We’ve collected reimbursement rates for therapists on Headway to provide transparency to the question of how much Headway pays therapists. We’re sharing this data so therapists can decide whether to use Headway for their private practice or to contract directly with insurance companies. We believe greater pay transparency puts more power in the hands of individual therapists, which we believe is a good thing.
To simplify the data, we are only sharing rates for an hour of psychotherapy (CPT Code 90837) for master's level therapists. See how we collected this data in the Methodology section.
To help other therapists, please submit your own Headway insurance rates. Our database does not yet include all states or insurances. Submissions can be anonymous. Submit Your Rates
For CPT Code 90837 (individual psychotherapy session that lasts 60 minutes) for master's level therapists, average reimbursement is very similar between Headway and direct insurance contracts.
The rates vary by state and by health insurance company, so while the nationwide averages are similar, it may be better or worse for you to use Headway in your state. Below is a chart showing average reimbursement across health plans by state. In some states like Virginia and Georgia, Headway pays quite a bit higher than direct insurance contracts, but in some states like Texas and New York, it is quite a bit lower.
Headway pay also varies by the health plan of your patients. What we see in our data is Headway pay for a 1-hour therapy session exceeds direct contracts for Aetna. Cigna and Aetna are pretty similar, while Blue Cross/Blue Shield is significantly higher for direct contracts.
In many cases, Headway is a good choice to accelerate accepting insurance as a therapist.
In many states, Headway's rates are higher than what an individual therapist would likely contract on their own. This is because Headway has negotiating leverage with insurance companies that an individual therapist will never have.
Headway is also faster to credential with insurances than going direct, and they provide billing services and an EHR included in their rates. These additional services further increase the attractiveness for an individual therapist. We’ve heard from therapists that you can be credentialed with insurance companies in days on Headway. This can take months if you go direct with insurance companies.
While there are many good software tools for therapists, it is convenient that Headway provides an EHR and video visit tool to all therapists included with their platform.
Many therapists choose to contract directly with insurance instead of using a platform like Headway. There are many reasons why they would choose to do this:
Our analysis shows Headway reimburses the therapist around the same amount that they would get on a direct insurance contract, but that amount is not the amount that Headway bills your patients. Headway bills patients a higher rate than a therapist receives. This amount is variable, but from hearing from therapists who have seen patient bills, Headway will add an 40-70% fee on top of what the therapist receives. This means if a therapist is receiving $110 per 1-hour visit, the patient may be billed $150 - $200. For patients with deductibles, this can be a real pain point for the patient and therapist.
Our analysis shows that many states and health insurance companies have better rates if you contract directly. One approach many therapists use is to start their private practice on Headway and simultaneously directly contract with health insurance companies. If you get better rates directly, then use those contracts; if the rates are better on Headway, then use Headway. It allows you to get the best of both worlds.
Headway has begun rolling out Medicare coverage, but as of writing this review, they do not accept any Medicaid patients. For many therapists, Medicaid is a key part of their practice, and they will need to contract directly with Medicaid to see those patients.
Most therapists will only want to bill codes available on the Headway fee schedule. Other clinicians, such as Nurse Practitioners or Psychiatrists, may feel constrained and need to contract directly with insurances to bill for all services within their practice. Such services could include substance use disorder treatment or ketamine therapy.
With a direct insurance contract, a therapist can bill for visits performed by limited permit therapists. This is called “incident to” billing. Headway does not allow “incident to” billing.
Headway requires therapists to use their EHR. This isn’t a problem for many; in fact, many see this as a benefit of Headway.
Therapists go into private practice to gain autonomy over their clinical practice, their time, and their finances. Working on the Headway platform is a quasi-independent practice. Headway could change their reimbursement rates for you at any time, or they could charge your patients more. Since Headway is performing services for you like billing and patient support, the experience your patients have depends on Headway behaving well. Some would say you have all these problems if you work with health insurance companies at all. This is true, but it is also true that working with Headway adds one more “middle man” that has significant power over a large group of individual therapists.
To develop the data in this report, we built web scrapers and AI interpreters that searched the web for any mention of Headway pay. We ended up with around 300 pay data points using this method. These mentions exist across Reddit, Tiktok, and other websites. We performed the same analysis for any mention of pay for direct insurance contracts.
To simplify the analysis, we only analyzed reimbursements for code 90837 (“psychotherapy, 60 minutes with patient”) for master's level clinicians:
Fair Use: Feel free to use this data and research with proper attribution linking to this study.
Media Inquiries: For media inquiries, contact team@singleaimhealth.com
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