Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 752: Mentaya. Empowering Therapists & Clients with Christine Li

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Episode 752: Mentaya. Empowering Therapists & Clients with Christine Li · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapists be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right,
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So here we go. So five four three two one our folks, welcome
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back to the podcast. Very excited to have us. My guest today Christine
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Lee. Christine welcome, Thank you so much. I'm excited to be on
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awesome So. Christine is a founder and CEO of MENTAIA, a company that
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helps private practice therapists go their revenue and private play client base by leveraging out
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of network benefits to bring client costs down closer to a cope. They instantly
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check clients benefits and automatically file out of network claims to help your clients get
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reimbursed. It's win win with Mentaya. Collect the full feed you deserve whilst
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significantly lowering cost for your clients. Christine is a strong advocate for mental health
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and left your job as a Google product manager to start Mentaya. All right,
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welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. So before we go
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in here, Christine share where the listeners, where you're from originally and where
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you are currently. So I am I'm from the Bay Area. So I
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grew up in San Jose, Paul Alto in the Bay Area, and then
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i am now in San Francisco, so I'm not far away from works.
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Okay, okay, awesome, So let's we're going to talk about Mantya and
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the details and the nitty gritty of it. But how did this start for
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you? How did this advocacy for in mental health or mental health begin?
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Yeah, so, I unfortunately went to high school in Paul Alto with a
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lot of mental health issues. Teen suicides were pretty common at my school,
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and you know, as a teenager or preteen, I guess starting high school,
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I didn't even really know what mental health was, I think, but
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I really just saw the impact that it had on people's lives and it's honestly
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just stuck with me ever since I ended up going to I went to Princeton
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and I studied computer science, but I actually dedicated the senior my senior year
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to writing a thesis around how to use technology to actually help improve patient outcomes
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and mental health care. And have been following the mental health space really closely
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since. But really what made me start Mentia was just wanting to make a
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difference in the space. I've seen other companies in the mental health space start
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popping up over the years, but one thing that stuck out to me was
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that a lot of these companies are making mental healthcare more accessible, but they're
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not really empowering therapists, and if anything, they're just paying therapists less in
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order to do that. And so that always felt weird to me, because,
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I mean, we are dependent on therapists and mental health workers to sort
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of help us out of it, especially during COVID help us sort of with
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our mental health and h and deal with all of this, and we are
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basically punishing them by paying them less to make mental healthcare more accessible. And
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so with Mentie, I wanted to do something different. We still want to
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make mental healthcare more accessible, but I wanted to make it do it in
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a way that also empower therapists to run successful private practices and build a sustainable
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living for themselves and not just you know, be paid very little work.
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So that was important to me. All right, But I want I want
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to go back a little bit because it's it's, you know, to be
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how you described it, to be a preteen getting into that situation going to
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a school being surrounded. I mean, that is that's that's no joke,
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that's intense. How did you How did you manage that yourself personally? I
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mean with all you know, people around you suiciding as you said, I
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mean, oh, yeah, this is so I had actually, you know
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how I said, I grew up in San Jose and Paul Alto. So
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I actually grew up in San Jose. I had moved to Paul Too right
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around the time when they started happening for high school, and so I was
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very shocked to move to a new school here about all of this stuff.
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And I really, I really don't think I knew how to process it.
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I think it kind of we all understood at my school that this was a
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thing. We kind of talked about it. People were like, oh,
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if you want to seek mental health care, if you need help, you
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know, call these numbers or come to our school counselors. But it wasn't
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that was back then when it was still a little stigmatized. You know,
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it wasn't really as and center as it is now. And it's a lot
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more desigmatized now, which is great, But I think back then it was
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kind of you just knew that it happened, and a lot of it didn't
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make the news, right, Like, there were people struggling with a lot
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of mental health issues. I had friends dealing with things, and I think
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you kind of just do your best to support the people around you, but
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there's only so much you can do. And so that was kind of tough
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for me because I've definitely I had friends going through stuff and you know,
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I tried my best to help support them, and some of them ended up
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okay, and some of them ended up not as great. So that was
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kind of just hard to to see and and just made me realize the important
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So, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. So when when you go
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off to college to Princeton, are you thinking, what I'm going to pursue
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computer science? Is the mental health things in the back of your head?
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Yeah, it's actually funny, I don't. I wasn't like, oh,
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because of this, I am now super interested in mental health. I think
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I didn't even really know what mental health was. I was still kind of
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processing it, but I just had a natural inclination towards it. So I
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was always very I was always very interested in stem like science and math.
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I actually didn't want to city computer science because I was from the Bay Area.
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I was like, let me try something different. I don't want to
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just be in tech because that's sort of what I grew around, grew up
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around. End up doing it anyway, because it was sort of where my
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interests lie. But I didn't want to just do tech for tech sake.
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I felt like computer science and tech was sort of this tool that can enable
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me to make an impact in spaces that I cared about. And I think
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naturally, I just gravitated towards even having friends who cared about mental health,
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and I always talked about it and I knew how important it was, and
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I went to therapy for the first time in college and I found it super
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helpful for me. And so I think it wasn't like a defining moment where
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I was like, now I am really interested in mental health care just was
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kind of always there, and I don't even know that I consciously realized it,
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right, but I also did. I remember I actually took time off
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from college and I actually worked in venture capital for a little bit back in
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twenty sixteen, and I looked into the mental healthcare space. That was one
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of the few spaces I was like gung ho on. I was like,
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there needs to be more innovation here. There needs to be more companies in
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this area actually doing good, and there was. It was pretty limited back
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then. It was just like some meditation apps, and there weren't really any
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companies back then. And so even back then I think I was I was
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really thinking about thinking about mental health and sort of had this vision around what
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I wanted the world to be like in this space. So when you sat
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down, when you said, okay, I'm gonna move forward with this.
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I want to get into this space and you founded Mentia. First of all,
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I love the name. Does it have any significance because it just kind
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of rolls off come there, Yeah, MENTI I mean kind of think of
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it as we wanted something that represented sounded like mental health, like mental but
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in a way that felt more very positive and sort of light and very easy
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and not this like super long, complicated name because it is of our platform
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trying to simplify things and make things easier. Okay, so let's break it
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down. Yes, how does this help a therapist? So, I know
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a lot of therapists are always sort of asking like do I want to take
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insurance or do I want to be private pay? I know a lot of
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therapists want more private pay clients. But obviously if you're not working with insurance,
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it's a lot more expensive for clients. And so what we do is
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we help therapists basically win over private big clients who might be otherwise on the
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fence by helping clients understand their out of network benefits and use them to get
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reimbursed for therapy. And so, for example, if you're a therapist,
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let's say your fee is I don't know, two hundred dollars a session,
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and you say, hey, my fees two hundred. I don't take insurance,
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that's it. Or maybe I can give you a super bill and like
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you can figure all that stuff out yourself. Most clients are going to be
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like that's kind of expensive, Like I'm not really sure. But if you
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say, hey, look my fees two hundred, I know it don't take
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insurance, but that doesn't mean that you can't use your insurance to actually get
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reimbursed from my services. I can check check your benefits for you immediately,
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see what they are, see how much you can get reimbursed, and then
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I work with Mentide to actually submit claims for you and make sure that we're
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actually sending of these insurance claims to your insurance company, getting you reimburse the
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amount you deserve, and helping bridge that gap between a network and private pay
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therapy. Does that make sense? It does make sense. So when the
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therapist, as in this example, you know I can help you. I
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can look into this. Basically Mentiah is doing the heavy lifting in this case.
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Yes we're doing Yes, Oh go for it. So does it?
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Therapists sign on with you? How this is a subscription model? What kind
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of model is so? Our platform? We have two main parts to our
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platform. We have an instant benefits calculator. So that's the thing I was
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i mentioned earlier, where we can you put in your information and transformation data,
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birth, et cetera, and we will immediately check someone's benefits. That
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is something that a therapist will pay a subscription fee for. It is twenty
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nine dollars a month and it is optional. It is month to month.
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You can cancel or pause anytime, and this is helpful for therapists who want
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to sort of help on their initial consultation calls and get clients over the fence
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to start therapy. So that's the first part and that's the only part that
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therapists paid for. The second part is it's like, let's say you of
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this client, they have these out of network benefits, They're excited, They're
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like, yes, I'm ready to start. How do I actually use it?
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So our second part is we actually submit the claim for clients and it's
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free for therapists, but we charge the client a five percent fee to cover
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the cost of submitting the claim and not only subody in the claim, but
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it comes with a guarantee that we will get the claim submitted successfully to insurance,
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even if that means we have to call insurance, we have to push
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back on them, we have to resubmit the claims the codes are wrong.
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We take care of everything well around the claim submission, and we guarantee that
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it goes through or we give a full refund of our fees to the clients.
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Wow. So in this situation again, you're doing all the work.
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Yes, all the MENTA is doing all the legwork right, which a lot
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of therapists find what laborsome confusing labyrinthian. Yes, I mean there's a reason
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why therapists are like, here's the super billa. Good look, you know,
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like call your insurance, here are some questions you can ask, go
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figure it out yourself. Most therapists just don't have the time, or the
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bandwidth, or just even desire to want to deal with any of the admin
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stuff. There's a reason why you want to have private paid clients. You
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don't want to deal with insurance, and we're sort of taking that burden off
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of you and or your client. We take care of all of that so
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that you and your client can focus on therapy, which is presumably what you
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know you want to focus on and what you're really good at. You said
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earlier on you know there are a lot of you recognize there are all out
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of mental health platforms out there, but you wanted to do something different.
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How would you say this is different? What you guys are doing is different
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were unique. Yeah, so we are. We're meeting therapists where they are.
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We're not trying to force them to take insurance, We're not trying to
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force them to get paid less. We are saying you get paid your full
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fee, whatever that may be, and we will help basically make your fee
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and your services more accessible to clients by using your clients out of network benefits.
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So it's very much of do it your way rather than like forcing therapists
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to come into our system and do it our way. It's like, if
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you want to get you want to charge one fifty, you want to charge
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three hundred, you want to charge whatever fee you feel like you deserve,
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and its sustainable for you. We will support you in that, and we're
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working with your clients to get them reimbursed so that your services can be as
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affordable as possible without you actually having to compromise on your pay It seems to
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me as though it gives therapists this kind of confidence and leverage to reach even
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more potential perspective clients exactly. So you can think of it for clients as
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like a lot of clients probably don't even realize they can get reimbursed for therapy,
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so they're just essentially overpaying or not or losing out on getting reimbursed thousands
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of dollars a year, and so those are for some clients and for other
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clients it might make the difference between whether or not they're able to even access
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your services, right, Like, maybe you know your full fee, they
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can't, But if they know they can get reimbursed, they are okay,
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paying your full fee and getting that reimbursement, and that opens up access to
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a lot more clients. When did you guys start We started in twenty twenty
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one, so it's been a few years. Okay, okay, and what
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have you found? What has been some feedback from therapists. We generally get
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pretty good feedback from therapists. They love the product. I think everyone.
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I think the number one thing is everyone's always surprised at how easy it is,
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because you think, oh, here's some new platform. I have to
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learn it. It's going to be complicated. And all the product demos we've
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done, we give some product demos to therapists, everyone's just like, is
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that it Like that's all realize as you like, you know, set it
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up and you like click this thing, and that's it. I think that's
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pretty much. That's the biggest piece of feedback we've gotten, which is,
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wow, this is so easy, Like I didn't realize that it could be
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so easy. And also we've heard a lot about how it's actually helped empower
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their practice. You know, we take care of all of that. You
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don't have to respress about any of the insurance stuff, out of network stuff.
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We take care of that, and it helps a lot of their clients
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ultimately feel comfortable, you know, staying in therapy and not having to worry
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as much about out the financial bourbon. And then just pause here to thank
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our sponsors again. We're speaking with Christine Lee, founder of Mentia. Would
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be back in two seconds, all right, Christine. So, when a
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therapist, let's say a client calls up a therapist blah blah blah, does
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the therapist at that time inform the client of Mentia or how how does that
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interaction work? Yeah, so a lot of therapists actually this is this is
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my favorite part. So therapists are like, I didn't realize how useful this
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would be in consultation calls because usually, especially if you're private pay or you
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know, you maybe don't take someone's insurance. Inevitably, some client will ask,
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you know, do take my insure? Do you take insurance? And
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then it's this awkward like, oh no, I don't. Here's my full
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feel. But you can, you know, maybe look at super bills and
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whatnot. But instead, now what they're for say is, hey, look,
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I don't take your insurance, but if you have your insurance card ready
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on hand, I just need your name, get a birth and insurance ID,
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and I can just look at your benefits immediately tell you what you might
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be able to get reimbursed. And so you're basically keeping the client on the
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call. You tell them, hey, you might be able to get reimbursed,
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and this is how much you can't reimbursed. MENTI will take care of
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all of this, right, work with a service that takes care of it,
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and you can basically convert the client of the spot to start therapy with
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you instead. Wow, So give us an example of what that conversion might
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look like. What that what the difference is that meantime might bring. Yeah,
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that's a great question. That was actually I was getting into, which
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is normally you say, hey, I don't know your benefits. You have
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to call your insurance company. Here are some you know, questions you can
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ask, I can give you a super bill, and then you just have
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to hope that the client is going to take time out other day during business
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hours to go and call insurance companies for like an hour and be put on
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hold and switched around and then come back to you and be like, hey,
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I'm in seeing you. But in contrast, now you can basically skip
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that whole part and just tell clients their benefits on the spot and then focus
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the conversation on are we a good fit? Do you want to start therapy
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with me now that we've sort of gotten the financial piece out of the way.
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Yeah. Interesting again, it seems seems it seems like you've thought about
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a lot of this, a lot of what therapists going through and the awkwardness
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and trying to not only just avoid that but kind of empower both the therapist
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and the client to again, as you said, focus on what's going on
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here is the ability to get therapy and deliver therapy. Yes, presumably don't
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go into this to deal with admin work or insurance right A lot people,
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that is why you go into this job, right right, So getting back
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to the whole landscape out there of online therapists, providers. There's a lot
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of stuff going on there. When you decided to create mentia, how did
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you say to yourself or in what way do you say, Okay, I
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want to do something different. What did you see out there that needed to
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be done differently? M I think the main thing was I think a lot
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about incentive alignment in healthcare. A lot of times in healthcare, incentives are
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not aligned. You either help the patient or you help the provider. It's
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rare where you sort of help both. And I thought a lot about this,
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and I was like, is there a way to sort of help both?
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Because all this stuff out there is like, we're making therapy cheaper,
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right, But the way they do that is they pay therapists last to make
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therapy cheaper. And so I was like, there must be some way where
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we can try to do both. And then I found out about super bills
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and out of network benefits, and I was like, why don't people know
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about this? I was talking to a bunch of my friends, all going
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to therapy. None of us knew that about or even understood out of network
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benefits. I mean, I can go on about the US healthcare system.
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It is crazy, and so they don't make it easy for people to understand.
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And so that's sort of where I got the idea where I was like,
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ooh, this is this insurance is this complex space no one wants to
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deal with. There don't want to deal with insurance. That's why most therapists
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don't take insurance. And and you know, consumers have no idea how to
19:33
use their benefits, and so I was like, we could really sort of
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fill this gap and empower therapists to work outside of the insurance system but still
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use the insurance benefits for their clients to essentially subsidize part of the cost of
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therapy. So for those listening, how would you define or what are out
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of network benefits? So out of network benefits are insurance benefits that most plans
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have. Not all plans have it, but most plans have it where if
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you see a therapist who is not in network or who does not take your
20:10
insurance, you can still basically file an insurance claim with your insurance to get
20:17
reimbursed for a portion of the cost of the services. So just because your
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therapist or any provider you see does not take insurance. That does not mean
20:26
that that you just pay their cash ing paither cash rain, but you can
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still get insurance to reimburse a portion of the cost. Again, so it's
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it's the win win. Just sounds right to say, but it's it is
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you're empowering both the client and the therapist here. So something that I mean
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A therapists need to know about this, Yes, I mean yes they do.
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I think once they find out, they're like where has this been?
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Or like why I haven't heard about this? So yes, I completely agree,
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right right, So who would you say is your kind of your target
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audience? Is it all therapists? Our target audience is and who we work
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really well with our therapists and private practice who are either there's a couple of
21:18
different categories. There are therapists who take insurance who are pretty much fully in
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network. They take insurance, but they want to get more private pay clients.
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They want to sort of start getting off of insurance panels. That is
21:30
a segment of therapists we work really well with. We also work really well
21:33
with therapists who are you know, part insurance, part private pay and want
21:37
to just become entirely private pay and not have to deal with insurance or billing
21:41
or any of that. And then we also work really well with therapists who
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are currently private pay and looking to grow in the private pay space. So
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if you're like, I'm trying to look for more private pay clients, or
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if you're like a solo practice growing into a group practice or a group practice
21:56
trying to expand your practice, any therapist who is looking for more private paid
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clients we work really well with. If you're like, I'm looking for more
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insurance clients, that's maybe that's not really our target market. We are helping
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therapists with private paid clients specifically. Okay, okay, So as we kind
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of wind down here, therapist goes to the mentai dot com right, and
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what's the onboarding process? How does that work? Oh, it's it's super
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easy. You go to menti dot com. You basically go to the therapist
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page. You can look through it, you click get started, and then
22:30
you sign up. And the sign up process is basically email password, verify
22:34
your email, and then put in some things like your MPI and whether you're
22:38
a group practice or a solo practice, and that's it. Basically, it
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takes literally thirty seconds or a minute to create an account, and then we
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also have a product demo you can book optionally if you want someone to walk
22:51
you through how to set up your account. We have a dedicated support line
22:55
that we respond very regularly too, but it's super easy to set up,
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and then we're also here to help and give any guidance that that people need.
23:03
Wow. Awesome, alright, Christine, amazing. I mean it's it's
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kind of refreshing to hear of this product that is again both empowering the client
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and the therapist. Yes, yes, we really wanted to be a win
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win for both. Awesome. All right, Look, I know a lot
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of therapists listening are going to be Okay, let me find out about this.
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What's the best way to contact you, Christine, or get or learn
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more about Mantya obviously. Yeah. So our website is Mentia dot com m
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E n t a ya dot com. If you want to reach out to
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me directly, you can reach out to Christine at mentia dot com, or
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you can reach out to our support line, which we have faster responses due
23:45
generally, which is just support atmanti dot com. Awesome, all right,
23:48
we'll have all this linked up at the show notes page at the Traumatist podcast
23:52
dot com. Christine, awesome, so inspiring. I mean, your story
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is really inspiring. And then just appreciate you coming on here and sharing this.
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Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. All right,
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we'll be in touch. Take care, all right. Thanks