Best Practices: Alma
Founder, Dr. Harry Ritter, on NYC’s new collaborative and innovative mental health space.
Step into Alma’s warm and well-appointed Midtown Manhattan waiting room and it might take a second to realize you’re not at a spa or meditation center. In actuality, Alma is a co-practicing space for mental health professionals, and it’s the brainchild of Dr. Harry Ritter, a former Oscar Insurance VP on a mission to elevate the mental healthcare experience with thoughtful, purpose-driven design and technology. Read on to learn how Alma is using form and functionality to support connection among clients and therapists alike.
Tell us a little bit about how you connected with medicine, and what that taught you about the needs in healthcare today?
My path to medicine began from with my family. My parents were both doctors, so I grew up with health and wellness in the blood. Later, as I was going through my medical training, I got really excited about the role of innovation and care models in medicine. That path led me to Oscar Insurance, where I was the VP of Care Delivery, eventually helping to launch the Oscar Center, where I had the opportunity to see how impactful good design and technology were for care.
How did the idea of Alma begin to take shape?
I had been thinking about the patient journey in mental health for a while, both from the personal experience of looking for a good therapist for myself and my family members, and from opening the Oscar Center. In all cases, there were a lot of frustrations, which led to the question of how to create a new model.
As a starting point, I began talking to therapists and clients to understand what the pain points were — specifically, what was blocking people from having better access and better experiences? What I discovered was a passionate universe of mental health providers that was also hyper-fragmented. These professionals didn’t have access to a shared set of resources, yet they wanted to collaborate and feel like they were part of a learning and growth-oriented environment. They were also frustrated by the fact that they were trained to take care of people, yet a great amount of their time and resources were by necessity directed toward running a business.
The term “co-practicing” has come up often in conjunction with Alma. How would you describe how that works in your model?
We’re trying to create a fundamentally different kind of practice, and I’d break that down into three things. First, the providers in our community are independent, so they are free to build their practices the way the want to. Yet because we’ve created Alma as a community, they also have a platform of like-minded colleagues with whom they can collaborate — learning with one another, growing together, and referring to each other. Second, our technology platform offers providers a full stack solution to power their businesses, so they are free to focus on clients and their care. Third, our beautifully-designed office space creates a new kind of experience for patients and providers alike.
How many providers work at Alma? What are some of the qualities you seek in your provider members?
We have over 40 providers in the community today. Membership is application-based, and the overwhelming majority are referrals from existing members who recommend colleagues whom they’ve learned from and who they think would be a good fit. A lot of what we look for is about values. We’re seeking providers who want to be in a collaborative environment, as that’s such an important part of our values as a business. We also look to make sure that members are people whom others look up to, and who are wanting to grow and be exposed to new ideas and feedback.
Diversity is important as well. We make sure that we’re recruiting new members who represent a wide array of disciplines, so patients can find what they need. Currently, the majority of our members are from mental health disciplines. But because our goal is a whole person approach to mental wellbeing, in addition to mental health professionals, we also have acupuncturists, nutritionists, coaches and experts from other non-clinical disciplines.
And then on the patient side, how have they found you? What has their response been?
Many of our providers have of course brought their clients with them. But increasingly since we’ve opened, we’ve seen consumers look to Alma as a resource for finding practitioners, which is exciting. In addition, we have a number of referrals happening within our member community — non-prescribing therapists who think their patients might benefit from support from prescribing therapists, for example. In fact, we even have some cases of providers getting treatment from each other. For all of this we have an active listserve and an active directory, as well as meeting spaces where members can meet and exchange ideas.
Why do you think design is so important in medical spaces? How does that flow into the patient experience?
It’s amazing to me just how helpful it is when you focus in on details pertaining to space and experience. For example, we’ve worked with our building to offer anonymized badges to clients. To maintain their privacy, clients can show these in the downstairs lobby instead of their driver’s licenses. Along those same lines, all of our waiting spaces are oriented in such a way that people don’t have to face one another when they’re waiting for care. We also have meditation stations where we provide guided meditations in partnership with Headspace, so if you’ve never tried a mindfulness practice you can come and do one for five or ten minutes. We actually have a number of clients who come early for that, and our therapists have access to a promotional code to give clients to make that actionable at home as well.
And what about technology? What are some noticeable ways that changes things?
The check-in experience is a good example. Typically, when you’re waiting for an appointment, there’s that feeling of nakedness when someone calls out your name. So we’ve used technology to eliminate that jarring experience. When you come to Alma, you check in with an iPad (and there’s always someone there to help you do it). Once you’ve done that, your provider is alerted by text and they can come and get you or send a text to the system to let you know to come to their room.
But what I’m most excited about is our ability to facilitate collaboration digitally — like helping consumers find the right provider for them. We don’t think that things like long lists of data alone are helpful, since a good patient-provider match is typically less about degrees and modalities and more about alliance and empathy. So what we do is focus on storytelling. We have a professional writer help create all our member biographies, and in terms of content we really focus on who that provider is and what working with them might feel like.
Looking ahead, what’s your vision for Alma as it continues to grow and expand?
Our goal is to build an amazing community of providers who are set up to collaborate in powerful ways that give consumers a better way of finding and getting care. We want to refine the experience and from there think about making it more accessible.
Vital Signs
Favorite waiting room feature: Definitely the meditation pods. We also have a really nice tea station. Our guest pantry has beautiful mugs and teas — we intentionally don’t offer coffee, as we want people to feel calm and relaxed before a session.
Best office snack: Danny and Maddy, who comprise our client-facing concierge team, are both talented bakers, so anything they make.
Favorite local lunch spot: There’s a Dig Inn a few blocks away. I love their experience; it’s so easy to order. Casa Lever is also nearby, and I like the juxtaposition of this classic finance restaurant right near our tech startup.
On the office playlist: The music in the waiting room is all instrumental. We spent days working on getting the right sounds; the Spotify playlist on right now is “Piano in the Background”
Favorite healthcare app: I’ve mentioned this one earlier, but I really enjoy Headspace.
Learn more about Alma here!
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