For commercial health plans
AI behavioral care for GI, built for commercial health plans.
Help members with IBS and functional GI manage the symptoms that drive avoidable utilization. Built for VBC, specialty-cost and medical-economics teams.
- 300,000+ people supported
- 20,000+ referring clinicians
- RCT published in the AJG1
- CMS ACCESS Model participant10
GI costs are rising, for both you and your members.
Most GI disorders are functional: scopes come back clear because the symptoms come from the gut-brain connection, which standard GI care is not built to treat.
National GI spend
$119.6B
in annual US costs for GI, liver and pancreatic disease.12
- reason adults visit the ED: stomach and abdominal pain.15
- #1
- of adults worldwide meet criteria for a disorder of gut-brain interaction.13
- >40%
Stays with existing GI care
Diagnosis, medication and procedures. IBD flares, bleeds, cancers.
Nerva
AI behavioral care for the functional-GI population, delivered as software, at scale. Complements existing care.
- IBS
- Functional dyspepsia
- Reflux hypersensitivity
Escalates when needed
Clinician-led multidisciplinary teams. Refractory DGBI, complex comorbidity.
Clinician-staffed GI clinics do valuable work in the complex tier, and their reach scales with clinician supply. Software economics are what make the whole addressable cohort reachable.
The functional GI care program
Nerva is a structured six-week program, validated in populations with IBS,3 IBD,4 functional dyspepsia5 and more.6
One 15-minute guided brain-gut session a day for six weeks, plus short CBT-based lessons.
General diet and lifestyle guidance, including support for reintroducing foods.
Members check in on validated measures: IBS-SSS, abdominal pain and PHQ-4. Reports reach your team through HIPAA-compliant reporting.
Our care team screens at intake, reaches out to members who go quiet, and escalates warning signs to a provider.
Nerva is AI behavioral care: a structured, clinician-designed gut-brain program, evaluated in a randomized controlled trial,1 delivered entirely by software.
- Fixed protocol
- Every member gets the same clinician-designed sessions. AI never writes the therapy.
- Personalized delivery
- AI tailors pre-authored education and pacing to each member.
- No capacity ceiling
- No clinician per session, so enrollment is never gated by appointment supply.
“Within the evidence reviewed, Nerva presented the strongest overall evidence for improving IBS symptoms.”
Peterson Health Technology InstituteVirtual Gastrointestinal Care Solutions, March 20262
Effect sizes from a randomized controlled trial.
81%1of participants met the primary symptom endpoint (≥50-point IBS-SSS improvement), vs 63% on active control.
Randomized controlled trial · N=244 · active control · AJG 2025 Read the research →
- Clinically significant abdominal-pain reduction, vs 35% on control1
- 71%
- Clinical studies on Nerva, indexed on our Research page
- 15+
Research and clinical collaborations
Modeled savings, built on measured outcomes.
Modeled estimate · not observed results
Observed · member-levelIn a retrospective study of over 17,000 Nerva users, six-month IBS management costs fell from $1,259 to $502.14 The model below translates that to plan level.
250,000 members
- 25,000 with an addressable functional GI condition (10%)
- 12,500 eligible and reachable (50%)
- 1,688 enrolling at the model's 13.5% assumption
The 10% addressable share is deliberately narrower than the >40% of adults who meet DGBI criteria: the model counts only members a claims-identified, self-guided program can plausibly reach.
$1.1M–$2.2MModeled annual net savings range8$0.37–$0.73 net per member per month. The low bound halves the enrollment assumption.
$1,276modeled net savings per enrolled member, after the expected program fee8
1,688enrolled members
Pay for outcomes.
Pricing follows pre-agreed improvements on validated symptom measures rather than activity. The program is software, so payment can stay per-enrolled with outcomes at risk instead of per-session. Clinical escalation stays human.
Mindset Health runs outcomes-based pricing with Medicare through the CMS ACCESS program, in its musculoskeletal and behavioral health tracks; ACCESS does not cover GI.10 An Australian health fund (HIF) runs Nerva as a member health program,16 and the plans and employers Nerva works with cover 30m lives.7
Terms tied to member outcomes.
Pre-agreed thresholds on RCT-validated symptom endpoints.
HIPAA-compliant symptom reporting; both sides see the same scoreboard.
Nerva, by line of business.
The same program serves every book. The economics sit in different places.
Fully insured: the risk is yours
The case on this page is your case, tested against your own claims: modeled economics and outcome-aligned terms.
ASO: a program your employer clients are asking for
Your self-funded clients own the risk and you own the offering. Take them the employer-facing story and the case studies.
Medicare Advantage: the 65+ book
MA runs on its own economics and evidence, on a page built for medical and care-management teams.
Commercial agreements are scoped by line of business and do not extend to Medicare Advantage members.
Measured on your claims, not ours.
Proposed design · agreed per contract
- Claims-based identification, with clinician clearance before enrollment
- Validated symptom instruments, reported on the cadence your team sets
- Pre/post evaluation on your claims, comparison agreed at contract
- Data handling under SOC 2 standards, documentation for procurement review
The full measurement design, identification logic and evaluation cadence come with the plan analysis.
Start with your claims, and an analysis you can hand to actuarial.
References
- Anderson, Ellen J.; Peters, Simone L.; Gibson, Peter R.; Halmos, Emma P. Comparison of Digitally Delivered Gut-Directed Hypnotherapy Program With an Active Control for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. The American Journal of Gastroenterology 120(2):p 440-448, February 2025. DOI: 10.14309/ajg.0000000000002921
- Peterson Health Technology Institute. Virtual Gastrointestinal Care Solutions Assessment. March 2026. PHTI separately estimated $1,889 in net annual healthcare savings per IBS patient for virtual GI care, in a commercial population.
- Lacy, B. E. et al. ACG Clinical Guideline: Management of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. The American Journal of Gastroenterology, 2021.
- Keefer, L.; Bedell, A.; Norton, C.; Hart, A. L. How Should Pain, Fatigue, and Emotional Wellness Be Incorporated Into Treatment Goals for Optimal Management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease? AGA Clinical Practice Update. Gastroenterology, 2022;162:1439–1451.
- British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines on the management of functional dyspepsia. Gut, 2022.
- AGA Clinical Practice Update on functional heartburn and reflux hypersensitivity. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
- Combined membership of the health plans and employers Nerva holds contracts with, in the US and Australia. A measure of partner reach rather than the number of members enrolled in or covered for Nerva.
- Mindset Health commercial model, August 2026: modeled expectations net of the model's expected per-enrollee fee, with the enrollment funnel shown in the calculator. Modeled estimates, not observed Nerva claims savings.
- Peters, S. L.; Yao, C. K.; Philpott, H.; Yelland, G. W.; Muir, J. G.; Gibson, P. R. Randomised clinical trial: the efficacy of gut-directed hypnotherapy is similar to that of the low FODMAP diet for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 2016;44(5):447–459.
- Mindset Health participation in the CMS ACCESS Model, 2026: outcomes-based arrangements in the musculoskeletal and behavioral health tracks. ACCESS coverage does not extend to GI.
- Stanghellini, V. Functional Dyspepsia and Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Beyond Rome IV. Digestive Diseases, 2018;35(Suppl 1):14–17: functional GI disorders represent 40% of diagnoses in gastroenterological settings. The structural/complex split either side is illustrative.
- Peery, A. F. et al. Burden and Cost of Gastrointestinal, Liver, and Pancreatic Diseases in the United States. Gastroenterology, 2022. The $119.6B estimate is a national whole-GI figure from 2018.
- Sperber, A. D. et al. Worldwide Prevalence and Burden of Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders, Results of Rome Foundation Global Study. Gastroenterology, 2021;160(1):99–114: over 40% of adults worldwide meet criteria for a disorder of gut-brain interaction (functional gastrointestinal disorder).
- Peters, S. L.; Gibson, P. R.; Halmos, E. P. App-delivered gut-directed hypnotherapy halves the long-term costs associated with managing Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) symptoms and improves work productivity. Retrospective study of 17,000+ Nerva users, presented at Digestive Disease Week: IBS management costs fell from USD 1,259 to USD 502 over six months. Retrospective completer analysis, not a controlled trial.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: stomach and abdominal pain is the most common principal reason for adult emergency department visits. See also Wu et al., Academic Emergency Medicine, 2025, on ED abdominal-pain presentations 2007–2019.
- HIF and Mindset Health member health program partnership, current as at August 2026. Program details and outcome figures are available to funds and plans under discussion.