#15 The Platform-Provider Problem
Why providers are frustrated and what platforms must do to make amends
Hi friends,
What the hell is going on between therapists and mental health platforms right now?
Last week, Spring Health announced a $100m Series E and this is the first post I saw about it on LinkedIn…
Not exactly congratulatory.
I read the comments and it became clear that lots of providers were frustrated - both with Spring and other MH platforms.
There’s a deep frustration within the provider community right now and it’s started to worry me.
We’re facing a mental health crisis, the size of which currently exceeds all of our combined capabilities and resources. And yet here we have two important parties (providers and MH platforms) in massive tension with each other.
The enemy is coming over the walls and we’re fighting over who gets the shinier piece of armour.
I wanted to get to the bottom of this tension, to understand exactly where it’s coming from and what we can do to resolve it.
So this week, I play marriage counsellor and have been spending the last few days having conversations with both parties.
In this post, I share what I learned about the compensation, clinical and communication challenges faced by therapists as well as how platforms are creating this tension by not truly understanding the labour of therapy.
And because we all want solutions (right?) I share how what platforms and providers need to do to find alignment and get back to working together on the problem we all care about solving.
Happy families once again!
This is a very thorough analysis. One thing that isn't called out that has significantly eroded trust with providers is provider layoffs. These layoffs have devastated providers and clients alike. Companies continue to "threaten" or "hint" at layoffs. They continue to shave benefits off for W2 employees so that they can chase the bottom of what they can get away with paying providers. I have also heard non-clinical members of these companies refer to providers as "fungible" and "supply," and otherwise de-humanize both them and the critical services they provide.