The rise of interventional psychiatry

Interventional psychiatry

Interventional psychiatry is a specialized field within psychiatry that employs advanced procedural interventions, like neurostimulation and pharmacological infusions, to treat complex mental health conditions. I’ve been super curious about the business of interventional psychiatry especially as ketamine, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and other novel interventions have gained traction.

According to Epic Research, ketamine prescription rates per 100k patients have increased by 5x between 2017 and 2022.

Interestingly enough, recreational ketamine use over the past decade has skyrocketed as well. The total weight of ketamine seized in the United States grew from 127 pounds in 2017 to about 1,550 pounds in 2022, marking an increase of more than 1,100%, indicating a serious rise in nonmedical and recreational use.

However, despite the efficacy and popularity of these treatments, there has been a slew of high-profile companies operating ketamine and TMS clinics that have shut down including Field Trip Health, which raised over $90M in capital.

We are interested in learning more about the second wave of interventional psychiatry clinics that will likely fare better. GIMBHI connected with Simon Tankel, Founder & CEO of Heading Health, to learn more about the company and the future of interventional psychiatry. If you’re interested in connecting with him, feel free to email him at simon@headinghealth.com.

If you’re interested in working with GIMBHI or doing a Founder Q&A with us, email me at shiv@gimbhi.com!

Tell us about Heading Health.

Heading Health is a precision psychiatry care provider, initially focused on chronic outpatient depression and PTSD patients and specializing in somatic centers of excellence. Our care plan triages patients across virtual psychotherapy, psychiatry, nutrition as well as in center ketamine treatments - all to enable patients to get better as quickly as possible and stay better.

”Today we have 3 centers in Texas for somatic modalities which means ketamine today, and in the next few years could involve MDMA, psilocybin or the new TMS protocols which look to be extremely rapid acting”

Everything we do is covered by all major insurance plans to enable us to treat those who need it most, and lean into our payor partnerships focused on long term outcomes + total cost of care versus distracting DTC dynamics.

What do you think the future of interventional psychiatry is?

“Specialized centers of excellence, the new modalities such as Spravato and the coming psychedelics require operating economies of scale vs being deployed as a bolt on treatment to a legacy psychiatry office.”

Covered by insurance, as the average patient at Heading pays $20 out of pocket and the days of cash pay ketamine treatments for $200-600/treatment will be behind us with a few exceptions. Local density, as this is a winning playbook across multisite healthcare owing to shorter drive times and other synergies including marketing.

If you wrote a book and you could only write one, what would it be named and why?

“Utilization and its discontents.” With several well known players either shutting clinics or shutting down entirely in the past year this is not an easy business to master.

“The treatments are highly effective (we see an average drop of 40% in PHQ-9 in the first month) but the byzantine requirements of insurance, arranging transportation and getting time off work deters many patients from beginning treatment altogether.”