Dr. Nishi Rawat created a D.C. company in 2015 to connect her patients with highly specialized medical care — and it’s proving crucial in the coronavirus pandemic five years later.
The OpenBeds Inc. founder launched the business out of her experience as a Baltimore-area critical care physician, as she and other doctors struggled to connect their emergency department and intensive-care unit patients with essential specialized care. As the opioid epidemic dawned, the National Institute on Drug Abuse tapped Rawat to tailor her technology to connect hospitals with substance use and mental health treatment services, and a subsequent Small Business Innovation Research grant solidified that work.
“That was the impetus for us to pivot full-time and devote the technology to behavioral health,” Rawat said. “It seemed like there was a lot of opportunity there to do good. At the time, the epidemic was really taking hold, unfortunately, and there was a lot of awareness around opioid use in general that I think the sector needed a solution.”
The platform aims to provide that. It collects program and treatment facility availability, enables referrals and connects those services with health care providers — all to get patients the care they need quickly. It also operates a public portal called Treatment Connection, which allows people to search vetted resources and seek treatment anonymously.
And in the age of Covid-19, demand has never been higher.
“The pandemic has profoundly affected behavioral health in general, and specifically, the ability for people to access substance use and mental health treatments,” Rawat said. “I think we’re all bracing ourselves as to exactly what the aftermath will be.”
So OpenBeds is providing data to its state partners on access to care and to patients “falling through the cracks,” she said. It continues to evaluate which facilities are accepting new clients, both in-person and via telehealth. And it's retooled its behavioral health system to help states, counties and health systems rapidly coordinate ICU beds, equipment and clinicians in the face of coronavirus, said Rawat, who declined to disclose revenue figures.
“It brings us back full circle," she said. "This was actually our initial solution back in 2015.”
So far, the business has deployed the new Covid-19 reporting system across North Carolina and is working with 124 hospitals in the state. It is also marketing the product to other states, though Rawat declined to disclose potential upcoming areas. It already works with eight states on its behavioral health platform, as well as hundreds of hospitals and health systems, she said.
Rawat, formerly the CEO of OpenBeds, sold the business to Louisville, Kentucky-based Appriss Health in 2018. The move made sense, Rawat said, and gave her father, Surendra Rawat — her OpenBeds co-founder and an electrical and systems engineer — the opportunity to retire.
Today, she remains on board of the venture, leading it as a subsidiary of Appriss, where she’s senior vice president. She hopes to return to practicing medicine, but for now, she's focused on expanding the platform even farther and wider to address public health crises.
“The good news is that companies small and large are realizing that they have the ability to address this problem, to innovate — for example, providing remote treatment or telehealth services for behavioral health,” Rawat said. “I’m optimistic that more people will be able to access treatment, especially those who cannot afford treatment, because of these innovations.”
