In the landscape of behavioral healthcare, growth often comes in measured steps. But for Health Connect America, the story is one of remarkable leaps involving the implementation of scalable behavioral health technology. Founded in 2006 as an in-home therapy service near Memphis, Tennessee, Health Connect America has transformed into a powerhouse community-based behavioral health and therapeutic foster care provider serving tens of thousands of families. Its business journey is marked by strategic expansion—from just six local offices to a network spanning 105 locations across ten states in the Southeastern United States. This impressive growth isn’t just about market share; it is a testament to Health Connect America’s commitment to delivering exceptional community-based care at scale and their focus on partnering with organizations that align with their strategy and vision.

Scalable Behavioral Health Technology Helped Foster Growth

Since 2009, Health Connect America has worked with Qualifacts to expand its reach while keeping the organization focused on its core competencies: behavioral health care and therapeutic foster care. Part of Health Connect America’s success can be attributed to its self-awareness as an organization and desire to keep its technology infrastructure lean and agile. Recently, Health Connect America’s CIO was interviewed by Technology Magazine about their role in scaling innovation, and supporting 2,400+ clinicians with the technology they need to deliver exceptional care throughout a network of community-based care facilities, supported schools, and in-home visits. The Organization’s clinical technology strategy focuses on these core interactions:

• Automating manual tasks and paperwork
• Maximizing clinician time spent in therapeutic sessions
• Optimizing clinical interactions with quick access to session notes
• Surfacing medication history and prescription lists
• Listening to clinicians to identify gaps in care and improve workflows

Health Connect America’s technology strategy extends beyond one-on-one interactions to large scale data-driven decision-making that improves the quality of care throughout their entire provider network. To enable this capability, the Health Connect America team developed a SaaS-based approach to technology and data management. They were deliberate in finding partners and technology solutions that worked within an entirely cloud-based architecture and that emphasized scalability and agility. “We made a very tactical and also strategic decision to not build products as much as possible, because we want to focus on what we’re really good at: mental and behavioral health,” explained the CIO.

When asked about the exponential growth Health Connect America has experienced in terms of revenue and market share, they emphasized that their goal was to improve clinical care and operations at every level by focusing on technology and analytics. This success is attributed to three key factors of Health Connect America’s strategy:

• Behavioral healthcare-specific technology that enables clinicians to spend more time with patients, see more patients, deliver better patient care, and optimize patient outcomes.
• Integration-optimized partnerships that allow best practices and technology solutions to rapidly spread across finance, IT and operations. Time to value is a massive competitive advantage.
• Partner with organizations that unify and contextualize data. Data-driven insights fuel clinical, financial, and operational success and are a major differentiator in the marketplace.

The CIO stated that Qualifacts is a foundational component to this transformational technology strategy and plays a significant role in Health Connect America’s growth. “We have grown alongside Qualifacts over the years, and we will continue to grow with them. They’re responsive to our needs, provide the technology for our clinicians to improve people’s lives, and help us surface the data we need to run the business. We have a really good partner in the form of Qualifacts.”