GIMBHI‘s Q&A with Vitalic’s Founder, Ben Gardner

Ben has 25+ years of experience driving sales, building businesses, and evangelizing new approaches in healthcare. He’s a growth-oriented leader with a track-record of opening new markets and building businesses that deliver high performance growth. Most recently, Ben was SVP of Sales and Marketing at Array Behavioral Care, a national telepsychiatry provider where he led year over year 20%+ growth from 2020-2023 while rightsizing (20% reduction) the sales organization. Ben also led the development of a new delivery model aimed at helping payers reduce unnecessary ED visits for BH patients. Prior, Ben was a member of the executive team leading growth with Archway Health a leading value-based care analytics company from 2015-2020. Before Archway, Ben was Founder and CEO of Linkwell Health, an innovative consumer engagement platform leveraging the power of brands and retailers for health insurers. Ben has a BA from Bentley University


What problem is Vitalic solving?

70% of people 65+ don't get the adequate behavioral health support they desperately need, and 11k more join that age group every single day. By 2060, seniors will account for a quarter of the country—so this issue is growing fast.

Untreated anxiety, depression, and loneliness don't just reduce quality of life for patients, they drive up costs across every other condition an aging adult may have. Older adults with diabetes, heart disease, COPD and an undiagnosed BH condition lead to more emergency-room visits and unnecessary utilization on the system as a whole, and often cost their health plan 3x what their peers with no BH issues cost. Yet the healthcare system has largely ignored this group. While billions have been invested in BH over the last decade bringing innovative models and care to many age groups in need including pediatrics, we've seen very little investments for the aging adult population who are driving a disproportionate share of our healthcare spend. While younger populations now embrace behavioral health, many seniors still suffer from stigma and limited mobility, and as a result, aren't able to, or are reluctant to engage in traditional outpatient models where the member has to proactively reach out for care.

Compounding this growing issue, MA plans have seen revenue and margin compression this past year. Payers now have a greater focus on reducing unnecessary utilization to improve their medex, and investing in geriatric-specialized mental health care for this expensive cohort not only improves the quality of care and lives, but also provides an ROI.


Who do you partner with and what does that partnership look like?

We team up with Medicare Advantage plans and other providers who hold financial risk for this higher acuity and more expensive population. Our first job is to identify members who need help (using claims data, social-determinant flags, prior diagnoses, etc.), and then we outreach them directly (not waiting for a self-referral that will seldom come on its own).

Once enrolled, each patient gets a dedicated care team: a coach, therapist, nurse practitioner, and a geriatric psychiatrist. They guide the member through an initial 8-12 week intensive model of care, then to a lighter maintenance phase that can last up to eight months. The model was designed by my co-founder Michelle Hoy and our CMO Dr. Jules Rosen, and it’s been validated in multiple peer-reviewed journals.

Financially, we keep it simple with a single bundled case rate. Under the hood, tech/AI supports everything: automated outreach, personalized content, real-time decision support for clinicians, and operational dashboards for our payer partners. The result is a tech-enabled, human-delivered partnership that aligns incentives from day one to provide the specialized care that this population requires.


How do you measure and provide value to a payer?

We’re highly confident in our care model, and we're putting a percentage of our fees at risk. If avoidable ED visits, readmissions, or other high-cost events are reduced, and quality measures and patient outcomes improve, everybody wins. It’s a clear, claims-based ROI that CFOs understand.

Better diagnoses are the second lever. This population's behavioral health conditions, as mentioned earlier, are undertreated and under-diagnosed. By identifying and treating those conditions, we improve RAF scores and give payers more resources to reinvest in care.

To make all of this transparent, our AI-driven platform tracks every interaction and measure that is important to our partner. Our partners et a real-time scoreboard, not a year-end PDF, and we get the data we need to keep improving the program.

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