Elemy

Elemy, formerly known as Sprout Therapy, is a pediatric behavioral health provider that pairs licensed clinicians with a technology platform to deliver personalized care to children in their homes and online. Its core offering is applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy for autism, delivered by board-certified behavior analysts working with registered behavior technicians, alongside services for anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, impulse control, eating disorders and OCD. The company also provides diagnostic and psychiatric evaluation, speech-language pathology, individual and group therapy, intensive outpatient programming and medication management overseen by pediatric psychiatrists, with treatment plans built after an initial assessment and adjusted over time.

Company materials describe a model in which care is administered in the home or virtually — the company has stated that parent training and child monitoring can be done remotely while skills acquisition, problem-behavior reduction and data collection occur in person. Data collected during care are used to measure efficacy and to inform both individual treatment plans and broader clinical strategy. Elemy states it accepts more than 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in most of its markets, and works with Medicaid programs in states including Florida, Georgia and California.

After scaling rapidly in 2021, the company retrenched: according to a March 2023 Business Insider report, Elemy withdrew from 11 of the 14 states it had entered, conducted at least five rounds of layoffs, closed at least two acquired clinics, and began exploring the sale of software to clinicians to help them run their own practices, which the CEO characterized as a pilot rather than a full business-model change.

Founding story

Elemy was founded in 2019 and launched in 2020 by CEO and co-founder Yury Yakubchyk, a software entrepreneur who previously launched the boutique hotel company Life House (backed by Comcast Ventures and Trinity Ventures) and co-founded the wireless carrier Wing. Yakubchyk was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and underwent ABA therapy himself; he has said he wanted to apply technology to what he described as a broken and outdated model of autism care in which families wait months or years for treatment.

Business model

Elemy delivers clinical services directly to families through employed and contracted clinicians, billing commercial insurance carriers and Medicaid. It has stated it accepts more than 100 insurance plans and works with Medicaid in most of its markets. As of early 2023 the company was piloting a software product sold to clinicians to help them operate their own practices, an approach the CEO described internally as a more scalable model.

Reimbursement for pediatric behavioral health services (ABA therapy, diagnostic evaluation, therapy and medication management) from commercial insurers and state Medicaid programs; a software offering sold to clinicians was in pilot as of March 2023.

Traction

Elemy reported growing from 109 employees at its seed round to over 1,000 within 17 months, delivering care in 14 states, and a 19x year-over-year revenue increase as of August 2021 versus August 2020, with management projecting $100 million in run-rate revenue by summer 2022. The company reported an average 83% reduction in problem behaviors and 88% increase in new skills for patients in care at least six months. By 2023, reported traction had contracted: an internal dashboard showed 462 children in active care in July 2022 and roughly 220 active patients by December 2022 per a current clinician, with operations in three states.

Latest developments

In March 2023, Business Insider reported that Elemy had exited 11 of its 14 states, carried out at least five rounds of layoffs (the most recent in the first week of February 2023), closed at least two acquired clinics serving roughly 35 families combined, and cut corporate headcount to about 150 from roughly 400 a year earlier, including nearly all clinical leaders. The company was piloting the sale of software to clinicians; CEO Yury Yakubchyk confirmed the pilot but disputed that the entire business was changing. Yakubchyk also established a separate venture studio staffed in part by Elemy employees, including a co-founder and the CFO.