risk,” Grant told Fierce Healthcare in an exclusive interview. “These are the people who need it the most.”  

Programs Grow patients need referrals to include intensive outpatient treatment, eating disorder care and substance use disorder treatment. Grow is curating a group of preferred partners, which today include Equip, Charlie Health and Bicycle Health. These providers must meet certain Grow standards, including using evidence-based practices and excelling in customer experience. Building a diverse network is key, Grant said: “No one referral partner is going to be right for every person in all 50 states with all the different plans we take.” 

A major responsibility of the coordination team is ensuring a patient’s in-network benefits are applied with the preferred partner. Referring to out-of-network care is unaffordable for most Americans. “It's incredibly difficult to figure out where you can go for intensive outpatient services,” Grant said. “We are always working with all of the different payers that our clients are covered by … it’s a really important piece of the puzzle.” 

The care coordination program’s success is measured by how often clients are effectively and promptly matched to appropriate higher-level care. The average turnaround time to get a patient to the new appointment is between 36 and 48 hours.

To complement the offering, Grow has an existing clinical risk program that supports providers seeing patients with higher-acuity needs. The program features 1:1 case consults, group consults and educational resources. Patients can feel shame when their provider tells them they need to see someone else because they cannot help them; Grow’s resource content includes training providers on how to best communicate about moving into a higher level of care. 

“We’re really doing everything we can to be able to support the providers so that they can continue to support their client in practice,” Grant said. 

There is a clear business case for why companies like Grow should be coordinating care, Grant noted. It supports provider satisfaction, and it also leads to better health outcomes. In the value-based care world, where payers expect behavioral health providers to manage the total cost of care, stepping patients up in treatment at the right time helps prevent downstream consequences. 

One payer partner has seen a 35% reduction in ED visits, according to Grant, and Grow expects the care coordination program to yield future positive results across metrics like inpatient hospital admissions and cost savings. Grow has several value-based arrangements with regional and national payers across commercial, Medicaid and Medicare plans. The company did not share the names of the payers nor what portion of its contracts overall are value-based. 

Grow, a Fierce 15 of 2025 honoree, was founded in 2020 and has raised $178 million to date. About 180 million Americans have access to Grow, including more than 16 million Medicaid and dual-eligible beneficiaries. The company works with Humana, Aetna, Cigna, Florida Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana and UnitedHealthcare. The company's telehealth infrastructure integrates with its proprietary EHR, enabling providers to refer to and edit patient treatment plans, goals and clinical notes. It also collects and analyzes clinical assessments, with measurement-informed care prompts built into treatment planning.