Verbena LLC
Software built around how your organization actually runs.
Less admin time. Fewer disconnected systems. Faster operations.
Custom software for mental health and behavioral health organizations. We listen first and then build the workflows your team needs, in weeks instead of months. No 18-month implementations, no off-the-shelf modules that almost-but-not-quite fit.
What we do
Software that fits how you actually work.
Intake systems, workflow tools, integrations, and dashboards, designed with clinicians instead of forced on them. We start with how your team really runs today, and ship working software in weeks.
Tailored quickly to your practice.
Workflows shaped to your team, your clients, your funders. Iterate in days, not the 18-month implementations enterprise vendors quote.
We listen before we sell.
Every operator at Verbena comes from sales, not just IT. Discovery before code. We don't lose the room ten minutes in.
We serve only mental health.
One ecosystem, compounding depth, no detours. Every engagement teaches the next one.
What we're addressing
People are waiting. Clinicians are burning out.
Mental health demand has never been higher. The systems serving that demand have rarely been weaker.
Clients
The most common wait from first call to first appointment, with some clients waiting over a year.1
Clinicians
Of clinician work time in community behavioral health goes to documentation, more than any other single task, including client contact.2
Organizations
Scheduling in one system, billing in another, outcomes in a spreadsheet. Documented workarounds and double entry cost hours every week.3
The incumbent gap
Why nothing has worked.
Each of these models was built for a different customer. Verbena is the first one designed for this one.
Enterprise EHRs
Built for hospitalsDesigned around billing-heavy hospital workflows. Implementations commonly run 6–18 months,4 and only 38% of organizations say theirs hit the mark.4 Behavioral health is an afterthought module.
Custom dev shops
Don't speak clinicianBill by the hour, ship code, then disappear. Mental health teams can't write a spec; dev shops won't translate.
Consultancies
Diagnose, never deploySell an expensive strategy deck, then hand over a vendor list the org can't afford and a roadmap it can't execute. Cost is already the top barrier to health IT for community mental health agencies.5
Verbena
Built for this fieldSales-trained, clinician-fluent, mental-health-only. Custom software at prices generalists can't reach, and we stay after go-live.
What the field says
The workforce has already told us what's broken.
In 2023, the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and The Harris Poll surveyed 750 behavioral health professionals.6 We didn't pick our priorities; the field did. Here's what they said, and what we do about each one.
And 62% report severe burnout, with administrative documentation identified as a leading driver across behavioral health settings.6
Every Verbena build starts with the tasks clinicians name as the worst part of their week. The busywork of drafting summaries, reminders, and reconciliation is automated in the back office, so the reduction shows up in their day, not just in a dashboard.
A third of the workforce reports spending the majority of their time on administrative tasks rather than care.6
We map where those hours actually go during the Readiness Engagement, then target the top time sinks first (double entry, manual scheduling, report assembly) in the first build sprint.
Of professionals providing direct care, 68% say administrative load directly reduces the time they can spend supporting clients.6
Our target is 5–8 hours per clinician per week pulled back from desk work, a goal we size against the documentation-time research2 and measure honestly after go-live.
Roughly 40% report they cannot complete administrative work inside a traditional workday; it follows them home.6
Systems that talk to each other mean nothing is typed twice and nothing waits for a human to copy it. The workday ends when the sessions do, not hours after.
What we believe
Five things, in plain language.
Infrastructure is care. When intake systems fail, clients don't get seen. Bad operations is a clinical problem.
Clinicians are tired of being sold to. The first thing we owe them is honesty about what software can and cannot do.
Automation belongs in the back office, never in care. Where tools like AI help with paperwork, they stay out of clinical decisions, full stop.
Orgs deserve software built for them, not enterprise tools forced to fit.
We win by listening. The sale, the relationship, and the product are the same conversation.
Who we serve
Built for mid-sized mental health organizations.
If you run on Medicaid, grants, and county contracts, and you're outgrowing your spreadsheets, you're who we built this for.
Community mental health
50–500 staff. Outpatient, substance use, integrated care. Tech-behind and feeling board pressure on operations.
CCBHCs
Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics carrying real certification, PPS, and reporting burdens. Readiness work maps directly to what you already track.
Behavioral health groups
501(c)(3) nonprofits and for-profit group practices that have outgrown off-the-shelf tools but can't afford a dev shop.
For the front line
What changes for your clinicians.
Leadership signs the contract, but clinicians live with the software. So we build for them first.
- Less time in documentation, 5 to 8 hours a week pulled back from desk work.
- One place to look, instead of three systems that don't talk.
- We train inside your actual workflow, not in abstract demos.
- Back-office busywork is automated away. Nothing automated ever triages, diagnoses, or touches a care plan.
A Tuesday morning
Before: An intake coordinator re-types the same client into the scheduling tool, then the EHR, then a grant spreadsheet. A no-show she could have caught goes unnoticed until noon.
After: The intake is entered once and flows to all three. Her morning list is already current, the at-risk no-show is flagged at 8 a.m., and the first client is seen by 9:15.
Works with what you run
We don't replace your systems. We make them talk.
Most organizations we serve already have an EHR, a billing tool, and a dozen spreadsheets holding it all together. Verbena builds the connective tissue: where a system has an API or export, we integrate with it; where it doesn't, we build the bridge that ends the re-typing.
Product names belong to their respective owners; listing here means we build alongside these systems, not that they endorse us. Run something not listed? That's normal; ask us.
Our first service
The Readiness Engagement.
Four weeks of being in your building, listening, mapping how you actually run, scoring you honestly, and leaving you with a sequenced, budgeted plan. The first thing every Verbena client receives.
Four weeks · one clear deliverable
- Make the case to your board with a scored rubric
- Sequence the next 18 months of infrastructure work
- Walk into vendor conversations with leverage
- Brief leadership and staff on a shared plan
Try the platform
See it running on real workflows.
Verbena Impact is a working operations dashboard on realistic sample data: access, care quality, workforce, learning, and finance for a behavioral health organization, in one place. Open it in your browser, no login required.
What you'll see
Real software, running on real data.
Live updates across the organization. Automatic summaries and reminders. Secure audit history. Fast, collaborative workflows. The same patterns that show up in our client work.
Questions
The things people ask first.
Do we have to buy anything beyond the Readiness Engagement?
No. The Readiness Engagement stands on its own. You leave with a scored rubric and a sequenced plan you can take anywhere, including to another vendor. If you want us to build what the plan calls for, that's a separate decision.
What does it cost?
Every engagement is a scoped, flat-fee project with no open-ended hourly billing. We size the fee to your organization before you sign, and we're deliberate about keeping the first step below every alternative. Exact numbers come in the first conversation, in writing.
Do you use AI anywhere? Does it touch client care?
We use AI selectively, and only for back-office work. It never triages, diagnoses, or makes judgments about a client's care plan. That commitment is written into every BAA, and your data is never used to train a foundation model.
How do you handle HIPAA and PHI?
Verbena is built for HIPAA-compliant deployment: encryption at rest and in transit, access logging, role-based controls, and a BAA in place before any client data touches a Verbena system. Today we deliver against that posture inside scoped engagements; an independent third-party HIPAA security review is on the roadmap before broader PHI processing, and SOC 2 readiness is targeted within our first nine months. We will say plainly where we are on that path in every sales conversation. See our security & compliance page for details.
Do you work with CCBHCs?
Yes. The five readiness dimensions we score (tech, talent, culture, governance, and funding) map closely to how CCBHCs already think about certification and reporting readiness.
We're a solo or very small practice. Can you help?
Not with services today; our model fits 50 to 500 staff organizations. Small practices are exactly who our future product tier is being built to serve.
Sources
- NASW-NYS, Survey Analysis: Behavioral Health Client Waiting Times. The most commonly reported wait was 2–4 weeks (~50% of respondents), with reported waits ranging up to 12–14 months; 16% of social workers were not accepting new clients. ↩
- Psychiatric Services (2023) time-use research in community behavioral health, summarized in Eleos Health, “How the Documentation Burden Contributes to Provider Burnout”: clinicians spent an average of ~35% of work time on documentation, 14+ hours/week for a full-time clinician. ↩
- “Electronic Health Record Challenges, Workarounds, and Solutions Observed in Practices Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care,” J Am Board Fam Med (PMC7304941), documenting double documentation and workaround burden in integrated behavioral health settings. ↩
- ClinicMind, EHR Implementation Statistics: large EHR deployments commonly take 6–18 months; only 38% of organizations report their recent implementation “hit the mark,” and 75% of those dissatisfied at implementation still report low EHR satisfaction two or more years later. ↩
- AcademyHealth (2025), “Consistent Implementation of Health Information Technology in Community Mental Health Care Needs Stronger Policymaker Support”: cost, lack of health IT guidance, and strict privacy requirements are the key barriers to EHR/IT adoption at community mental health agencies. ↩
- National Council for Mental Wellbeing & The Harris Poll (2023), “Help Wanted” behavioral health workforce survey of 750 behavioral health professionals (fielded Feb 3–19, 2023): 93% reported burnout and 62% severe burnout; one-third spend most of their time on administrative tasks; 68% of those providing care say admin time reduces time supporting clients; ~2 in 5 cannot complete admin within traditional working hours. ↩
Where we start
Let's start with a conversation.
No pitch deck, no pressure. We'll talk about how your organization actually runs and whether a Readiness Engagement is the right next step.