Item 1. Business
Item 1 . Business
Overview
LifeStance Health Group, Inc. ("LifeStance Health Group", "LifeStance Health", "LifeStance" or the “Company”) was formed as a Delaware corporation on January 28, 2021. The Company was formed for the purpose of completing a public offering and related transactions (collectively referred to as the “IPO”) in order to carry on the business of LifeStance TopCo, L.P. and subsidiaries.
Our vision is a truly healthy society where mental and physical healthcare are unified to make lives better. Our mission is to help people lead healthier, more fulfilling lives by improving access to trusted, affordable and personalized mental health care. To fulfill this mission, we have built one of the nation’s largest outpatient mental health platforms based on number of clinicians and geographic scale.
We are dedicated to improving the lives of our patients by reimagining mental health through a disruptive, tech-enabled in-person and virtual care delivery model built to expand access and affordability, improve outcomes and lower overall health care costs. We combine a personalized, digitally-powered patient experience with differentiated clinical capabilities and in-network insurance relationships to fundamentally transform patient access to mental health treatment. By revolutionizing the way mental health care is delivered, we believe we have, an opportunity to improve the lives and health of millions of individuals.
We employed 4,790 licensed mental health clinicians through our subsidiaries and affiliated practices in 32 states as of December 31, 2021. Our clinicians offer patients a comprehensive suite of mental health services, spanning psychiatric evaluations and treatment, psychological and neuropsychological testing, and individual, family and group therapy. We treat a broad range of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, psychotic disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. Patients can receive care virtually through our online delivery platform or in-person at one of our conveniently located centers. Through our more than 250 payor relationships, including national agreements with multiple payors, patients can utilize their in-network benefits when they receive care from one of our clinicians, enhancing access and affordability.
Mental illness is a large and growing crisis that creates a significant burden on the healthcare ecosystem. One in five U.S. adults and one in six youths will experience mental illness each year and over 50% of adults will experience mental health issues during their lifetime. This incidence has been worsening in recent decades. This prevalence makes mental health a greater disease burden than cancer or heart disease. This disease burden has a broader impact across all of healthcare—healthcare costs for individuals with mental health conditions, including depression, have been shown to be approximately three and a half times higher than for people without those conditions.
However, there are significant barriers to addressing this crisis:
• Lack of Access: Despite this large burden, access to mental health treatment is plagued by significant challenges. Even if patients are able to access a mental health professional, studies show they often face significant wait times of up to one to two months. During this time, their underlying physical and mental health issues may worsen, potentially requiring treatment in costlier care settings like hospitals, emergency rooms and inpatient mental facilities.
• Lack of Affordability : Nearly 50% of outpatient mental health clinicians do not accept any form of commercial insurance, forcing patients to pay cash out-of-pocket for treatment and, therefore, reducing the likelihood that patients will receive treatment. In a 2018 survey, nearly one in four people reported needing to choose between getting mental health treatment and paying for daily necessities.
• Lack of Scale and Organization: Outpatient mental health is highly fragmented. We believe that independent clinicians are burdened with significant non-clinical business demands, including marketing, payor contracting, billing and collecting, and other administrative tasks, impeding their ability to focus on their patients’ care. A corresponding lack of resources to invest in infrastructure and technology exacerbates these burdens, even as growing regulatory and compliance requirements increase the need for them. This lack of technology further constrains access issues—for example, through limited or no virtual capabilities—while impeding the ability to effectively track patient data and outcomes as needed to ensure care is being delivered effectively.
• Lack of Care Coordination: Many primary care physicians and specialists are not well-equipped to identify and treat patients with mental health conditions, resulting in many patients receiving treatments only once their condition has been exacerbated or not receiving treatment at all. This limited access to treatment has a significant social and economic impact. According to the Center for Prevention and Health Services, nearly 217
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million work days are lost annually to absenteeism and reduced productivity due to mental health issues, resulting in an estimated increased annual cost to employers of nearly $17 billion.
We founded LifeStance to solve these challenges. More broadly, we recognized that addressing this unmet need would require a transformation of how mental health care is built and delivered. We developed powerful incentives for each of our stakeholders—patients, clinicians, payors and primary care and specialist physicians—to align with our mission, adopt our platform and drive our growth.
We Provide Patients Access to Convenient, Affordable, High-Quality Care
We are the front-door to comprehensive outpatient mental health care. Our clinicians offer patients comprehensive services to treat mental health conditions across the clinical spectrum. Our in-network payor relationships improve patient access by allowing patients to access care without significant out-of-pocket cost or delays in receiving treatment. Our personalized, data-driven comprehensive care meets patients where they are through convenient virtual and in-person settings. Three quarters of patients prefer in-person mental healthcare. We support our patients throughout their care continuum with purpose-built technological capabilities, including online assessments, digital provider communication, and seamless internal referral and follow-up capabilities.
We Empower Clinicians to Improve the Lives of Their Patients
We empower clinicians to focus on patient care and relationships by providing what we believe is a superior workplace environment, as well as clinical and technology capabilities to deliver high-quality care. We offer a unique employment model for clinicians in a collaborative clinical environment—with clinicians employed by our subsidiaries and affiliated practices—and we improve patient access through in-network payor contracts and primary care and specialist physician referrals. Our integrated platform and national infrastructure reduce administrative burdens for clinicians while increasing engagement and satisfaction. Our digital platform enables collaboration across the clinician team. Our clinicians are dedicated to our mission—in 2021, we were Certified by Great Place to Work, the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience and leadership behaviors proven to deliver market-leading revenue, employee retention and increased innovation.
We Improve Outcomes and Reduce Costs for Payors and Their Members
We partner with payors to deliver access to high-quality outpatient mental health care to their members at scale. Long-term analyses demonstrate that $1 spent on collaborative mental health care saves $6.50 in total medical costs, representing a compelling opportunity for us to drive improved health outcomes and significant cost savings. Through our validated patient outcomes and extensive scale, we offer payors a pathway to achieving these savings in the broader healthcare system. By offering access to our services, payors also have an opportunity to reduce their employer customers’ significant mental health costs arising from higher employee absenteeism and lower productivity.
We Enable Primary Care and Specialist Physicians to Deliver Superior Care
We collaborate with primary care and specialist physicians to enhance patient care. Primary care is an important setting for the treatment of mental health conditions—primary care physicians are often the sole contact for over 50% of patients with a mental illness . We partner with primary care physicians and specialist physician groups across the country to provide a mental healthcare network for referrals and, in certain instances, through co-location to improve the diagnosis and treatment of their patients. Our measurable patient outcomes also provide primary care and specialist physicians with a valuable, validated treatment path to improve the overall health of our mutual patients.
We Have an Opportunity to Transform Healthcare as a Whole
To truly transform healthcare, the integration of mental and physical care is increasingly recognized as a critical priority. It is estimated that over one-third of all patients with chronic physical diseases have a co-occurring mental health disorder. Our scale, breadth of capabilities and value proposition to our key stakeholders position us to enable this transformation, which we are already undertaking. We co-locate our clinicians to facilitate seamless mental health care treatment and enable collaborative care consultation with other care providers. We have over 10 integrated care programs underway, including partnerships with Medicare Advantage plans, employers, and chronic care providers as we lead efforts that seek to demonstrate the ability of fully-integrated mental health models to improve holistic health outcomes. We envision a future where the coordination and delivery of mental and physical care is accomplished collaboratively between primary care and mental health providers to improve overall patient health, and we are actively working to lead the mental health industry in this direction.
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We Have Experienced Significant Growth
We have a demonstrated track record of growth. Our number of employed clinicians increased from 1,404 as of December 31, 2019, to 3,097 as of December 31, 2020 and to 4,790 as of December 31, 2021.
We generate revenue on a per-visit basis when a patient receives care from one of our clinicians. Depending on the state, our clinicians are either employed directly through our subsidiaries or through our affiliated practices, for which we manage day-to-day operations pursuant to long-term management services contracts. Our revenue is generally derived from in-network insurance coverage, pursuant to which our subsidiaries or affiliated practices are reimbursed for patient services. For the year ended December 31, 2021, 90% of our revenue was derived from commercial in-network payors, 5% of our revenue was derived from government payors, 4% of our revenue was derived from patients on a self-pay basis and 1% of our revenue was derived from non-patient services. Our contracts with payors are typically structured as fee-for-service arrangements, with negotiated reimbursement rates for our clinical services. With respect to our affiliated practices, our revenue is derived from management fees negotiated under our management services contracts. We believe we are well-positioned to grow our revenue by catering to each of our stakeholders and remaining focused on our patient-centered mission.
We estimate that the outpatient mental healthcare market in the United States was approximately $116 billion as of 2020. We expect that the market will nearly double from 2020 to 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 14%, to approximately $215 billion.
We Deliver Value for All Key Stakeholders in the Healthcare Ecosystem
Our model is built to empower each of the healthcare ecosystem’s key stakeholders and align around our shared goal of delivering a healthier life for patients by creating access to high-quality mental health care.
Our Patients Gain Access to High-Quality Care When and Where They Need It
Our clinicians treated more than 570,000 unique patients through approximately 4.6 million visits in 2021. We aim to deliver value to our patients in multiple ways:
• Superior patient experience: We have a relentless focus on delivering a superior experience to our patients. We enable our patients to conveniently see their clinician through their preferred choice of virtual or in-person visits. Three quarters of patients prefer in-person mental healthcare. We optimize patient engagement through our convenient digital tools, including online scheduling, adherence reminders, online prescription refills and online payments. We believe our centers are built to a superior standard that provides our patients with a best-in class visit experience. Enabling our patients and elevating their experience makes them more likely to seek help, resulting in higher engagement and an increased likelihood they will continue treatment. We believe our superior patient experience drives increased patient engagement—in 2021, 84% of our patients have had two or more visits with our clinicians.
• Front door to comprehensive mental health care: We offer comprehensive access to a suite of services to meet our patients’ needs through their mental health care journey. Our patients have access to our comprehensive team of licensed mental health clinicians, including psychiatrists, advanced practice nurses ("APNs"), psychologists and therapists. We use a data-driven digital onboarding process to match patients with clinicians based on their needs and collaborate to develop medically-driven care plans. We believe our breadth of clinical capabilities enables superior coordination among disciplines to deliver our patients the best possible care.
• Increased access and affordability through in-network coverage: We have over 250 payor relationships nationally, which improves access and affordability for our patients. Our in-network patients can seek initial mental health screening, clinical treatment and subsequent therapy or follow-up as needed in a timely manner appropriate for their needs.
• Outcomes-driven, patient-centric care: Through our technology and our outcomes data, we enable patients and their clinicians to track improvements in their well-being, increasing their engagement with care.
Our Clinicians Are Empowered to Focus on Improving the Lives of Their Patients
We deliver value to our clinicians through our "Seven Points of Value" clinician value proposition:
• Mission-driven culture: Our platform enables our clinicians to focus on delivering the best possible care to their patients. We augment their ability to serve their patients through technology tools and data, while freeing them from the many non-clinical burdens they face in independent practice.
• Collegial and collaborative: We promote a clinical culture of collaboration and ongoing learning for our team of mental health professionals. Our clinicians share evidence-based practices and meet regularly for continuing
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education and other collaborative opportunities for learning. They are also strongly supported to work together across disciplines to provide the most comprehensive and clinically effective care possible—often the most effective, evidence-based treatment modality is a combination of psychotherapy and psychiatric medication, and our mix of prescribers and non-prescribers supports the ability to provide optimal patient care.
• Strong work-life balance: Our conveniently located centers and virtual care delivery platform provide our clinicians with greater flexibility and convenience to serve their patients in whatever environment is most suitable. This flexibility improves clinician engagement, efficiency and their overall working environment.
• Enhanced digital tools: We have built a centralized operating platform that enables significant efficiencies for our clinicians, alleviating administrative burden, expanding availability for patient care and improving overall clinician satisfaction. Our unified electronic health record and outcomes tracking platform, combined with our management of day-to-day operational aspects such as marketing, payor contracting, billing and collecting, intake, and scheduling, alleviates administrative burden and improves overall career engagement.
• Robust support services: With our robust support services, we alleviate the administrative burden and free clinicians from the many nonclinical burdens they face in an independent practice, allowing them to dedicate their time to patient care.
• Competitive compensation package: Our clinicians are employed as W-2 employees by our subsidiaries and affiliated practices rather than as independent contractors, the latter of which we believe is more common in the mental healthcare industry in the United States. Additionally, we offer a flexible visit-based economic model, which allows our clinicians to build their patient panels while flexibly managing caseloads in line with clinicians’ personal preferences.
• Ownership mentality : We believe investing in our talent in human capital is paramount. Under our employee equity incentive program, we make grants to eligible employees, including clinicians, beginning in 2022. For clinicians, eligibility for equity awards and vesting are tied to productivity, directly serving our mission of expanding access to mental healthcare at this critical time for the country. We believe our equity program boosts our value proposition in a highly competitive labor market, can help attract and retain the talent needed for our patient-centric business model, and promotes an ownership mindset among our employees, including our clinicians. Just as critically, it aligns with our values and purpose and builds on a history of investment in our team by providing meaningful rewards for furthering our mission of enhancing access to mental healthcare in a sustainable manner over the long term.
Our Payor Partners Expand Access, Improve Outcomes and Lower Costs
We have over 250 in-network payor relationships offering access to our clinician team. We deliver value to our payor partners in several ways:
• Access to a national clinician employee base: We deliver a scaled and comprehensive mental health care offering with an appropriate mix of psychiatric and therapeutic expertise to offer to their members and employer clients.
• Lower total medical costs: Long-term analyses demonstrate that incremental spend on mental health care for patients results in significantly higher savings in total health care costs. As a result, improving access and coverage of mental health care represents a large cost containment opportunity with a compelling return on investment.
• Measurable outcomes: We track major measures of clinical outcomes, quality and utilization. These measures allow us to track the improvement of patients, measure their progress and provide our payor and employer partners with the data to quantify the impact of our care. We believe we are uniquely positioned to offer payors this comprehensive data and outcomes capability within our industry.
• Stronger member and client value proposition: We believe our clinicians provide best-in-class mental health treatment services and experience, which enables payors to provide to their members a superior product. Because mental health conditions can lead to employee absenteeism and lower productivity, we believe our payor partners are also well-positioned to deliver value to their employer clients.
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Our Primary Care and Specialist Physician Partners Can More Effectively Improve the Lives of their Patients
We partner with primary care physicians and specialist physician groups, to deliver improved health outcomes for our shared patients:
• More efficient referral base: We offer our primary care and specialist partners an extensive mental health clinician base for their patients, enabling their patients to receive the best total care across their mental and physical health needs. As we scale nationally, large provider groups can partner with us to streamline their mental health referrals. By having access to our extensive clinical team, primary care and specialist physicians can more easily and consistently connect patients to our clinicians throughout the course of their care.
• Improved outcomes: Through the integration of mental and physical health care, we believe physicians can achieve better outcomes and lower total health care costs to their patients with co-morbidities. Our outcomes also provide our primary care and specialist physician partners with data to assess treatment of our mutual patients.
• Enable more integrated care and lower costs: We believe mental and physical health care integration may help lower costs to our primary care physician partners under reimbursement models where reimbursement rates are tied to quality and value-based outcomes. Our collaborative care model, through our partnerships with primary care physicians, other specialists and payor partners, aims to improve early diagnosis of mental health conditions to drive identification and better treatment, which may lead to improved quality outcomes and lower costs.
Our Strategies for Growth
We believe we are well positioned to sustain our strong track record of growth and accomplish our mission to reimagine mental health care in the United States. To achieve this, we are anchored on our vision to deliver the highest-quality care for our patients and our value proposition to our key stakeholders.
Highly Scalable Platform with Proven Growth Playbook
We believe we have developed a highly replicable playbook that allows us to enter new markets and pursue growth through multiple vectors. To enter new markets, we generally seek to establish our clinician base in those markets by acquiring high-quality practices with a track record of clinical excellence and in-network payor relationships.
Once we enter a market, we build market density by hiring or acquiring clinicians in that market. To drive growth in our clinician base, we have developed an in-house clinician recruiting model that is built on our compelling clinician value proposition. Our proprietary pipeline of clinician groups around the country also provides us with the opportunity to selectively expand our clinician base via tuck-in acquisitions. We believe our guiding principle of creating a national platform built with a patient and clinician focus makes us the partner of choice for smaller, independent practices.
In addition to acquiring and expanding existing practices, we open de novo centers to provide physical locations for our clinicians to deliver on our hybrid model of in-person or virtual care. From our inception through December 31, 2021, we have successfully opened 226 de novo centers and completed 77 acquisitions of existing practices.
Our clinician productivity drives center profitability, as evidenced by our de novo centers generating an attractive and predictable return on investment. All but one of our de novo centers that have been open for 18 months or longer have achieved profitability within that time period.
Expand Presence in Our Existing Markets
We believe we have built a powerful market growth engine that allows us to rapidly grow our presence within our markets and unlock potential latent demand through our differentiated scale, access and affordability. We have a significant opportunity to scale within our existing footprint. We estimate that there are approximately 650,000 mental health clinicians in the United States, which provides us with a meaningful runway to grow from our current base of 4,790 employed clinicians, as of December 31, 2021. Our investments in technology are a critical component of our growth, improving our patient and clinician experience and enabling us to leverage our platform scale to expand our reach. Our virtual and in-person care model allows us to optimize our utilization within our existing center and clinician footprint while flexibly scaling our platform capacity across our markets to meet demand. Our existing payor and primary care physician relationships further support this rapid growth by improving our patient access as we grow in our markets. Our unified technology and operational platform is also highly scalable, helping us sustain our rapid growth.
Enter into New Markets
We believe our model is highly replicable nationally. We identify new markets based on the core characteristics of attractive patient population demographics, substantial clinician recruiting opportunities, untreated patient communities and a
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diverse group of payors. We are able to enter new markets and grow our clinician base in those markets via acquisitions of clinician groups and through clinician hiring. Acquired centers and de novo centers provide a physical location for our clinicians, allowing care to be delivered in-person or virtually based on optimal patient care. Our multiple national payor contracts ensure we have immediate in-network coverage in our new markets, transforming patient access and unlocking potential latent demand. The highly fragmented nature of our industry provides us with significant opportunity to build and expand our presence across the United States.
Consistent with the corporate practice of medicine doctrine, in certain states, we acquire and operate some of our centers as affiliated practices.
Grow Our Partnerships with Key Stakeholders
We enjoy preferred national relationships with payors based on our scale, comprehensive service offering and ability to integrate mental health care. We have over 250 in-network payor relationships. We are focused on improving the lives of our patients through validated outcomes that enable health care cost savings and further increasing our value as a partner to payors, primary care and specialist physicians and employers. Our goal is to continue to closely integrate mental and physical care. We believe that increased integration across the industry could enable payors to realize their population health goals and enable our primary care and specialist physician partners to successfully operate within value-based care and outcomes-driven reimbursement models. As we continue to grow, we see an opportunity to augment the scope of our relationships with each of our stakeholders, including by entering into risk-sharing partnerships. We believe our deepening relationships with each of these key health care stakeholders will further drive our success as we benefit from continued growth in our patient referral networks.
Advance Integrated Care Models
Long-term analyses demonstrate that $1 spent on collaborative mental health care saves $6.50 in total medical costs, representing a compelling opportunity for us to drive improved health outcomes and significant cost savings. We are currently pioneering collaborative care models with our payor partners in several of our markets, embedding mental health clinicians into primary care centers to evaluate and treat patients in a single setting. We co-locate our clinicians in primary care and specialist offices. We are also in programs with partners in certain chronic disease populations to identify and treat co-occurring mental health conditions, with the goal of improving overall health outcomes. Over time, our goal is to continue to evolve our offering toward a fully-integrated care model in which primary care and specialist physicians and mental health clinicians work together to develop and provide personalized treatment plans for shared patients. By collaborating as a team for shared patients, we believe we will not only be able to provide a seamless response to patients’ needs in a unified practice but also deliver better outcomes and lower overall medical costs.
Highly Experienced Executive Team
Our executive team has a proven track record, having successfully founded and led several patient-centric healthcare businesses. Our leadership team has an average of over 20 years of experience across operational, technology and clinical roles in healthcare and technology businesses. We believe our executive team’s extensive experience will continue to drive our success.
Our Integrated Platform Is Reimagining Mental Health
We have purpose-built an integrated platform to reimagine how mental health care is delivered. Our patient-focused platform combines differentiated clinical capabilities with a personalized, digitally-powered patient experience designed to transform patient access and treatment.
Extensive Scale, Breadth and Access
We are reimagining access to mental health care in the United States. We are one of the nation’s largest providers of outpatient mental health care in the country based on the number of clinicians we employ through our subsidiaries and our affiliated practices and our geographic scale, employing 4,790 dedicated clinicians in 32 states, as of December 31, 2021. In 2021, our clinicians treated more than 570,000 unique patients through approximately 4.6 million visits. We serve all patient demographics through a comprehensive suite of mental health services to treat the most common mental health conditions. Our care delivery model enables patient access via virtual or in-person visits, at their convenience. We believe the scale, breadth and depth of our offering is unmatched in our industry.
Our Clinicians
We strive to provide a best-in-class working environment for our 4,790 employed psychiatrists, APNs, psychologists and therapists. We believe our dedicated employment model offers a superior value proposition compared to independent practice. We employ a comprehensive range of mental health professionals to provide multi-disciplinary clinical modalities through our subsidiaries and our affiliated practices. We serve all patient demographics—children, adolescents, adults and
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geriatrics. Patients have seamless access to our team of licensed mental health clinicians, including psychiatrists, APNs, psychologists and therapists. Our breadth of clinical capabilities facilitates coordination across psychiatric and psychotherapy treatment modalities, limiting the need to refer patients externally as their needs are met within our comprehensive service offerings. Our clinicians have access to our digital platform, which allows for shared electronic medical records for internal communication, and facilitates patient referrals within our clinician team, both of which support our collaborative approach to care.
Our Clinical Services
We offer a comprehensive suite of services to meet patients’ needs across their mental health care journey. Our clinicians provide services spanning psychiatric evaluations and treatment, psychological and neuropsychological testing, and individual, family and group therapy. We treat a broad range of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, psychotic disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. We use evidence-based approaches to ensure effective treatment. Our outcomes data is tracked and shared with our clinicians to monitor patient progress and adjust treatment as needed to achieve the best possible patient treatment results.
Our Digital Strategy
We believe that, while advanced digital capabilities are an essential part of the future of mental health care delivery, it is difficult to replicate and replace the in-person, human aspect of care. As a result, we have built a holistic, people-driven, digitally enabled care experience.
From the first interaction with LifeStance, our digital capabilities enable us to improve patient access, match patients with clinicians more efficiently and successfully, inform clinician decisions through data-driven insights and streamline referrals and consultations.
We are uniting virtual and in-person treatment with the goal to redefine the delivery of mental care for consumers across the ecosystem—one that delivers virtual engagement as personalized and human as the best in-person visits, and in-person visits as simple and seamless as the best digital experiences.
Across all three pathways and constituencies, we believe LifeStance delivers distinct value today, while continuing to shape and bring to life a vision for potentially even greater value in the future.
Our Hybrid Care Delivery Model
We deliver comprehensive care to our patients through a seamless and convenient virtual and in-person experience that allows patients to choose how they access their treatment. Within our care delivery model, patients can easily switch from virtual to in-person care due to unforeseen circumstances—for example, if they are delayed at work, traveling or at home with an ill child—which improves continuity of care. This flexibility is especially critical in certain circumstances when, for example, a patient changes medications and a two-week follow-up is necessary to ensure effectiveness. Our hybrid virtual and in-person delivery model is also crucial in treating certain mental health conditions, such as active substance abuse, eating disorders and autism, where we believe in-person treatment is essential to generate successful outcomes compared to virtual-only delivery models.
Our Centers
When they choose to do so, our patients can receive in-person care at one of our 534 centers, both acquired and de novo. Currently, our typical de novo center comprises 3,500 to 4,500 square feet and 10 to 12 clinician exam rooms. We systematically locate our de novo centers within a given market to ensure convenient coverage for in-person access to care. To provide our patients and clinicians with flexibility, our centers are generally open five days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. local time, with some open on Saturdays. Each de novo center offers a comprehensive clinical care team of clinicians offering psychiatric and psychotherapy services.
We aim to provide a superior in-person patient experience. Our de novo centers are built and fully outfitted to architectural design standards to create a comfortable and welcoming experience for our patients and clinicians that is replicated across our markets. Our spaces are compassionate, human-centric environments, thoughtfully designed to support best practices in mental health care, while providing a collaborative and inclusive backdrop for patients and clinicians alike.
Our Virtual Care
To enhance patient access, we offer patients the ability to conduct a given visit with their clinician virtually. Our virtual visit experience is convenient and easy to use. Patients can schedule their visit online and are able to conduct their visit via our digital platform at the time of their appointment from their computer, mobile device or tablet. In advance of their appointments, patients are sent an automatic reminder via text or e-mail, depending on their preference, with a link to launch the visit. We further optimize patient engagement through our convenient digital tools, including online messaging, adherence reminders, online prescription refills and online payments. Our patient portal allows patients and clinicians to
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communicate regularly, which is critical in a variety of circumstances, including for example, to help prevent errors in medication dosing and compliance. By offering these accessible tools, we believe patients are more likely to seek care and maintain appointments, driving further engagement and improving health outcomes.
Our Patient Acquisition Strategy
We focus on driving growth in our patient base primarily through two avenues: pursuing contracts with payors on a national, regional and local level; and our development of referral relationships with physicians, most notably in primary care, as well as specialist physicians.
Our Payor Relationships
As of December 31, 2021, we had a large and diverse base of over 250 national, regional and local payors. Our dedicated payor relationship team is divided into three regions to ensure that strong relationships with regional operations teams and insurance companies are cultivated. Our payor contracting teams consist of professionals with decades of experience working with large national payors. We believe this expertise is critical to allowing our team to engage with payors more effectively than other providers. Our teams negotiate, implement and manage new payor relationships, drive regional rate improvement and advance key initiatives. We enter into individually negotiated regional contracts with regional entities comprising national payors. Two payors individually exceeded 10% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021; UnitedHealthcare and Anthem, comprising 19% and 14%, respectively. Our contracts with payors are generally fee-for-services arrangements. Only a nominal number of our contracts provide for incremental payments tied to the attainment of quality or performance metrics, and such payments comprised an immaterial portion of our revenue during the period.
Our Physician Relationships
As of December 31, 2021, we had a large base of regional referring primary care physicians, specialist physicians and other network providers. Within our markets, we partner with primary care practice groups, specialists, health systems and academic institutions to refer patients to our centers and clinicians. To achieve this we have center leadership teams that build and maintain relationships with our referring partner networks. These teams focus primarily on creating awareness of our platform and services including existing and new centers as well the introduction of newly hired clinicians with appointment availability. When establishing new centers, we seek to build relationships with proximally located primary care and specialty offices as well as psychiatric hospitals to raise awareness. We achieve this through in-person visits as well as offline and online marketing. We established ongoing rapport with these groups by making progress reports, discharge summaries and outcomes data available.
Our Marketing Efforts
We also use marketing strategies to develop our national brand to increase brand awareness and promote additional channels of patient recruitment. Our channel marketing strategies are online through web, social media and paid social ad campaigns and search engines, including direct-to-consumer paid search optimization. Clinicians accepting new patients can be booked for appointments directly online. We also hand out a limited number of printed brochures or other marketing materials to raise awareness of the Company locally.
Organization
S ome states have laws that prohibit business entities with non-physician owners from practicing medicine, which are generally referred to as the corporate practice of medicine. See “—Government Regulation—Corporate Practice and Fee-Splitting.” I n states where we are not subject to corporate practice of medicine laws, we operate our business through centers that are wholly owned by our subsidiaries. In states where the corporate practice of medicine doctrine applies, in order to comply with such laws, we do not own the centers or directly employ the clinicians. Instead, such practices are owned by Dr. Anisha Patel-Dunn, our Chief Medical Officer, or other licensed clinical leadership employees. However, we own substantially all of the assets of the center and enter into a long-term management services contract with the center pursuant to which we provide all the services to the center that it needs to operate, with the exception of medical or clinical services. As of December 31, 2021, 289 of our 534 centers were operated as affiliated practices. We manage our wholly-owned centers and affiliated practices consistently and generally do not distinguish between our wholly-owned centers and affiliated practices in operating our business, subject to compliance with applicable law.
Our subsidiaries directly employ the clinicians who practice at our wholly-owned centers, whereas, with respect to our affiliated practices, our affiliated practices directly employ the clinicians. Any payment to a clinician at an affiliated practice is made pursuant to the clinician’s employment agreement with the affiliated practice (not through the management services contract).
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Payor Agreements
We and our affiliated practices have over 250 payor relationships across multiple independent regional and national contracts. These relationships allow members to utilize their in-network benefits when such individual elects to receive service from one of our clinicians. As of December 31, 2021, our contracts with payors typically provide for an initial term of one to three years and auto-renewal thereafter for additional one year terms, with a majority of those agreements in automatic annual renewal stages. The contracts with our three largest payor partners are entered into on substantially consistent terms. In most markets, our practices have been contracted (in-network with payors) for more than a decade. While length of contract and economic terms are often negotiated, payors generally use form contracts that contain terms and conditions that are standard in the industry. A small number of our agreements with payors also include terms and conditions to incentivize us and facilitate our ability to provide quality care to that plan’s members, with modest bonus payments tied to quality or utilization metrics.
The contracts governing the relationships with our payors include terms such as the period of performance, reimbursement rates and termination clauses. Typically, these contracts provide for a pre-determined fee based on a negotiated fee for service schedule or a customary charge that is typically a certain percentage of the fees specified in the CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule that is charged to the patient and the payor when a patient covered by the payor obtains services from one of our clinicians.
Many of our contracts are terminable for convenience by either the payor or us after a notice period has passed. The related notice period in our contracts is negotiated on a case-by-case basis and is dependent on many factors, some of which are outside of our control. Most of our contracts include cure periods for certain breaches, during which time we may attempt to resolve any issues that would trigger a payor’s ability to terminate the contract. Certain of our contracts may be terminated immediately by the payor if we lose applicable licenses, go bankrupt, lose our liability insurance, become insolvent, file for bankruptcy or receive an exclusion, suspension or debarment from state or federal government authorities. Additionally, if a payor were to lose applicable licenses, go bankrupt, lose liability insurance, become insolvent, file for bankruptcy or become excluded, suspended or debarred by state or federal government authorities, our contract with such payor could in effect be terminated. The loss, termination or renegotiation of any contract could negatively impact our results. In addition, as payors’ businesses respond to market dynamics and financial pressures, and as they make strategic business decisions in respect of the lines of business they pursue and programs in which they participate, we expect that certain of our payors will, from time to time, seek to restructure their agreements with us.
The contracts with our payors impose other obligations on us. For example, we typically agree that all services provided under the payor contract and all employees providing such services will comply with the payor’s policies and procedures. Further, upon termination, we are generally obligated to continue the provision of covered services to a member for a certain amount of time or a given event, for example, for a period of 60 days or until the member is discharged from services. In addition, in most instances, we have agreed to indemnify our payors against certain third-party claims, which may include claims relating to the services performed under the agreement.
Competition
The market for mental health services is competitive. We compete in a highly fragmented market with direct and indirect competitors that offer varying levels of impact to key stakeholders such as patients, clinicians, payor partners and physician partners. Our competitors primarily include other mental health providers that deliver services virtually or in-person. Our indirect competitors also include episodic consumer-driven point solutions, such as in-person and virtual life coaching, digital therapy and support tools and other technologies related to mental health care. As the demand and market for mental health services continue to grow, we may also face competition from new market entrants, including major retailers that have recently begun to offer in-person and virtual mental health care in certain markets. However, as our market grows, new stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem could provide increased partnership opportunities for us. Each of the individual geographic areas in which we operate has a different competitive landscape. In each of our markets we compete with other mental health providers for patients and in contracting with commercial payors. In addition, we face intense competition from other clinical practices, hospitals, health systems and other outpatient mental health providers in recruiting psychiatrists, APNs, psychologists, therapists, and other health care professionals.
The principal competitive factors in our industry include:
• patient engagement and satisfaction;
• quality outcomes for patients;
• comprehensive digital tools;
• ability to negotiate favorable reimbursement rates;
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• convenience, accessibility and availability;
• brand awareness and reputation;
• technology capabilities;
• ability to attract and retain quality clinicians;
• employment models;
• geographic footprint;
• level of participation in insurance plans;
• scalability of models; and
• financial resources and stability.
We believe that we compete favorably with our competitors on the basis of these factors and we believe the offerings of competitors inadequately simultaneously address the needs of key stakeholders or fail to do so at scale. See “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Business—We operate in a competitive industry, and if we are not able to compete effectively our business, results of operations and financial condition would be harmed.”
Government Regulation
The healthcare industry and the practice of medicine are governed by an extensive and complex framework of federal and state laws, which continue to evolve and change over time. The costs and resources necessary to comply with these laws are high. Our profitability depends in part upon our ability to operate in compliance with applicable laws and to maintain all applicable licenses. As the applicable laws and rules change, we are likely to make conforming modifications in our business processes from time to time. In some jurisdictions where we operate, neither our current nor our anticipated business model has been the subject of formal judicial or administrative interpretation. A review of our business by courts or regulatory authorities could result in determinations that could adversely affect our operations or health care regulatory environment may change in a way that impacts our operations.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state and federal regulatory authorities loosened or removed a number of regulatory requirements in order to increase the availability of telehealth. For example, many state governors issued executive orders permitting physicians and other health care professionals to practice in their state without any additional licensure or by using a temporary, expedited or abbreviated licensure process so long as they hold a valid license in another state. In addition, changes were made to the Medicare and Medicaid programs (through waivers and other regulatory authority) to increase access to telehealth by, among other things, increasing reimbursement, permitting the enrollment of out of state providers and eliminating prior authorization requirements. It is uncertain how long these COVID-19 related regulatory changes will remain in effect and whether they will continue beyond this public health emergency period. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, our reimbursement rates for telehealth and in-person care were substantially similar. This was driven by contractual arrangements with our payor partners or payor policies, which we expect to remain in effect.
Practice of Medicine
Corporate Practice and Fee-Splitting
The corporate practice of medicine prohibition exists in some form, by statute, regulation, board of medicine or attorney general guidance, or case law, in certain of the states in which we operate. These laws generally prohibit the practice of medicine or practice of psychology by lay-persons or entities and are intended to prevent unlicensed persons or entities from interfering with or inappropriately influencing providers’ professional judgment.
In these states, we contract with affiliated practices, who in turn employ or retain licensed clinicians and other staff to deliver mental health care services to patients. We enter into management contracts with our affiliated practices pursuant to which we provide a wide range of administrative services and receive payment from our affiliated practices. These administrative services arrangements are subject to state laws, including those in certain of the states where we operate, which prohibit the practice of medicine and the corporate practice of psychology by, and/or the splitting of professional fees with, non-professional persons or entities such as general business corporations.
Corporate practice and fee-splitting prohibitions vary widely from state to state. In addition, such prohibitions are subject to broad powers of interpretation and enforcement by state regulators. Our failure to comply could lead to adverse action against us and/or our clinicians by courts or state agencies, civil or criminal penalties, loss of clinician licenses, or the need to restructure our business model and/or clinician relationships, any of which could harm our business.
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Practice of Medicine and Provider Licensing
The practice of medicine and the practice of psychology are subject to various federal, state, and local laws and requirements, including, among other things, laws relating to quality and adequacy of care, clinical personnel, supervisory requirements, mental health, medical equipment, and the prescribing and dispensing of pharmaceuticals and controlled substances.
Telehealth Provider Licensing, Medical Practice, Certification and Related Laws and Guidelines
Clinicians who provide professional medical services to a patient via telehealth must, in most instances, hold a valid license to practice medicine in the state in which the patient is located. Federal and state laws also limit the ability of clinicians to prescribe pharmaceuticals and controlled substances via telehealth. We have established systems for ensuring that our affiliated clinicians are appropriately licensed under applicable state law and that their provision of telehealth to our members occurs in each instance in compliance with applicable rules governing telehealth. Failure to comply with these laws and regulations could lead to adverse action against our clinicians, which could harm our business model and/or clinicians relationships and have a negative impact on our business.
State and Federal Health Information Privacy and Security Laws
HIPAA
We must comply with various federal and state laws related to the privacy and security of personal identifiable information ("PII"), including health information. In particular, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA") establishes privacy and security standards that limit the use and disclosure of protected health information ("PHI") and requires the implementation of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of PHI. HIPAA’s requirements are also directly applicable to the contractors, agents, and other business associates of covered entities that create, receive, maintain, or transmit PHI in connection with their provision of services to covered entities. Certain of our entities and affiliated practices are covered entities, while our management service entities are business associates.
Violations of HIPAA may result in civil and criminal penalties. The civil penalties include civil monetary penalties of up to $60,226 per violation, not to exceed $1,806,757 for violations of the same standard in a single calendar year (as of 2021, and subject to periodic adjustments for inflation), and in certain circumstances, criminal penalties with fines up to $250,000 per violation and/or imprisonment. However, a single breach incident can result in violations of multiple standards.
We are also subject to the HIPAA breach notification rule, which requires covered entities to notify affected individuals of breaches of unsecured PHI. In addition, covered entities must notify the Office of Civil Rights ("OCR") and the local media if a breach affects more than 500 individuals. Breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals must be reported to OCR on an annual basis. The HIPAA regulations also require business associates to notify the covered entity of breaches by the business associate.
Many states in which we operate have their own laws protecting the privacy and security of personal information, including health information. We must comply with such laws in the states where we do business in addition to our obligations under HIPAA. In some states, such as California, state privacy laws are even more protective than HIPAA. It may sometimes be necessary to modify our operations and procedures to comply with these more stringent state laws. State data privacy and security laws are subject to change, and we could be subject to financial penalties and sanctions if we fail to comply with these laws.
42 C.F.R. Part 2 and Other Privacy Laws
The Federal Substance Abuse Confidentiality Regulations known as 42 C.F.R. Part 2 serve to protect patient records created by federally assisted programs for the treatment of substance use disorders. The federal government could initiate criminal charges for violations of Part 2, which include $500 for the first offense; and $5,000 for all subsequent offenses and seek fines up to $5,000 per violation for individuals and $10,000 per violation for organizations. Under the CARES Act, Congress also gave the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") the authority to issue civil monetary penalties for violations of Part 2, ranging from $100 to $50,000 per violation depending on the level of culpability.
In addition to federal and state laws protecting the privacy and security of personal information, we may be subject to other types of federal and state privacy laws, including laws that prohibit unfair privacy and security practices and deceptive statements about privacy and security, along with laws that impose specific requirements on certain types of activities, such as data security and texting.
In recent years, there have been a number of well publicized data breaches involving the improper use and disclosure of PII and PHI. Many states have responded to these incidents by enacting laws requiring holders of personal information to maintain safeguards and to take certain actions in response to a data breach, such as providing prompt notification of the
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breach to affected individuals and state officials and provide credit monitoring services and/or other relevant services to impacted individuals. In addition, under HIPAA and pursuant to the related contracts that we enter into with our clients who are covered entities, we must report breaches of unsecured PHI to our clients following discovery of the breach. Notification must also be made in certain circumstances to affected individuals, federal authorities and others.
Association and network rules
In addition to the applicable privacy and data security laws, we may be subject to card association rules and regulations. For example, an independent standards-setting organization, the Payment Card Industry (“PCI”) Security Standards Council developed a set of comprehensive requirements concerning payment card account security through the transaction process, called the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard ("PCI DSS"). All merchants and service providers that store, process and transmit payment card data are required to comply with PCI DSS as a condition to accepting credit cards. We must implement certain data security measures and are subject to annual reviews to ensure compliance with PCI standards worldwide and are subject to fines if we fail to maintain a valid certificate or are otherwise are found to be non-compliant.
Federal and State Fraud and Abuse Laws
Federal Stark Law
We are subject to the federal physician Ethics in Patient Referrals Act, commonly known as the Stark Law, which prohibits physicians from referring Medicare or Medicaid patients to an entity for the provision of certain “designated health services” if the referring physician or a member of the physician’s immediate family has a direct or indirect financial relationship (including an ownership interest or a compensation arrangement) with the entity, unless an exception applies. The Stark Law is a strict liability statute, which means intent to violate the law is not required. In addition, the government and some courts have taken the position that claims presented in violation of various fraud, waste, and abuse laws, including the Stark Law, can be considered a predicate legal violation to submission of a false claim under the federal False Claims Act (described below) on the grounds that a provider impliedly certifies compliance with all applicable laws and rules when submitting claims for reimbursement. Penalties for violating the Stark Law may include: denial of payment for services ordered in violation of the law, recoupments of monies paid for such services, civil penalties for each violation and three times the dollar value of each such service, and exclusion from participation in government health care programs. Violations of the Stark Law could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Federal Anti-Kickback Statute
We are also subject to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, which, subject to certain exceptions known as “safe harbors,” prohibits the knowing and willful offer, payment, solicitation or receipt of any bribe, kickback, rebate or other remuneration, in cash or in kind, in return for, or to induce, the (1) the referral of a person covered by government health care programs, (2) the furnishing or arranging for the furnishing of items or services reimbursable under government health care programs, or (3) the purchasing, leasing, ordering, or arranging or recommending the purchasing, leasing, or ordering, of any item or service reimbursable under government health care programs. Federal courts have held that the Anti-Kickback Statute can be violated if just one purpose of a payment is to induce referrals. Actual knowledge of this statute or specific intent to violate it is not required, which makes it easier for the government to prove that a defendant had the state of mind required for a violation. In addition to a few statutory exceptions, the Office of Inspector General ("OIG") of the HHS has promulgated safe harbor regulations that outline categories of activities that are deemed protected from prosecution under the Anti-Kickback Statute, provided all applicable criteria are met. The failure of a financial relationship to meet all of the applicable safe harbor criteria does not necessarily mean that the particular arrangement violates the Anti-Kickback Statute, but business arrangements that do not fully satisfy all elements of a safe harbor may result in increased scrutiny by OIG and other enforcement authorities. Violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute can result in exclusion from government health care programs as well as civil and criminal penalties, including fines of $105,563 per violation (as of 2021, and subject to periodic adjustments for inflation) and three times the amount of the unlawful remuneration. Violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Although we believe that our arrangements with physicians and other referral sources comply with current law and available interpretative guidance, as a practical matter, it is not always possible to structure our arrangements so as to fall squarely within an available safe harbor.
False Claims Act
The federal False Claims Act prohibits knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented, false claims to government programs, such as Medicare or Medicaid. In addition, the improper retention of an overpayment for 60 days or more is also a basis for a False Claim Act action, even if the claim was originally submitted appropriately. Some states have adopted similar fraud and false claims laws. Government agencies engage in significant civil and criminal enforcement efforts against health care companies under the False Claims Act and other civil and criminal statutes. False Claims Act investigations can be
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initiated not only by the government, but by private parties through qui tam (or whistleblower) lawsuits. Penalties for False Claims Act violations include fines ranging from $11,803 to $23,607 per false claim or statement (as of 2021, and subject to annual adjustments for inflation), plus up to three times the amount of damages sustained by the federal government. Violations of the False Claims Act violations can also result in exclusion from participation in government health care programs.
State Fraud, Waste and Abuse Laws
Several states in which we operate have also adopted similar fraud, waste, and abuse laws to those described above. The scope and content of these laws vary from state to state and are enforced by state courts and regulatory authorities. Some states’ fraud and abuse laws, known as “all-payor laws,” are not limited to government health care programs, but apply more broadly to items or services reimbursed by any payor, including commercial insurers. Liability under state fraud, waste, and abuse laws could result in fines, penalties, and restrictions on our ability to operate in those jurisdictions.
Other Health Care Laws
HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act ("HITECH"), and their implementing regulations, includes several separate criminal penalties for making false or fraudulent claims to non-governmental payors. The health care fraud statute prohibits knowingly and recklessly executing a scheme or artifice to defraud any health care benefit program, which includes private payors. Violation of this statute is a felony and may result in fines, imprisonment, or exclusion from government health care programs. The false statements statute prohibits knowingly and willfully falsifying, concealing, or covering up a material fact by any trick, scheme, or device, or making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement in connection with the delivery of or payment for health care benefits, items, or services. Violation of this statute is a felony and may result in fines or imprisonment. This statute could be used by the government to assert criminal liability if a health care provider knowingly fails to refund an overpayment.
In addition, the Civil Monetary Penalties Law imposes civil administrative sanctions for, among other violations, (1) inappropriate billing of services to government health care programs, (2) employing or contracting with individuals or entities who are excluded from participation in government health care programs, and (3) offering or providing Medicare or Medicaid beneficiaries with any remuneration, including full or partial waivers of co-payments and deductibles, that are likely to influence the beneficiary’s selection of a particular provider, practitioner, or supplier (subject to an exception for non-routine, unadvertised co-payment and deductible waivers based on individualized determinations of financial need or exhaustion of reasonable collection efforts).
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property is an important asset of the Company that enables us to develop, market, and sell our services and enhance our competitive position. We rely on trademarks, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements, and employee non-disclosure and invention assignment agreements to establish and protect our proprietary rights.
Employees and Human Capital Resources
LifeStance Health is Great Place to Work, certified by the Great Place to Work Institute which is the global authority on workplace culture. When asked what make LifeStance Health a Great Place to Work, our team members most valued Flexibility, Caring People, Management, Support Staff and Inclusion. In addition, nearly 85% of employees say, “I feel like I can bring my authentic self to work”.
As of December 31, 2021, we employed approximately 6,635 employees through our subsidiaries and affiliated practices, of which 3,662 were directly employed through our subsidiaries and 2,973 were directly employed by our affiliated practices. The clinicians of our affiliated practices have entered into employment agreements directly with our affiliated practices. All employees of our subsidiaries and affiliated practices are located in the United States. We engage temporary employees, independent contractors and consultants as needed to support our operations. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or subject to a collective bargaining agreement.
At LifeStance Health, we are building a culture that represents our values:
• Delivering Compassion - we care for people unconditionally and act with empathy always
• Building Relationships - we are collaborative, building enduring relationships to achieve more together
• Celebrating Difference - we respect the diversity of every individual's lived experiences
Our employees are deeply compassionate, dedicated advocates for mental health and overall wellbeing. Over the last year, we have implemented a number of initiatives to support our employees’ health and wellbeing, in several ways:
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Employee health & wellness : As a company focused on mental health, the culture and community we build with our employees is paramount. We have taken several steps to ensure we continue to support them both within and outside of the workplace.
First, we initiated quarterly satisfaction surveys, townhalls and a communication channel called Better Together, providing agency for clinicians and team members to share feedback that we can address timely in addition to celebrating key moments and milestones together. This accessible and personalized approach to communication parallels our mission and values and helps clinicians feel like while they are caring for patients, LifeStance is caring for them.
Second, recognizing that financial security is an important attribute of mental health, we developed a long-term incentive program to award employee stock grants – including to clinicians – providing meaningful rewards for furthering our mission of enhancing access to mental health care. In addition, we redesigned our medical benefits and wellness plans to significantly improve affordability and access for our team members including enhancements to parental leave, enhanced mental health benefits, and care navigation support for employees and extended family members.
Third, we implemented a systematic way of identifying clinicians and team members who may be experiencing burnout or compassion fatigue and offer peer-to-peer support through our national clinical team. In addition, all clinicians are assigned champions who initiate routine one-on-one communications to ensure that we are giving our clinicians opportunities to be heard and supported. These initiatives are especially important with lower social contact in the workplace resulting from the pandemic and team members working remotely.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging : Our National Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ("DEI") Committee is guided by the vision of fostering a workplace in which individuals of all backgrounds are welcomed by a culture of inclusion and respect. As a committee we are focused on education, cultural humility, celebrating difference and taking effective action to ensure every staff member and patient under our care understands that LifeStance is a safe place for them to be their authentic selves.
At LifeStance, culture starts with leadership—over 70% of our clinicians, 50% of our executive leadership team and 40% of our Board of Directors are diverse by gender or race/ethnicity.
Finally, we developed an in-house training, education and professional development program which is designed to promote a community-based approach to learning and enable team members to build relationships across locations. We are collaborating with our National DEI Committee and local DEI chapters to weave our value of Celebrating Difference into content and training modules. The combination of these initiatives is how we get Better Together at LifeStance.
Community : Another attribute of happiness and well-being is participation in pro-social giving. In support of this and further increasing access to affordable mental health care, LifeStance endowed the LifeStance Health Foundation in June 2021. The Foundation was developed to award grants, award scholarships and support organizations that share our mission with a focus on especially vulnerable patients including youth and adolescents, underrepresented minority communities and the underemployed/uninsured. To date, the LifeStance Health Foundation has awarded more than $400,000 to both national and local non-profits working to destigmatize access to mental healthcare including The Mental Health Coalition, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation, Washington Recovery Alliance, Hillsboro Schools Foundation and Peer Health Exchange. In addition, we held a peer-to-peer recognition event called Giving Thanks over the holiday season which culminated in a day of celebrating individual clinicians and team members for how they make lives better every day and making a donation from LifeStance Health Foundation to nearly 120 local non-profit organizations nominated by our teams.
We are very proud to support our employees and their commitment to our mission which improves the health and wellbeing of patients across the communities we serve. While world events over the last few years have destigmatized mental health in important ways, our clinicians and team members chose a career in mental healthcare long before it was in the spotlight. Their compassion, expertise, and advocacy are making a difference. At LifeStance Health, we make lives better.
General Corporate Information
On January 28, 2021, LifeStance Health Group, Inc. was incorporated in the state of Delaware. Our principal executive offices are located at 4800 N. Scottsdale Road, Suite 6000, Scottsdale, Arizona 85251. Our telephone number is (602) 767-2100. Our website address is www.lifestance.com. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into this filing and you should not consider any information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website as part of this filing. We are a holding company and all of our business operations are conducted through our subsidiaries and affiliated practices.
Our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and, if applicable, amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available free of charge on or through our web site, www.lifestance.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC. The SEC’s
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website, www.sec.gov, contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.