The Ugly Truth About Accepting Insurance in Private Practice (1/2)
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2020
- Are you feeling the stress about whether or not to take insurance or just do private pay in your private practice? Do you feel like you just don’t really understand either process enough to make an educated decision? This is the first of our two-part video series covering the pros and cons of taking insurance or doing private pay in private practice.
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Insurance gets a bad wrap from a lot of mental health professionals in private practice. It may not be for everyone, but it’s your choice to make.
If you don’t mind having a fully booked appointment calendar, consider taking insurance.
Pros:
1. Your private practice will fill up… fast! When you are accepted on their network, you show up on these panels. Showing up on these panels gives you a steady stream of clients fast, usually completely booking your private practice within the first couple of months.
2. You don’t have to market. The in-network referrals from the insurance companies do all the work for you.
3. Skip the process of creating your brand. If you are booked without any effort, then you can skip this step.
4. More frequent sessions. Since they aren’t reaching into their pockets as much as private pay clients, they are more likely to see you weekly. When you can get that frequency with the client, they are likely to achieve their goals at a much quicker pace, giving you and them a huge feeling of accomplishment.
5. Economic recessions? Not for you! With insurance, if the market tanks and everyone is holding onto their cash, you won’t be near as affected since insurance will be paying for most of the bill.
6. No niching down. When you choose to accept insurance, you’ll get a broad range of clients so you get to see a little bit of everyone.
7. Helping people who would not normally be able to afford therapy. Just because someone cannot afford out of pocket therapy doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have access to it.
8. Gives your practice some credibility in that the insurance company has credentialed you.
Cons:
1. Insurance can take a REALLY long time to pay you. I’m talking about 6 weeks at the minimum and MONTHS at the latest.
2. You have no control. This can get really frustrating when you are trying to help someone, but you have a list of rules on how you can do it.
3. You’re going to make less money. Normally around 60-80 percent. When you are making so much less per client, you will have to see more clients to make your needed salary.
4. Your time on the phone with the insurance company trying to get paid for the work you are doing. They often have a high rate of denial, and even the smallest mistakes can get your claim denied.
5. Disruption in the therapy process. They can take up to two months to tell you that they have denied a claim. This causes them to pause their current services with you and maybe even cause them to never resume.
6. Stigmatization. This permanently marks this person with this diagnosis on their record.
7. Larger group of them who are not motivated. Since they aren’t paying as much of their own hard-earned cash they tend to take your healing less seriously causing you more frustration when trying to help them.
8. Other software and systems in place. You will need to learn how to handle billing properly along with making sure you have the correct software to do so.
If you decide that accepting insurance is right for you, help yourself by getting specialized training for that.
You can always look into paying someone to take care of your billing.
Thanks! This was very helpful
Great advice!
Solid info! Thx!
I'll go to an out-of-network provider for important things like therapy. Insurance makes it harder for people to choose the right one.
You make a lot of very solid points here when covering the pros and cons of accepting insurance. However, I think you make it sound too easy to build a profitable private practice as quickly as you say by accepting insurance. I also disagree with the point you made about not having to market your private practice if you accept insurance.
How can I get trained in billing?
This video was helpful, but I have not spoken to anyone in private practice who has had luck filling their caseload just by taking insurance. How is this achieved?
It isn't true that taking insurance fills your private practice fast. I have never had more than 8 insurance clients at one time. Private pay has been much better.