Why better depression treatments go unused

Everbright co-founder and CEO Ben Kuhn joined Health Tech Nerds Radio for a conversation about a question that sits at the center of our work: if more effective depression treatments already exist, why aren’t they being used?

It’s a focused, twenty-five-minute listen for anyone interested in the gap between what medicine can do and what patients actually receive.

The treatments work — that isn’t the problem

Psychiatry still leans heavily on standard medication and talk therapy, even though the FDA cleared better options years ago. TMS has been approved since 2008; esketamine (SPRAVATO®) since 2019. For treatment-resistant depression, the episode discusses evidence that these therapies are roughly twice as effective as standard treatment.

When the science is settled but patients still can’t get the treatment, the problem isn’t clinical. It’s operational.

Where patients actually get stuck

The barriers are structural, not medical:

• Payer eligibility criteria that are complex and vary by plan.
• Prior authorization that is slow and administratively heavy.
• Operational lift that most independent practices can’t take on alone.

Each of these is a place where an eligible patient quietly drops out of the funnel — not because the treatment wouldn’t help, but because the path to it is too hard to navigate.

How Everbright closes the gap

Everbright works as an AI-enabled service organization that partners with independent practices to remove those barriers end to end: identifying eligible patients, educating them on their options, managing billing and prior authorization, and supporting the day-to-day operations of delivering care. The conversation also looks ahead — to emerging therapies and to value-based payer models that point toward real reductions in the total cost of care.

The throughline is simple: the treatments already work. Our job is to make them reachable.

Listen to the full episode.

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