With JSA Health acquisition, SOC Telemed expands US telepsychiatry business

By Dave Muoio
03:10 pm
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SOC Telemed (formerly Specialists on Call) announced yesterday that it has acquired behavioral health telemedicine company JSA Health, and will be adding JSA Health’s services to its acute telemedicine platform. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“JSA achieved a strong foothold in the telepsychiatry industry, but as a single specialty practice the company sought scalability that SOC Telemed supports with its proven platform and continued investments in innovation,” Hammad Shah, CEO of SOC Telemed, said in a statement. “This acquisition enables growth for JSA Health — allowing the combined entity broader reach across the nation in areas experiencing detrimental shortages of psychiatry doctors.”

SOC Telemed offers telemedicine technology and acute virtual care services to provider organizations. In March, the company announced a name change from Specialists on Call as well as the launch of its enterprise telemedicine technology platform, Telemed IQ. The company’s platform supports remote visits for any clinical specialty, and can provide virtual psychiatric, ICU, and neurology patient care.

In regard to the latter, SOC Telemed acquired virtual neurology company NeuroCall in 2017, and currently claims to the largest provider of telehealth neurology services in the US. Now, with the acquisition of JSA Health’s behavioral team and SOC Telemed’s newly gained avenue into more than 450 hospitals and health systems, the company is making a similar claim for telepsychiatry.

“JSA Health has seen tremendous growth over the years,” Dr. Avrim Fishkind, JSA Health’s founder and CEO, who will be taking on the newly created role of general manager of behavioral health services at SOC Telemed, said in a statement. “Joining forces with SOC Telemed allows us to achieve our vision of providing access to expedited treatment in settings where it might not otherwise be possible.”

The telehealth industry has been hungry for M&A as of late. Just last quarter Teladoc, hot on the heels of last year’s Best Doctors acquisition, announced that it had picked up Advance Medical for $352 million. Meanwhile, American Well absorbed Avizia for an undisclosed sum on the same day that InTouch Health announced its acquisition of Reach Health (with this coming just months after InTouch Health had already obtained TruClinic).

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