Not billing your insurance for mental health services insures that we can keep you mental health records confidential. This allows for a greater feeling of safety in opening up and being honest about struggles in your life. Knowing others won’t have access to your diagnosis or symptoms can be of great importance. If Diana Hughes Counseling is audited, your information will not be protected by confidentiality.

Furthermore, previous treatment and diagnosis won’t follow you the rest of your life impacting future employment opportunities, changing insurance companies or applying for life insurance. When therapy is paid by insurance, your treatment and diagnosis become a part of your permanent medical record and is considered a preexisting condition.

Unfortunately, having insurance that covers mental health treatment doesn’t mean your treatment will be covered. Most insurance companies require prior authorization which means you first have to be referred by a primary care physician. Also, only diagnosis that are considered medically necessary are covered. This can lead to feeling pressure to lie about symptoms or asking your therapist to give you a diagnosis you don’t meet the criteria for.

In addition to first having to get approved, once you start meeting goals and symptoms begin to improve, your insurance company may decide you don’t need therapy anymore and stop paying for it even if you aren’t ready to end therapy.

This means that if you are someone struggling with relationships, transitioning to a new job or school due to a move, or are processing the loss of a loved one, you may not able to receive services.

Basically, when going through insurance, they get to dictate treatment instead of you and your therapist.

The therapeutic relationship is a unique relationship where vulnerability and openness are required. Studies continuously show that the therapeutic relationship is more important that the approach in client improvement. It can take a while to find the right therapist, one that you feel comfortable with and that can meet your needs. Going through insurance can limit who you see and get you stuck in long waitlists.

Most private practices don’t have the ability to hire personnel for a billing department. This means that on average, for every hour spend with a client, a therapist spends 30-60 minutes on billing, documentation and authorization paperwork. This is time that could be spent with clients or obtaining additional training or consultation to better serve our clients.

This also means that a therapist may have to limit sessions to what an insurance company will reimburse for as opposed to what they believe is effective treatment.

Finally, different insurance companies reimburse therapists at different rates which means a therapist may have to add more clients to their caseload to keep the doors open and meet their family’s needs. This can lead to burnout and a decrease in quality of care.