Mental health provider Flourish Health announced a $26 million Series A funding round on Monday.
B Capital, F-Prime and Cherryrock Capital led the funding round.
Only about 20% of children with mental, emotional, or behavioral health disorders receive professional care, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Flourish Health aims to fill that gap.
The startup, launched in 2022 by Natalia Birgisson, MD, John Haskell, and Josh Gachan, offers a unique home care model to support pediatric and young adult patients with serious and complex mental health needs. Flourish Health has raised $46 million since its founding, executives said.
Birgisson, CEO of Flourish Health, said his experience working in a pediatric emergency room inspired the mission behind the startup. “I lost a young patient who worked in a pediatric ER to suicide. He was being bullied at school and his mother was at a loss trying to defend him. The next day I was in crisis, placed in foster care, and very distressed about having to change homes again. “She cared for another teenager who was suffering. She knew there needed to be more than a waiting list and referrals, and there needed to be a better way to help these children and their families,” she said.
Birgisson added: “We decided that we needed to connect all these dots and help build the missing pieces in the medical field: How can we provide more robust services so that children don’t end up in crisis that requires hospitalization.”
Flourish Health improves the well-being of children and young people with serious mental health needs, while significantly reducing hospitalization and residential treatment. The company works with leading health plans to support families dealing with complex needs such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, trauma-related illnesses, suicide attempts, and destructive impulse control and conduct disorders.
Patients are supported by Flourish’s Care Pod team, which includes a psychiatrist, certified therapist, patient guide, and family guide. Experts are supported by the company’s artificial intelligence workflow platform, which aims to reduce administrative burden.
Flourish Health Family Guide Director Sharon Epps told Fierce Healthcare that the team wants families to know they are “actually involved in the community.”
“That’s why we call them carepods,” Epps said. “We want them to feel connected to that support in a more intentional way.”
The company aims to help patients and families stay engaged between clinical visits through opportunities such as in-school advocacy, life coaching, and primary care coordination.
“We’ve often seen that going to schools with parents and supporting advocacy conversations in schools can be a really helpful step in aligning all these different systems for patients,” Birgisson said. “We had kids on house arrest who were feeling really isolated socially, so going to see them in person even weekly for a period of time and doing things like art therapy was really helpful.”
Epps said the team had noticed an increase in referrals from jails and transitional facilities, something they didn’t initially expect.
“Many detention centers welcome the idea of making sure the people who are housed there have access to care,” Epps said. “So it’s also rewarding to see some success stories.”
Flourish’s services are currently available in 10 states and serve thousands of patients, executives told Fierce Healthcare. Birgisson said the company has tripled year-over-year growth since starting patient care in 2023.
Additionally, the company says that major health insurance studies have shown that Flourish’s model results in 70% to 96% reductions in hospitalizations. There will be a 69% to 90% reduction in in-facility care, and a “sustained” 80% to 95% reduction in higher-level care after discharge.
Birgisson said the company’s technology-enabled approach allows it to reach families who are struggling to find care. He said a recent analysis from the health plan found that the “vast majority” of children in the program were in “care deserts.”
“If Flourish wasn’t available, there would be no other provider that could provide in-person services,” she said. “This was external validation that we are fulfilling our mission of helping children and families that other clinics don’t have the infrastructure for.”
This new capital will support the company’s national expansion in partnership with the nation’s largest health plan.
“That’s the main reason we raised the money,” Birgisson said. “And the second reason is to always stay ahead of needs in terms of platforms, tools, and AI support.”
Executives said the investment will also help advance Flourish Health’s proprietary technology, which serves as a work hub for care pods by integrating patient touchpoints, electronic medical records and prescribing capabilities, workflow automation and team collaboration.
“Intensive mental health care is extremely difficult, but it becomes easier and more effective when teams work closely together,” F-Prime partner Brett Cook said in a statement. “The clinical products Flourish Health has built enable team collaboration at scale, empowering psychiatrists, therapists, and guides to provide coordinated, high-touch care without losing the human connection that patients and families need.”
