Lauren Gage started Triplemoon based on her own experiences and what she learned in her corporate career. She worked at Goldman Sachs, did growth strategy at McKinsey, and earned an MBA. When she and her husband became parents, they faced more challenges than they expected. “In the first few years, postpartum, my husband and I really struggled more than we thought we would,” Gage told the California Business Journal.
They were not alone. Their struggles revealed a deeper problem: Access to mental-health care for children and families was badly misaligned with demand. “Am I the only person, or is this a broader issue?” Gage asked herself. That question eventually drove her to launch Triplemoon, a tech-enabled behavioral health services company embedded within primary care clinics.
The Gap in Pediatric Mental Health
In the United States, the supply of pediatric mental-health services is not keeping up with demand. One in seven children is diagnosed with a mental-health condition. Only about 20% of children with mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders receive care from a specialized mental health care provider, according to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) archive entry. The issue has become urgent. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among people aged 10 to 24, and the rate increased by about 60% from 2010 to 2020, according to a 2023 CDC publication.
Geographical and structural barriers exacerbate the problem. More than one-third of the U.S. population—around 122 million people—live in areas officially designated as Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas, according to 2024 HRSA statistics. In rural settings, families can face waits of several months; some outpatient child and adolescent psychiatric clinics report average delays exceeding 200 days, according to a research paper published on Science Direct in 2023. Meanwhile, more than half of all mental-health and substance-use treatment in the U.S. is delivered in primary-care settings, according to an editorial published in The Journal for Nurse Practitioners in 2021, typically by physicians with limited behavioral-health training. As Gage noted: “We’re burning our primary-care system out by asking it to shoulder mental and behavioral health alone.”
Triplemoon’s founders see these issues as signs that the system is not working. Demand is rising, the infrastructure is weak, reimbursement is lacking, and primary care is stretched too thin.
A Model Designed to Bridge the Gap
Triplemoon uses a collaborative care model that works inside the patient’s primary care practice. The idea is to keep the primary care provider involved and add a team of social workers and board-certified pediatric psychiatrists who work virtually. “The primary-care provider is still part of the care team. We are providing services directly to the patient, we bring in a team of social workers, and we bring in a team of psychiatric consultants,” Gage said
For patients, the process begins with a routine visit with their primary care provider. The provider uses screening tools to check for anxiety, depression, or developmental issues. If there is a concern, the child is referred to Triplemoon. All care is virtual, so families can schedule sessions at times that work for them, including mornings, evenings, or weekends. “They no longer have to take off work or get backup childcare or pull their kids out of school to go get the mental-health care that they need,” Gage says.
Triplemoon’s service has four main parts. First, they start with a behavioral health intervention to make a precise diagnosis and set up a treatment plan that usually lasts 6 to 12 months. Second, families get ongoing education and support through Triplemoon’s online platform, which is always available. Third, the team coordinates care by working with schools and other specialists, like occupational, physical, or speech therapists. Lastly, board-certified child psychiatrists review each case to ensure the treatment is appropriate and that any medication is correct.
Getting paid by insurance is key to making the model work. Collaborative-care CPT codes are required for insurance reimbursement in 34 states. Triplemoon is already in five states and plans to grow. Gage said California is ahead in paying for these services.
Benefits for Clinics and Clinicians
Triplemoon’s model also helps clinics and providers, not just families. For primary care practices, it means they spend less time on complex mental health cases, receive support from behavioral health teams, and can earn more through collaborative care codes. “The better job we do, the more time a primary-care provider gets back, the more money they make, the better their patients’ fee, and the quicker they achieve their target outcomes,” Gage said.
For social workers and psychiatrists, Triplemoon offers a clear career path and manages their caseloads. The team holds weekly reviews, works together on treatment plans, and uses shared systems to help prevent isolation and burnout. “We are managing their caseloads very closely; it is truly a very symbiotic system,” Gage says.
Technology and the Human Touch
To grow, Triplemoon focuses on efficiency and technology. Lauren says the company automates admin tasks, scheduling, and follow-ups, but real people still provide the care. “We are firm believers that humans should deliver mental-health care, but we want to allow and enable our team to practice at the top of their license,” Gage said.
This mix of strong processes and personal care helps Triplemoon deliver quality and consistency as it grows.
Scaling the Business
Initially bootstrapped, Triplemoon recently raised a $3.5 million seed round led by LiveOak Ventures and Activate Venture Partners to accelerate growth. The capital will be directed toward three strategic areas: standardizing the clinical offering, integrating technology to achieve operational efficiency, and expanding state by state across the nation. “The U.S. opportunity is massive, and that’s where we’re focused for the time being,” Gage said.
Triplemoon’s model could work in other countries, but for now, the focus is on the United States. The main challenge in other places would be changing how care is delivered and paid for. Gage says the priority is to build and scale the model in the U.S. first: “The opportunity in U.S. health care is enormous, and our responsibility is to support that system first—to prove that collaborative care can work at scale here,” Gage said.
The biggest challenge is running operations with discipline. Gage says having a well-organized process is both the most challenging part and the most significant opportunity for the business.
Stigma, Awareness, and Social Change
More people in the U.S. are aware of mental health, but it is still uneven. “Any publicity for mental health awareness raising is good publicity. I hope that this general awareness and discussion about mental health makes it less taboo,” Gage says.
Triplemoon helps in two main ways. First, it shares information with the public by publishing articles on topics such as neurodivergence and ADHD, highlighting the strengths of people with these conditions. “We just published a two-part series on ADHD and some of the superpowers that people who have ADHD have,” she add. Second, Triplemoon makes it easier and more private for people to get care. “Models like Triple Moon are designed to fit into your life so you don’t have to announce to the whole world what you’re doing.”
Younger generations like Gen Z are more open about wellness, so mental health services may become a regular part of family healthcare. Triplemoon wants to be part of this change.
Triplemoon’s vision remains constant: “We want to help families extend the years in their life and the life in their years,” Gage concludes. “The immediate task is to refine, standardize, and scale its collaborative-care model across the U.S., while maintaining clinical quality and operational discipline.”
If Triplemoon succeeds, it could become a model for integrating pediatric behavioral health, making care easier to access, expanding into more regions, and helping mental health care shift from reacting to problems to preventing them.
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