It’s official: evolvedMD saw its first patient five years ago! Anchored by our mission to reimagine behavioral health for all, we’ve made an exponential impact and are proud of creating lasting change in the communities we serve.
With our official Five-Year Celebration coming up next week, we wanted to reflect and highlight some of evolvedMD’s most impactful milestones.
At a time when Arizona ranked 50th in the United States for access to mental healthcare, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Steve Biljan and Erik Osland launched evolvedMD. They focused on integrating behavioral health services in modern primary care to better serve struggling Arizonans and their families.
In a month of firsts, Biljan and Osland hired evolvedMD’s first employee, Sarah Hanchett, who now serves as one of evolvedMD’s high-impact executive leaders. An accomplished therapist in both community settings and private practice, Hanchett served our first patient on Aug. 28, 2017, in collaboration with our first partner, Multi-Specialty Physicians.
Laying the foundation for our unique, upfront, and ongoing approach, evolvedMD became the first behavioral health provider to bill psychiatric collaborative care codes in Arizona, also making us among the first to do so nationally.
The market responded enthusiastically to our innovative approach, which helped us quickly scale in our own backyard. By 2019, we integrated behavioral health services across 12 sites — supporting 45 primary care providers — to help them deliver improved patient outcomes for struggling Arizonans and their families. Throughout that year, we launched more clinical extension programs targeting depression, diabetes, and chronic pain, among other conditions, to provide more comprehensive care.
The pandemic exacerbated mental health conditions, with nearly 50 million Americans experiencing a mental illness just prior to COVID-19’s arrival. It has also impacted therapists, primary care providers, and other frontline heroes who cared for patients at the expense of their own wellbeing, causing widespread burnout across the healthcare industry. With people struggling now more than ever, we had to act fast to better serve our patients, providers, practices, and people.
With behavioral health integration uniquely equipped to tackle these challenges, we launched a pilot in collaboration with HonorHealth, a leading healthcare system serving 1.6 million people in the greater Phoenix area, as part of our journey to servicing 90 providers across 17 sites. During this time, the Phoenix Business Journal named evolvedMD among its “Best Places to Work” — a testament to our intentional work cultivating a culture around self-care and wellness.
In the midst of a worsening mental health crisis, evolvedMD expanded services into Utah in 2021 at a time when the state ranked 43rd for higher prevalence of mental illness and lower rates of access to care. Focusing on Salt Lake City and surrounding areas, we launched partnerships with Granger Medical Clinic and Ogden Clinic to serve Utahns.
Soon after, we launched our innovative pediatric behavioral health integration program in partnership with Granger Medical Clinic. The goal: to treat children and adolescents needing high-quality mental health services. This launch coincided with an urgent plea from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children’s Hospital Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, elevating the pediatric mental health crisis in the United States and declaring it a national emergency.
Following our expansion into Utah, launching the pediatric behavioral health integration program, and completing the successful pilot with HonorHealth, we scaled to service 500 providers across nearly 100 clinical locations by the end of 2021.
Just a few years into our journey, evolvedMD earned recognition from many respected organizations for changing the mental health narrative. In early 2022, the Greater Phoenix Chamber chose us as an IMPACT Awards Finalist for our positive influence on the economy and the communities we serve. Recently, evolvedMD earned its place on the Inc. 5000 list of the “Fastest Growing Private Companies in America,” and was named a finalist at this year’s Small Business Awards by the Phoenix Business Journal — highlighting how mental health is not only impactful, but a great business model.
To support this growth, scale infrastructure, and build out our world-class clinical delivery team, evolvedMD secured a $5.4 million Series A investment from Waterline Ventures and Conductive Ventures.
To date, we’ve positively impacted over 15,000 patients and increased access to care for over 730,000. We couldn’t have done it without our dedicated employees, our ever-growing list of partners, and community members who are passionate about creating meaningful change in the healthcare landscape.
We’re just getting started, too. By the end of this year, we will have over 100 employees on our roster and plan to expand services beyond the Southwest. Until then, we invite you to celebrate five years of impact and service with us during our weeklong celebration next week.
Stay tuned on our LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram channels for Daily Spirit week themes, engagement activities, fun pictures, and much more during the week of Aug. 22, 2022. We also invite you to attend our in-person celebrations with the evolvedMD team in either Arizona or Utah.
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