Hi Reader,
Should you take insurance, or go cash-pay?
It's one of the first decisions in private practice, and it often gets framed as a choice you make only once, before you've seen any clients.
You can do both; it's less like a choice and more like a sequence.
๐ฌ What's inside
- ๐๏ธ Insurance or cash-pay: why it's an order, not a choice
- ๐๏ธ What actually pays you in the first 90 days
- โฑ A five-minute way to see where you'd start
This Week's Edge
Insurance and cash-pay solve different problems.
Cash-pay gets you paid now. You set the fee, the client pays for the consult, and nothing stands in between you and your ability to bring in an income.
Insurance widens the door. Clients who would never pay out of pocket can say yes, and a referring provider can send a patient without a conversation about cost.
But...credentialing takes a while, and it usually doesn't pay out inside your first 90 days of practice.
So a new practice usually starts as private-pay, with the credentialing process running alongside that.
Cash-pay is how you start. Insurance is how you widen your client base.
Neither one is more legitimate than the other. And the billing side of insurance isn't mysterious; you can learn it, or you can outsource it.
The real question isn't which model is better. It's which one gets your first client paid while the other one is still being built.
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Write down the fee you'd charge for one consult if a client paid you directly.
Then write down the three insurance plans your patients mention most at your current job.
That's your start and your widen, on one page.
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Your Turn
Which way are you leaning right now: insurance, cash-pay, or both? Hit reply and tell me why.
To your success,
Julie