How AbleTo Meets Exponential Demand for Mental Health Provision With Whatfix

The AbleTo Story

Connecting More People to Care

Whatfix is helping AbleTo connect more people to care and improve mental health services. This pioneering provider of virtual mental health services has standardized on a Whatfix Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) to reimagine the way almost 2,500 clinical therapists and coaches (‘providers’) engage with the company’s clinical guidance platform to deliver care. By transforming AbleTo’s approach to application guidance, Whatfix is making it easier for participants to get the support they need with virtual mental health appointments from the privacy of their home.

With Whatfix, AbleTo was enabled to:

• Support a more rewarding application experience, reducing clinical provider churn.
• Enable clinical team meetings to be 100% focused on improving care delivery. Previously, 80% was devoted to system-related questions and support queries.
• Empower AbleTo to scale provider community 10-fold, enabling AbleTo to meet the exponential demand for mental health services
• Underpin upcoming Salesforce Health Cloud digital guidance

The Challenge

Provide Better Access to Mental Healthcare

In 2008, AbleTo set out to solve the biggest challenge in behavioral health: provide affordable, high-quality mental health care to reduce depression and anxiety. Two million participant sessions later, the organization continues to set the standard for care quality: from the way the 2,000+ providers deliver clinical guidance to ensuring outcomes are validated by the scientific community.

Mental health care is facing its toughest test. Factors such as Covid-19 isolation and anxiety associated with disruptive societal change are driving intense demand for AbleTo’s cognitive behavioral therapy services. In the U.S. one in four adults experience mental illness each year 1, and over half of adults with a mental illness do not currently receive treatment 2.

Industry-wide competition for therapist talent, together with clinician workload burnout, also make it vital to deliver a rewarding provider experience. Most notably, providers need to be comfortable using ‘EnAbleTo’, the platform they use to deliver digital mental health services to participants.“The technology has to work with the clinicians, not against them,” says Owens.

Until recently, however, AbleTo’s learning system was working against the company. Live training and difficult-to-find system guidance notes delayed EnAbleTo learning and disappointed users. For example, if a provider needed help with a particular EnAbleTo feature, in extreme cases they would pause the live consulting session, log into a different system, and find the training aid. Owens says, “It was slow and diminished the participant experience.”

Regular clinical team meetings were another casualty of this disconnected learning system. Although the meetings should be dedicated to discussing care quality, up to 80% of the call was focused on system training and support.

Compliance matters too. Unlike small, pop-up telehealth companies selling direct to consumers, AbleTo is only available through health plans. “These health providers want to see trusted online therapy with rigorous quality control. To support that, we needed to reimagine our learning management system,” says Owens.

The Solution

Whatfix’s Intuitive, Integrated, and Intelligent DAP

Following a free download trial, AbleTo turned to Whatfix.

“The beauty of Whatfix is in its simplicity. The platform is intuitive, integrated, and intelligent. We looked at a competitor, but it was so complex we would have needed to hire a dedicated resource to support it,” says Owens

The secure nature of Whatfix’s DAP also protected AbleTo’s sensitive patient data. Whatfix is an overlay technology. It’s not embedded in our application, so it doesn’t see confidential patient data.

Whatfix facilitates seamless adoption and learning of AbleTo through step-by-step instructions, a knowledge repository, contextual information, and other guidance. New providers can be trained faster, with personalized, in-app onboarding experiences.

“Contextual walkthroughs and relevant smart tips personalize the learning processes and provide 24/7 provider self-support. All training content is available and easy to find,” says Claire Griswold, Learning Technology Manager, AbleTo.

Contextual information (Smart Tips) is one of the most popular digital guides. Griswold explains, “One health plan required our providers to push messages periodically to participants, such as reminders to finish tasks. AbleTo anticipated a 30% increase in follow-through of these messages to participants. In fact, it led to a 50% uplift, increasing compliance and improving therapy care.”

The Results

Mental Health, at the Moment of Need

By transforming AbleTo’s approach to adoption and learning, Whatfix is making it easier for participants to get the support they need with virtual mental health appointments from the privacy of their home.

The benefits include:

• Improved access to mental health: Intuitive, in-app guidance supports high-quality, accessible therapy, helping to bridge the gap between mental health demand and treatment.
• Reduced clinical provider churn: Optimal, in-platform support enables therapists and coaches to devote more time to participants’ mental health needs and less time frustrated by understanding the EnableTo features. This way, they enjoy a more rewarding employment experience with AbleTo.
• Increased productivity: 100% of clinical team meeting calls are now focused on enhancing the quality of care and clinical programs. Previously, 80% was devoted to system training and support. Pop-ups now display more than 35,000 times, empowering users and boosting productivity.
• Drove business growth: Simplified enterprise software adoption and learning allowed AbleTo to rapidly scale the provider community from 200 to 2,000, meeting rising demand for mental health services.
• Reduced support ticket volume: 18 Smart Tips have been viewed almost 500,000 times. This is evidence that providers use self-help content, reducing the volume of support inquiries.
• Reduced cost: Projected to save AbleTo $71,000 in three months through reduced search time and faster content development.
• Drove innovation: Helped AbleTo to identify areas where providers need additional help/support. These new intuitive features will be included in the new Salesforce Health Cloud platform.

AbleTo will shortly migrate from EnAbleTo to Salesforce Health Cloud, with Whatfix continuing to deliver in-the-moment training for thousands of providers. “Real-time digital guidance in Salesforce Health Cloud will allow AbleTo to innovate further, meet the growing demand for virtual behavioral health care, and ensure our providers are successful,” says Owens.