Maybe some telepsych companies want to keep rates low and work off volume but most would obviously want higher reimbursement rates from the insurance companies. This company, Talkiatry, pays its providers based on the rates they get from the insurer. So yes, they negotiate a better rate by ensuring that there is a noncompete. As explained by calvnandhobbs68, that gives the group negotiating leverage. It also assures the insurers that their patients won’t leave to follow their docs and go OUT of network. That is much more costly for the insurers and a lot of these nationwide telepsych companies don’t participate with the major insurance providers.
On a more general note, I have been interviewing with a lot of these OTHER nationwide telepsych companies (Headway, Hims/Hers, Talkspace, etc.) and I am pretty turned off by the way psychiatry, psychiatrists, and psychiatric patients are being handled. The speech I usually get is about how much money I could make by talking to my patients so little. I hear things like, “The patient gets to pick which SSRI out of the 7 in our formulary he’d like,” “If a patient needs to have a phone session more than 3 times in a year (as opposed to an automated email check-in) then that patient probably isn’t right for this practice,” “Sure you can see patients using our group NPI and your own private NPI from the same at home office. And if your current patient has insurance that we take, but you don’t take privately, then you can decide if you want to tell them that they could technically see you in network through our group practice,” “Well the patient pays a monthly subscription, whether or not she utilizes our services, and if she wants to cancel, she has to do so by a certain date to not be charged for the following month.”
I’m currently interviewing with Talkiatry and the least I can say so far is that at least this is a true psychiatry practice with actual psychiatrists, where it seems that I can practice however I want, in person and/or virtually, selecting my own patient population, where my compensation depends mostly on how much I want to work. I also work part time in an outpt clinic focusing on SPMI pts and I don’t want to give that up. The people at Talkiatry weren’t concerned about it at all and said their non compete is actually really flexible. Before I make a decision about a job, I’ll be sure not to focus on someone’s opinion and instead to ask all the right questions directly during my interviews. And for the record, they have 52 psychiatrists and only 11 NPs so they actually aren’t replacing us with NPs. Finally, have you looked at their roster of docs? They have some pretty reputable AND experienced psychiatrists working for them and the medical practice is started by an actual respected NYC psychiatrist. I compare their package and overall respect for medicine and for my autonomy and I’m impressed with it. I certainly don’t feel like a young naive doctor getting pissed on.
I’ve heard from colleagues at other places that there’s excitement about a brick and mortar place that is taking new geriatric Medicare patients and they’re talking about Talkiatry. It’s actually what got me looking at them
