PayrollPlans, Woebot Health, and Curai Health have announced a groundbreaking partnership to offer a digital-first benefits experience to traditionally underserved employees and their families. It enables the more than two million small- to medium-sized businesses employing 70 million Americans to provide their employees with easy access to unlimited, high-quality, affordable mental health support tools and primary care services. We sat down with CEO Michael Evers to explore the details of the collaboration and to find out how it will impact people and businesses across the United States. 

Tell us a bit about the company behind PayrollPlans, IAG.

It’s a national employee benefits provider that has made innovative and cost-effective health plans available to more than 2,500 small- to medium-sized companies. Those companies’ employees work in hospitality, staffing, and medical services, and they haven’t typically been able to access healthcare benefits because they don’t work full-time. IAG has completely transformed access to care for these people and their families.

What makes this collaboration unique?

It reinforces a movement we’re seeing in the market around behavioral health integration, where primary care and behavioral health are integrated into how people access healthcare, and support tools like ours can be provided via a clinically-mediated pathway. It’s special for us because we’re going to be able to reach a much larger population of people in need. It also shows the growing applicability of our technology, which has been shown to address well-documented equity and accessibility gaps.

Is it also unique for the industry?

Definitely. PayrollPlans is far and away the leader in the employee benefits space, and now they are the first to combine innovative technologies to create virtual-first, affordable mental health support and primary care. This goes to what PayrollPlans’ founder, J. Marshall Dye, is genuinely passionate about. Decades ago, he saw a population of people who didn’t have the same access to benefits that everybody deserves, and there were no vehicles for smaller-sized employers to offer them. Now PayrollPlans is using AI to advance access to primary care and mental health support tools and drive down the cost of care. Every company in this collaboration – PayrollPlans, Woebot Health, and Curai Health – has complementary missions focused on expanding access to healthcare and mental well-being for the health and welfare of employees. 

You talk about driving down the cost of care. How might a collaboration like this help do that?

We know if we can get mental health support tools to the person in their moment of need, the potential cost savings down the line are significant. For example, we’ve seen studies (not related to Woebot) indicating outpatient behavioral health care can reduce emergency room visits and inpatient hospitalizations, leading to potential healthcare cost savings of up to $1,377 per patient, per year. While Woebot for Adults doesn’t provide health care services, it can offer access to mental health support at any time. In doing that, it can offload the burden on the limited number of available clinicians so they can focus on more serious cases. If you’re a small employer, that could be significant because if one of your 25 employees is out, that could impact your business’ livelihood.

Does this collaboration represent a new direction for Woebot Health? 

It’s a giant step toward our founder’s and company’s goal to provide radical access to mental health. Over the last six years, nearly 1.5 million people have downloaded Woebot. Working with IAG, we now have a way to reach far more: tens of millions of employees at small- to medium-sized businesses. That is an incredible opportunity to help people in need of mental health support tools. It also underscores a strategy we’ve aimed to implement all along: to integrate Woebot within a care ecosystem across a broad swath of populations. This is really the first time we’ve been able to extend access to Woebot to so many people. It’s why we think offering Woebot in this way, primarily via partners vs. simply in app stores, is how we’ll reach more people in need.

What’s next?

This is the beginning for a collaboration that will only grow. We expect to work with IAG and Curai Health to extend and expand access to primary care and mental health support tools to other markets, such as the hospitality, staffing, and medical services industries. We’re really excited to see just how far we can go and how many people we can help.

Please note: Woebot for Adults is a non-prescription medical device under FDA enforcement discretion; it is not evaluated, cleared or approved by FDA. It is not intended to diagnose, monitor, treat or prevent any disease. It may be considered as an adjunct to clinical care, it does not replace clinical care.”