AnswersNow founder Jeff Beck couldn’t be more excited about the recent pivot in his business.
The Richmond-based startup is an online platform providing support for families with children who have autism. This year Beck modified the business from a tech-based support model to a robust telehealth solutions company, where clinicians can work directly with people regardless of their age or location.
Since coming up with the platform in 2017, Beck said he’s been able to prove the business concept and is ready to take AnswersNow to the next level.
“We have an answer on how to make the business work, and now we just need to scale as quickly as possible,” he said.
He responded to comments from parents and clinicians, who have relied on video meeting tools like Zoom because of the pandemic. Integrating their feedback about telehealth options into the AnswersNow platform, he said the team created a cost-effective, expert-driven service for its users.
“Technology is the great equalizer. We’re doing hours per week of one-on-one parent training [and] hours per week of one-on-one, direct ABA therapy over our proprietary platform with children and adults with autism,” Beck said. “This just wouldn’t have been possible before.”
Prior to the pandemic, AnswersNow was a direct-to-consumer subscription service that provided predominately tech-based support to parents and caregivers. Beck, a licensed social worker, saw quality results from the sessions and wanted to give parents a way to continue the work at home.
Beck launched the startup in 2018 and worked with Tech Stars and Lighthouse Labs to develop additional features and fine-tune business operations. Going into 2019, they raised a pre-seed round of funding and launched a new platform for the subscription service.
Covid-19, however, became the catalyst that would change the startup significantly, Beck said.
Seventy-five percent of users paused or canceled their subscriptions, mainly due to cost concerns. But soon after, insurers and regulators announced that they would start covering AnswersNow’s services, he said.
Beck and his team began the time-intensive process of learning the reimbursement landscape and working their way through state credentialing and audits with insurance companies.
The startup had already on-boarded licensed clinicians for the states they planned to expand into, but the ensuring the proper processes were followed was a time-intensive undertaking.
“Every state is different, and every insurance company is different,” he said.
The last piece was the growth of telehealth solutions and online learning tools. Beck said over the last six months, the platform’s tech has continued to evolve.
As a result of these changes, the startup can the startup continue to provide much-needed services for people with autism and their family members and is now able to take reimbursement worries off their plates.
AnswersNow offers a tracker to show users exactly where they are in the process, from confirmation of eligibility to requests for documentation.
“We want to find an easy way to bring families into [our] services,” Beck said. “All the family has to do is provide us with the child’s diagnosis and their insurance card, and we do the rest.”
“It’s incredibly fulfilling to be a bit of a bright spot for some of these families,” he added.