By Karen-Janine Cohen
In the few years since liftoff, Reachlink, a telehealth company centered around mental health, has grown to providing close to 100,000 sessions a year, and now has more than 300 therapists and other mental healthcare providers on its books.
Started in 2019 by James Farese, the site was designed to virtually connect therapists with people in recovery from substance abuse and who had recently left rehab. It was bridging what can sometimes be a rocky transition and a dangerous time for relapse.
Since then, Reachlink has branched out into a more comprehensive menu of mental health offerings and approaches. Conditions that are treated range from anxiety and eating disorders to depression and panic attacks. Meanwhile, therapists run the gamut of modern mental health treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, to traditional psychotherapy.
Getting started
Two intersecting aspects of Farese’s life experience came together when he decided to start Reachlink. Born in West Boca, Farese and his siblings were home schooled early on and then went to public school. He eventually enrolled at Florida Atlantic University. Yet he left after a few semesters, heeding the entrepreneurship call. It was part of his nature – he had a side hustle of one kind or another since childhood. Meanwhile, technology always fascinated him.
He became an early employee of government procurement startup GovSpend. It was there he met company founder, Jeff Rubenstein. “I got to watch how he assembled the business and I got a front row seat in how to build a business,” he said. One of the most important lessons, he said, is figuring out how to assemble the right team and be willing to delegate. “That is what holds a lot of entrepreneurs back,” he said, noting that letting go of every single operational detail is a hard task for many people who build a business from scratch.
Still, he learned the ins and outs of starting and running a tech company. After leaving the firm in 2013, Farese joined a brick-and-mortar rehab facility started by a friend. He learned the business from what happened inside the clinic to the backroom operations that made it run, including how health insurance works, contracts and case management. He noticed that the time immediately after discharge was a shaky period for patients. That was when he got the idea for Reachlink.
The road to rapid growth
He founded the company in early 2019 – just in time to experience the Covid effect: a great increase in people wanting and needing mental health services. “We were supposed to be this boutique thing,” he said. They were at the right place at the right time, yet all wasn’t smooth sailing to start. Therapists were in demand and could be difficult to get on board the platform. Just as enough therapists were in the system, the number of patients started to decrease as the pandemic subsided. Getting the technology right was a challenge. Eventually, a balance was reached. Meanwhile, the company expanded into other mental health and wellness offerings.
He said the cliche that “every overnight success takes 10 years” has been true for him, and growth remained moderate and measured until the last year or so.
Reachlink now works with more than 66 health plans and is accessible by more than 200 million Americans. Later this year, it will launch iOS and Android apps, which means users can go right to the site without engaging a browser.
Branching into AI
Yet what may be even more innovative, Reachlink is beta testing a mental health AI assistant. It both helps providers with administrative tasks – such as typing up session notes – and allows a new patient to talk about their past and history, summarized and provided to the therapist. “They want to use the hour for what they want help on,” Farese said, referring to the patient.
And, in what may be a bit mind-blowing, under development is the “carebot,” as the system is being called, that is being trained to interact with patients who may want to contact someone in off hours. It is being trained on transcriptions from actual therapy sessions. It will summarize the conversation and give resources if called for. “We asked the bot a lot of complicated questions,” Farese said. While not yet ready, AI is already being used in mental health assessments and research. AI therapists may just be a click away.
For now, Farese is focused on building the business and launching the new products, and he’s enjoying the process. “In business, you get to tie in multiple things, different components,” he said, from technology and finances to hiring the right team. ” I think I truly like to build things, that is the driver for me, having the unknown and finding the best way to solve for those unknowns.”
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