Alma/Headway

[PSYD2024]

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I've heard mixed reviews and I'm curious if it's really worth it. I like working private practice but I don't have my own so im still getting a percentage of my pay. But I also know I'm not ready to handle all the ins/outs of billing and admin stuff at this point in my career. Lastly, has anyone done alma/headway/etc and been able to transition to their own practice after without problems?

 

[WisNeuro]

No, just no.

 

[PsyDr]

If I wanted to be paid like a flight attendant, I would have become a flight attendant.

 

[PSYD2024]

lol I appreciate the honesty.

 

[WisNeuro]

Also, don't contribute to the en****tification of the field, please.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Hard pass.

1. Horrible rates, which hurts the clinician and the field.
2. Liability more bc remote.
3. A.I. / Ethical considerations of what info they have access to and what they do with it.

The list goes on.

 

[quickpsych]

Never heard of those companies but looked them up real quick. It's telling on the Alma site that almost all of the providers listed are midlevels and some alphabet soup of letters after their name.

I may be wrong but a big problem with this model from a business perspective is that you're basically an independent contractor for them and thus it isn't your private practice, you're just a contractor for their private practice collective. And likely means any expenses you incur you can not deduct or write off as business expenses. Even if I am wrong, as others said, these companies are usually bad for business and undercut skilled providers and well trained providers.

 

[Sanman]

My take is a bit different. From what I know of Alma and Headway, their only real function is managing your credentialing and billing. So, they get you credentialed, take a cut off the top, and pay you the rest (or Alma charges you a monthly fee). You get faster payment. Depending on the rate that is proposed, this might be better or worse than credentialing with an insurer directly if you are unable to obtain a favorable payment rate. At the end of the day, they may be useful as a transitional payor when starting a practice depending on who they are credentialing you with overall. I heard that rate cuts are occurring as venture capital runs into cash flow problems. You are also not working for them and keeping them as your sole referral source is asking for problems down the line.

 

[medium rare]

Please do not. You will be more than fine by working with insurance directly yourself.

 

[Doctor Eliza]

You’ve heard mixed things, so some good things too? Everything I’ve heard has been uniformly bad. What have you heard that was positive?

Also don’t sell yourself short. Billing has a learning curve but if you can get through a PhD program, you can learn it. I have practice management software that makes it a breeze.

 

[smalltownpsych]

Billing insurance can be a pain initally to set up, but once it is , it’s pretty straightforward. I don’t think a third party company would really help that much anyway. I have been using chat GPT to help me navigate this lately and it actually works great. AI digests legal gobbledygook and insurance jargon easily and actually acts like it “enjoys” doing it. Good example was recently getting a claim rejected for some unknown reason, I pasted all the indecipherable stuff and it told me exactly what the potential issues were and what was most likely. Even told me how to adjust my practice software to fix it and it worked. Best tech support ever to be honest and I am a tech kind of person so have pretty high standards.