Finding a good therapist who takes insurance is hard. Here’s why.

If you’ve been looking for a therapist who takes your insurance, there’s a good chance that you’ve had one of the following (frustrating) things happen:

• The therapist never calls you back.
• You find out a therapist is no longer in-network for your insurance.
• Everyone is fully booked and not accepting new clients.

The demand and need for mental health services has never been greater in the United States, and it can be really tough to find a good therapist, let alone one who takes your insurance. Over 30% of people with insurance said that they’ve had a tough time finding a mental health provider who took their insurance.

Why? In big cities, experienced therapists are often booked and have long waiting lists of clients who are willing pay out of pocket. In small cities, access to mental health services can be really limited, and you might find a harder time finding someone who is the right fit for you, which is really important to your success with therapy.

It’s common for therapists to accept insurance when they’re just starting out because it can help guarantee that they’ll get clients, but they often end up dropping insurance as part of their business as they grow and become known in their local communities. As a result, most of the best, most experience therapists near you likely don’t take insurance.

When it comes to your mental health, it’s generally better to go with someone who will be the right fit instead of someone who just happens to be available.

Taking insurance can be difficult for therapists

While most therapists generally want to help more people, the rates that therapists receive from insurance companies can be really low, as low as 33% of what they’d receive from someone who pays out of pocket for their sessions. Therapists are there to help, but oftentimes they’re also small business owners too. Insurance companies can put therapists in a tough position to run a business successfully.

There’s also additional paperwork and keeping track of any limits on the number of sessions a client can have, so it creates more work for less money for most therapists. If a claim is denied, a therapist might not be paid for a session, which can create an awkward situation with a client that both people would want to avoid. This can be a huge deterrent for therapists who are thinking about how to sustainably run their businesses.

Because of the extra work involved, many therapists choose not to accept insurance so that they can run their business and spend more time dedicated to their clients instead of spending time wresting with paperwork, insurance companies, and tracking sessions and reimbursements. By simplifying the business without insurance and investing the time into bettering themselves as therapists, they’re able to spend more time on the work they want to do on behalf of their clients instead of work needed by insurance companies.

There are ways to make therapy more affordable without insurance

Even if a therapist isn’t in-network with your insurance provider, if you have a PPO and depending on your insurance, you could be reimbursed for your sessions after meeting your deductible. While we are out-of-network providers, many of our clients get reimbursed by their insurance companies after submitting claims for their therapy sessions.

You can also look for therapists who provide therapy sessions on a sliding scale basis. Each of our therapists reserve a set number of spots for sliding scale sessions, where we adjust the price of sessions to work within our clients budgets. While we can’t offer sliding scale pricing to all clients, we do our best to make it work for more people in Denver with therapy rates that are at or below the local and national averages for therapy.

We do our best to find the right balance for our clients, and if you’ve been having a tough time finding a therapist who takes your insurance, we’d love to see how we can help.