The company provides tools and software to help therapists run their practice.
Alma helps mental health professionals run their practices by providing a membership network that gives practitioners access to tools and software to help them run their practices.
Now the company is adding a new tool to its arsenal: an AI-generated progress-recording tool called “Note Assist,” which the company announced Tuesday, and which is HIPAA-compliant, requiring both healthcare providers and customers to opt in and give explicit consent.
Once both parties agree, the tool records the therapy session and generates a progress note, which the provider can then review, edit, and adjust as needed before saving. Once the progress note has been generated, all session recordings are automatically deleted.
“We have always wanted to take a thoughtful, clinician-informed approach to AI, and with Note Assist, we aimed to develop a valuable tool that could save mental health providers valuable workday time,” Dr. Harry Ritter, founder and CEO of Alma, told VatorNews.
After the company launched its custom-built EHR, which required clinicians to write progress notes after every treatment session, which was tedious and cumbersome to administer, Note Assist felt like a natural next step for the company, he said.
“We also believe that more robust documentation is critical to support quality care and capture insights and next steps from treatment. We incorporated extensive feedback from therapists into building Note Assist to ensure that this tool meets therapists’ specific pain needs and creates real value in their day-to-day work.”
Founded in 2017 and launched in 2018, Alma offers insurance support, telemedicine software, automated billing and scheduling tools, and a community of clinicians that come together for education, training and events. The company also allows patients to find doctors on its platform, using technology to help match the right patients with the right providers.
The company’s network includes more than 22,000 mental health providers licensed to practice across all 50 states. Approximately 40% of providers in Alma’s network identify as Black, Hispanic/Latino or Asian, and 10% identify as LGBTQIA+, allowing them to provide culturally competent care to diverse populations.
Alma’s data shows that more than 80% of patients who start treatment with symptoms of depression or anxiety see improvement over the course of treatment. The company is also committed to removing the barriers to getting treatment in the first place. Once at Alma, patients can begin treatment with a therapist in Alma’s network within an average of three days.
To date, Alma has raised more than $220 million, including a $130 million round in August 2022. In the two years since that funding, the company has Ritter explained that the company has invested in the product experience for mental health providers to ensure they have the technology and support they need to grow their private practices and support their clients.
“We’re really proud of the custom EHR we’ve built, which allows our members to seamlessly onboard new clients, document care and adhere to clinical best practices in one place,” he said. “In particular, we have made significant investment efforts to improve access to clinical assessment tools that help ensure we support data-informed care.”
Note Assist is Partnering with Upheal, an AI-native medical record platform Ritter explained that the aim is to create tools that will reduce time to market and “provide real, immediate value to customers.”
“They were great to work with. After vetting multiple vendors and soliciting feedback from our own members, it was clear that Upheal’s technology offered the best and highest quality clinical documentation experience,” he said.
“Upheal aligns with our company values and shares their commitment to supporting mental health providers, incorporating provider feedback throughout product development, and prioritizing data security and privacy. We also appreciate Upheal’s agility to quickly address our feedback.”
Note Assist is designed to help providers save time so they can focus on their client sessions. Testing of the tool’s early users showed that Alma providers spent 50% less time completing progress notes. Additionally, 88% said the tool was easy to use and saved them time. This time savings can help reduce provider burnout, which an American Psychological Association survey found 36% of providers suffer from burnout.
“We want to be a one-stop shop for providers, giving them everything they need to run a thriving practice within our network and provide excellent, quality care. Note Assist plays a key role in that vision, helping mental health providers save time and connect more closely with their clients,” Ritter said.
