The behavioral health industry provides crucial services, but as with any business, it experiences its share of staff shortages, lags and oversights. Percensys, which stands for “Person Center Systems,” has found a way to jump those hurdles, giving providers the tools to help clients create a treatment plan, understand their diagnosis, state recovery goals and pick from 550 skill-building activities—all in one session.
Founded under a larger umbrella company called CORE, the startup began by working with behavioral health provider agencies in North Carolina. After seeing early growth and success, CEO Kylie Roy and COO Vito Cota-Robles realized the system could be used to help both licensed and non-licensed mental health professionals. In 2010, Percensys CORE Learning was born.
The system uses a strength-based approach. The client and provider work through a digital, interactive application, filling out the client’s strengths, diagnosis, long- and short-term goals before selecting a barrier group, which groups symptoms of a diagnosis together to outline how the diagnosis manifests in the client’s life.
Next, a list of skill-building activities will populate based on the barrier group selected. The client can select the activities that interest them before receiving their person-centered treatment plan—providing assurance that the session was productive and that the client is on a positive, intentional path forward, Roy said.
“Our system essentially creates a digital paper trail between every meeting with a mental health professional and a client, and it creates what we call a golden thread back to medical necessity,” Roy said. “So medical necessity really just means proving the therapeutic value of every session and tying that back to the clients, their stated goals, their barriers and then all the way back to their mental health diagnosis.”
The Need For Percensys
Roy grew up around a family business involving behavioral health services, and Cota-Robles is a qualified mental health professional who has previously managed community-based services. The co-founders started Percensys CORE Learning after observing how intimidating it is for the average provider to go into the community and deliver services.
“What we have found is that even though those staff are very well meaning, it’s difficult work, and they’re deployed into the community to do this work, often without a lot of guidance, without a lot of experience,” Roy said. “And so an early version of CORE was developed really to support those staff, but to also support the folks that are receiving services.”
Had she gone down the path of becoming a licensed mental health professional, Roy said she can’t imagine how overwhelmed she would have felt at the beginning of her career.
“Here I am, straight out of college, I would have been deployed into the community and told, ‘Okay, go help this person that is really, really struggling,’” Roy said. “And I can imagine that for anyone else that also would have been terrifying, and not having this system that lets you know, ‘Okay, I feel like I have not just activities to do with this person, but a framework that’s teaching me and making me feel confident that what I’m doing is helping people, and certainly not hurting them.’”
The startup contracts directly with provider agencies with a B2B model on a per-seat basis. Outside of North Carolina, the platform is primarily used in New Mexico, Arizona and California, with some expansion into state mental health systems as well as provider agencies.
Cota-Robles said that his goal for the platform is to allow paying clients to move away from relying on paid support so they aren’t receiving services for indefinite periods.
“The idea is to help people move into this state of independence, where they’re not relying upon paid support anymore,” Cota-Robles said. “The industry is very heavily regulated, and CORE really helps to protect providers, to make sure that the activities that they’re doing are planned and purposeful.”
QUICK BITS
Startup: Percensys
Co-Founders: Kylie Roy (CEO), Vito Cota-Robles (COO)
Founded: 2010 (under umbrella)
Team size: 6
Location: High Point, NC & Raleigh, NC
Website: percensyscore.com
Funding: Bootstrapped
The latest version of the platform was rolled out in August, with a new option for clients to receive a generated PDF of the treatment plan and to complete all activities online. Roy indicated that customers have noticed the improvements to the website.
“Just seeing people using our system and being really excited about what we’re offering, that’s really a highlight right now for us,” Roy said. “It’s really gratifying to see people look at the system and say, ‘Oh, wow, you guys have made a big investment here, and we’re excited to use this.’”
As the need for mental health support has grown and Medicaid services have expanded across the nation, the industry has seen a mass shortage of professionals. Roy said that they want to continue leveraging their services in a way that helps as many providers and clients as possible. Percensys currently contracts with providers across multiple states, enveloping hundreds of staff and thousands of service recipients.
“It’s really important to carry on this family legacy of helping people,” Roy said. “We’re just now helping people in a different way.”
