Defina’s Customer Success Story: Delivering Personalized Mental Health Care at Scale with Tellescope

Defina Health is a clinician‑founded mental health clinic based in San Francisco. The team’s mission is simple yet ambitious: bring people to the center of an adaptive mental health community.

Defina offers both virtual and in‑person psychiatry and therapy services, pairing patients with clinicians, case managers, and (when needed) friends and family support. Their clinic promises mental‑health adapted to you, providing easy access to personalized care in a single space.

It’s designed by clinicians, with virtual appointments and a connected care team that listens, collaborates and adapts. Defina is in‑network with several major insurers, including Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare, making care accessible to a wide range of patients.

Before adopting Tellescope, Defina wanted to avoid the technological fragmentation that plagues many healthcare startups.

Gene Javaherian, CEO and co‑founder, drew on her experience working at other clinics before founding Defina. She previously had to use about “ten different tools” just to handle onboarding, consents, and other parts of the patient journey. Oftentimes those tools would lack integrations with one another, forcing care teams to rely on manual data entry to ensure critical information flowed from one tool to another.

Platform updates also meant more manual work for teams: each change to one tool required updates across numerous others, creating hidden costs and slowing down the care journey. Gene described those workflows as “cumbersome and expensive.”

When she founded Defina, she was determined not to recreate that experience; from day one the goal was a unified, minimal tech stack and efficient workflows.

Defina’s requirements for its platform stemmed directly from Gene’s experiences at other clinics. To set the practice up for success from day one, she insisted on:

• Self‑service patient onboarding: Prospective patients must be able to visit the Defina website and easily sign up for services without being routed through emails or phone calls.
• All‑in‑one intake form: A single form, hosted outside of any vendor portal, should let patients book an appointment, sign consent forms, and enter insurance and payment details in one unified flow.
• EHR integration: Information collected (questionnaires, consents, and payment details) must feed automatically into their EHR. Staff should never have to re‑enter data manually.
• Reduced friction for everyone: By removing barriers to entry and keeping a minimal tech stack, Defina aims to improve the patient experience and free clinicians and administrators from time‑consuming administrative work so they can focus on care.

Gene acknowledged that these goals might sound simple but pointed out that most platforms couldn’t deliver a true all‑in‑one workflow out-of-the-box. For example: at other clinics, collecting payment information often wasn’t possible or wasn’t connected to other systems. In addition, standalone forms were only available inside the vendor’s portal.

Those limitations created a lot of friction for staff and patients, which is why Defina insisted on having everything in one place from the beginning.

Defina discovered Tellescope in 2024 by way of their EHR: Canvas. Gene discovered Canvas first because of their open API and emphasis on interoperability. Gene and her team wanted an EHR that would let them build their own technology layer and leverage patient data rather than being locked into a closed system.

Canvas introduced the team at Defina to Tellescope because an integration between the two platforms already existed. At this stage, Defina evaluated both custom developers (to build their own platform from scratch) and Tellescope.

They chose Tellescope because “it was a lot more feasible to go with something that’s already built and just plug in.” The existing connection between the two products meant there would be no additional build time.

Ultimately, Tellescope provided the all-in-one solution that Defina was looking for:

• EHR integration: Tellescope integrates with a variety of EHRs, including Canvas, eliminating the need to jump between platforms. Data flows from Tellescope into Canvas, ensuring patient forms and questionnaires are stored in the clinical chart.
• Unified communications: Tellescope allows staff to manage email, SMS, secure messages, and even phone or video calls from a single shared inbox. This unified inbox replaces multiple communication tools and helps clinicians stay on the same page.
• Modern client experience: Patients access a branded portal where they can self‑schedule, message their care team, and access educational materials. The portal is easy to customize without writing code, which was crucial for non‑technical staff.
• Workflow automation: Defina can build automated workflows to send reminders, collect information, assign tasks and create custom surveys. This saved hours of manual work and ensured patients received timely touchpoints.
• Team coordination: Different roles and permissions keep everyone aligned. Clinicians and administrators can communicate internally to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Using Tellescope alongside Canvas allowed Defina to keep its tech stack small; just two platforms instead of a patchwork of several niche tools. Gene recalls both companies were very willing to work with one another to ensure a seamless integration experience.

During the onboarding phase, the Tellescope team worked closely with Defina to ensure the platform fit their workflows. Most of the training happened through hands‑on, one‑on‑one sessions with Tellescope’s customer success team.

Gene emphasised that Tellescope felt like an extension of Defina’s own staff. They were receptive to feedback, responsive to support tickets, and eager to walk through different ways of solving a problem.

She could bring an idea and ask, “Is there a better way to implement this?” and the team would brainstorm options and sometimes suggest a more efficient approach. When Gene requested small improvements, like the ability to drag a calendar block to extend an appointment, Tellescope’s developers acted quickly.

This responsiveness and collaboration made Defina feel as if they were building the platform together; it felt like a true partnership within the onboarding experience, and still remains a partnership to this day.

“It was such a low‑code situation, and the functionality was exponentially greater than the coding,” Gene recalls of the implementation process. Defina’s founders, two clinicians with no engineering background, were able to configure workflows, forms, and automations themselves.

Building Tellescope and Canvas side-by-side took about six to nine months. Gene and her co‑founder were surprised at how quickly they could set up the platform without engineering support. When they first began evaluating tools, they assumed they would need a coding team or builder to make everything work.

Instead, the low‑code environment allowed two clinicians to plug in their workflows and launch much faster than they had anticipated. Gene noted that she had never seen two people stand up a system so quickly (and have it still work seamlessly a year later) in any of the national expansions, healthcare, or academic settings she’d worked in previously.

The experience convinced her that a small, non-technical team could deploy Tellescope and Canvas together without sacrificing functionality or stability.

Tellescope powers every stage of Defina’s patient journey. Patients can sign up for services directly on Defina’s website and complete consent forms, insurance details and payment information in a single workflow.

Self‑scheduling links and automated reminders ensure that appointments are booked quickly and that patients arrive prepared. The platform also supports retention campaigns and patient communications, which means no more juggling spreadsheets and separate email services.

During care, Defina uses Tellescope to send ongoing questionnaires and educational materials - and the team is actively expanding this library. For example, therapists can send food journal templates for eating-disorder care; patients complete these online, and the responses flow directly into Canvas.

1. Less administrative overhead

Defina has dramatically reduced the typical need for logistical messages from patients. In other clinics, Gene was used to seeing a steady stream of emails and calls about things like billing, scheduling, and medication refills.

With Tellescope handling those tasks, clinicians see far less inbound patient outreach. Instead, they can spend their time on clinical questions and meaningful interactions. Patients know how to reschedule appointments in the portal or request new services, eliminating the need to contact the Defina care team for assistance.

2. Seamless patient experience

One of the most telling metrics is what patients don’t say. Defina’s patients rarely mention the onboarding process or patient portal because it simply works. There are no complaints about missing forms, confusing instructions, or multiple emails.

Gene says this absence of feedback is the best evidence of a smooth experience: patients move through intake and care without noticing the technology. In her previous experience this is usually not the case; patients would often reach out with logistical issues like lost messages or needing help with password resets. With Tellescope, they have not had to manage those logistical challenges.

3. Personalization at scale

The adaptive care model at the heart of Defina’s mission is now supported by technology. Tellescope’s automation and survey tools help identify which patients need attention and which interventions are working.

Clinicians can tailor education and forms for each patient, track outcomes, and adjust plans accordingly. Because the platform integrates tightly with Canvas, there’s no manual data entry or risk of losing information.

Defina consistently describes Tellescope as “an extension of our own team.” Beyond quick responses on support tickets, the relationship is built on collaboration and iteration. When Defina has a goal and a proposed path, Tellescope walks through options in the product, explains trade-offs, and often suggests a better route.

Importantly, the team regularly ships updates and closes the loop when requests land: Gene noted that features which weren’t initially available were submitted as requests, and over time “they’ve been knocking those out.” Often with a follow-up email along the lines of “Hey, we just did that; we’re good here.” 

That ongoing learning loop of, “Here’s what we’re trying to do; what do you think?” has turned support into continuous co-design and upskilling for Defina.

Defina’s next priority is a bi‑directional integration between Canvas and Tellescope. Currently, scheduling flows from Canvas into Tellescope but not the other way around. Gene wants clinicians to live in a single platform (ideally Canvas for clinical work) while administrative staff manage communications and logistical tasks in Tellescope. She’s also looking forward to enabling the click‑to‑call functionality within Canvas so that clinicians can call patients from the same interface where they chart.

With Tellescope continuing to evolve alongside Defina’s needs, the partnership shows how modern PRM software can help mental health practices scale without sacrificing the personal touch that defines their care. By centralizing communications, automating workflows, and integrating tightly with their EHR, Defina has freed its clinicians to focus on what matters most: supporting patients on their unique mental‑health journeys.

The partnership model matters as much as the software itself. Quick iterations and thoughtful guidance let a small clinical team launch fast, then keep improving without adding tools or headcount.

If your care team is looking for an all-in-one care management solution that unifies intake, communication, automation, and EHR workflows without a heavy engineering lift, Tellescope is built for that.

See how your clinic could replicate Defina’s setup and results. Click to schedule a demo with our team to learn how your workflows and EHR can seamlessly integrate into Tellescope’s unified platform.