Austin, Texas is quickly becoming a hotbed for health tech innovation, and Legion Health is the latest startup to make waves in the rapidly growing Digital Mental Health Marketplace. Following a trajectory similar to fellow Austin-based company Wheel Health Inc., which raised a stunning $150 million in Series C funding, Legion Health is drawing attention for its unique approach to solving one of behavioral health’s most persistent challenges: workforce shortages.
Founded by Yash Patel, Daniel Wilson, and Arthur MacWaters in 2021, Legion Health offers a modern solution to one of the industry’s oldest problems. By providing a platform that connects mental health professionals with digital health companies, value-based care providers, and hospitals, Legion Health positions itself as the first B2B marketplace specifically designed for mental health clinicians.
This new model doesn’t just streamline hiring—it transforms how organizations think about clinical capacity, flexibility, and access. In doing so, Legion Health is laying the foundation for a new kind of digital infrastructure in mental health services.
A Market Ripe for Disruption
The digital health sector has seen explosive growth in recent years. According to CB Insights, digital health companies raised $57.2 billion in 2021—a 79% increase from the year prior. Much of this investment has gone toward scaling telehealth, integrating behavioral health into primary care, and addressing long-standing mental health access issues made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.
That boom created massive opportunities—but also intensified existing workforce shortages. Mental health providers are in short supply, and recruitment is a significant barrier to growth for digital-first healthcare organizations. It’s this reality that Legion Health is built to address.
“There’s not a shortage of time that mental health professionals want to provide,” said CEO Yash Patel. “There’s this latent supply that exists in the form of hours that go unused.” Legion Health’s platform taps into that underutilized availability, giving clinicians the flexibility to work part-time, remotely, and with the organizations of their choosing—while giving healthcare companies access to ready-to-go clinical talent.
From Concept to Company: Building the Infrastructure for Behavioral Health
The founding team began exploring the idea for Legion Health in late 2020, conducting interviews with over 200 stakeholders across the healthcare landscape—from startup founders and clinicians to hospital administrators and payers. What emerged was a clear opportunity: health organizations were struggling to recruit, manage, and retain a clinical workforce, and mental health professionals lacked meaningful, flexible opportunities that fit their lifestyle.
Legion Health officially launched in May 2021 and quickly gained momentum. The startup was accepted into Y Combinator in June of that year, receiving $125,000 in seed funding for a 7% stake. That experience helped refine the business model and provided the coaching and capital needed to scale.
As of mid-2025, Legion Health has raised a total of $2 million in seed funding. High-profile individual investors include Erica Johnson, co-founder of Modern Health; Ravi Shah, chief innovation officer at Columbia Psychiatry; and Jay Desai, former CEO of PatientPing. Institutional backers include UpHonest Capital and Soma Capital—both known for investing in breakout startups.
This capital is fueling Legion’s expansion, allowing the company to add features, scale its provider network, and deepen its footprint in the Digital Mental Health Marketplace.
A Clinician-First Platform: Freedom, Flexibility, and Support
At the heart of Legion Health’s mission is a deep respect for the clinician experience. Unlike many gig-style staffing models, Legion Health offers providers a more structured and supportive environment—without requiring a full-time commitment.
Clinicians who join the platform work as 1099 contractors and are given the freedom to set their hours, choose the organizations they work with, and decide how many patients they want to see. They’re paid weekly and are supported by Legion’s backend operations, which handle patient scheduling, licensing support, and payment processing.
“We’re finding a sweet spot around 20 to 30 hours per week,” said Patel. “People want to earn extra income, and currently, there’s not a really good way to do that without jumping through a lot of hoops.” Legion removes those barriers by making the process seamless for clinicians and connecting them to companies that are actively seeking their services.
To broaden opportunities further, Legion helps clinicians obtain additional state licenses—expanding access to telehealth care across state lines and more evenly distributing supply to where it’s needed most.
Going Beyond Staffing: The Evolution of Mental Health Marketplaces
While Legion Health may look like a staffing agency at first glance, its model is distinctly different. The company maintains long-term relationships with healthcare clients, helping them adapt to fluctuating patient volume while offloading the administrative burden of managing a part-time workforce.
Clients pay by the hour for clinician time, and those clinicians become integrated into the client’s care team. This creates a more cohesive patient experience while allowing organizations to maintain continuity of care—something that’s difficult to achieve with typical temp or contract labor models.
“What we found when we talked to many of these mental health providers is that they were having a poor experience working as a contractor for many of our potential customers,” Patel said. “That’s because they often weren’t getting the volume of appointments they needed—and so they’d leave the platform, dissatisfied.”
Legion Health solves that by aligning the interests of providers and organizations. It’s a model designed not just to fill slots, but to foster real professional engagement. By building a true Digital Mental Health Marketplace, Legion helps companies focus on delivering care—while it handles the rest.
Positioning for the Future of Behavioral Health
Legion Health is betting that its platform can become the backbone of behavioral health services for a new era. With 800+ clinicians in all 50 states and eight enterprise clients—including some of the biggest names in digital health—Legion is proving its model works.
The timing couldn’t be better. The demand for behavioral health integration is rising as primary care shifts toward value-based care. The explosion of digital health startups means more companies need scalable clinical infrastructure. And telehealth has finally entered the mainstream, opening new possibilities for remote mental health care.
In this evolving landscape, Legion Health’s role in the Digital Mental Health Marketplace is growing more central by the day. Patel believes that as more organizations enter the space, the opportunity for Legion to serve as a common layer of clinical infrastructure will only grow.
“So as the space becomes more crowded, we think it’s great,” he said. “It seems like every company is providing a different flavor of what the market needs. That’s an opportunity for us to help a lot of companies thrive.”
Final Thoughts
The digital behavioral health space is crowded, competitive, and full of promise. But it’s also fragmented, with many organizations struggling to find the workforce infrastructure needed to scale. Legion Health’s clinician-first, tech-enabled platform offers a solution that benefits both providers and patients—and creates real value for digital health organizations.
With a firm foothold in the Digital Mental Health Marketplace, strong investor backing, and a clear vision, Legion Health is poised to become one of the standout companies reshaping the future of mental healthcare.
