Starting a group practice with Headway
Primary benefits
- Efficient and quick credentialing
- Competitive reimbursement rates
- Consistent and simple biweekly direct deposit payments
- No insurance billing or admin burden
- Quick and easy client insurance verification
- Intuitive provider portal with EHR included
- Ability to manage staff clinician’s accounts for them, or allow them access to their limited visibility/capability account to perform basic admin tasks
- Streamlined new client vetting/scheduling via the Headway marketplace
How to get started
The first step is to identify an administrator (admin) for the group account. The admin can be the group owner, sole practitioner, or other admins. *
Each admin will need to create a Headway client account.
All admin requests must be approved by the group owner / provider, and cannot be added without their consent.
To get started:
- Confirm the email address to be used for the admin account
- If email address is not yet tied to a Headway account, then:
- Create a client account by going to the Headway website.
- Don't fill out the fields asking for your insurance, payment, and provider search criteria.
- Then verify your account and email address.
- Notify us via our contact form of the following:
- Group name - If you do not have a formal group practice name, we can use the group owner’s first and last name, as this is for administrative purposes only.
- Group admins - Please include the full name and email address for all assigned admins.
- Any existing providers in the group (non-admins) - Be sure to specify if the providers being added are new to Headway, or are already set up. If not already setup, please specify their name(s), unique email address(es) and license type(s).
You may add as many admins to your group practice as you would like.
* As a note, group practice owners are responsible for any actions taken on their account by an associated admin account.
Access levels within a group practice (Sigmund Lite vs. admin access)
Users in a group practice are assigned as providers, admins, or both.
For a provider in the group without admin access (Sigmund Lite), they will have access to:
- Calendars with full scheduling access and ability to confirm session details (though sometimes group admins will handle this—it's up to you!)
- Client list with the ability to add clients
- Messaging portal
- Insurance status tab
- Profile settings (including photo, name, specializations, languages, highlights, bio, education, demographics)
- Address settings and ability to add a practice location)
- Individual provider intake form
Sigmund Lite users will not have access to financial information, or access to the calendars/profiles of other providers in the group.
Users with admin access will have access to:
- Calendars with full scheduling access and ability to confirm session details
- Client list with the ability to add clients
- Messaging portal
- Insurance status tab
- Profile settings (including photo, name, specializations, languages, highlights, bio, education, demographics)
- Address settings and ability to add a practice location)
- Payments tab, including payment date, amount, and the client it is for
- Ability to choose between being shown in search versus hidden in search
- Intake session length settings
- Client age range settings
- Booking preferences (e.g. defaulting to phone consults or appointments by specialization)
- Billing settings (e.g. cancellation policy, bank account, and ID verification)
- Account settings (e.g. contact email and phone number)
- Rates
Admin users will have access to financial information and access to the calendars/information of other providers in the group.
Group practice payments
Group practices will always have payments from Headway funneled into one user's (typically the group owner’s) bank account—we leave the smaller details of what you would pay them up to you.
Just like with individual accounts, group practices get paid as follows:
- Sessions confirmed on the 1st - 15th of the month would be paid to you on the last day of that month.
- Sessions confirmed on the 16th - last day of the month would be paid to you on the 15th of the next month.
It's important to note that sometimes the actual payment takes an extra day or two to get to you just due to bank processing or holidays.
Adding new providers to your group
At this time, we require all requests to add new clinicians to a group practice come directly from the group’s owner. Group owners can reach out to us with the following information, and we will be happy to assist them.
- New clinician full name
- New clinician license type
- New clinician email address
Adding an admin to your group
To add a new admin to your group practice (non-clinician), we will need them to create a client account by visiting headway.co.
To create an account, the admin will need to:
- Visit our website, headway.co
- Click the Log in button in the upper right hand corner
- Instead of logging in, select Create new account
- Follow the instructions to set up an account
- Once you've entered all of the requested information, select create account
Once the admin has a verified profile (they'll need to verify their email address before proceeding), reach out to us using our contact form, and be sure to include their name and the email address associated with their Headway account.
Removing or archiving providers from your group
Archiving a provider
Group admins can hide providers who have left the practice, without fully removing them from the platform, enabling continued access to their provider profile history
To archive:
- Select Manage team from the dropdown menu in the upper left corner of the provider portal
- Select Archive provider next to each provider you'd like to hide
To access an archived provider's account:
- Select Manage team from the dropdown menu in the upper left corner of the provider portal
- Click on the name of the provider whose profile you'd like to access
Fully removing a provider
The group's admin, not the individual provider, will need to be the one to contact us directly.
Please reach out after your group has received its last payout from sessions conducted by this provider and confirm the following:
- Reason provider is leaving group practice
- All of the provider's sessions have been confirmed
- All of the provider's payouts have been received
Once you reach out and provide this information, our team will begin the removal process.
Setting up existing providers with Sigmund Lite access
To set up an existing provider in your group with Sigmund Lite access, send over a list of your clinicians and their associated email address in the following format:
- Clinician Name: Email Address.
Once our support team receives this information, they'll send account invitations to your clinicians. Please note - account invitations expire in 24 hours.
Transferring clients between clinicians within a group practice
- Archive that client from their initial provider’s client roster
- Navigate to the new provider’s client roster
- Select “Add Client"
- Once you populate this client’s email address into the dialogue box, our system will automatically recognize that they have an account and they will be added to the new provider’s client list
Frequently asked questions
Credentialing
Yes – Headway now supports multi-state credentialing. More information and requirements can be found in our Help Center article: Credentialing with Headway.
The length of time it takes to get credentialed with Headway depends on if your clinician is already in-network with one of our insurance carriers. Most panels can take as little as 15-30 days to complete the credentialing process. Other carriers can take 90-120 days, based on the state and carrier. Please note that we cannot guarantee a specific timeline, but do our best to provide the best estimate.
Each clinician does not need their own COI; Headway can credential a staff clinician using the group/business’s policy. However, please make sure there is an employee list with clincan’s name included with the Certificate of Insurance (COI). You can learn more about COI requirements here: Certificates of insurance (COI).
Headway cannot support incident-to billing, or billing sessions on behalf of supervised provisionally licensed therapists. If you currently bill insurance for these types of sessions, you can continue doing so off of the Headway platform.
Billing sessions
Sessions must be entered into our system before the session occurs, and confirmed by the group practice owner, admin, or staff clinician within 30 days. Headway always recommends confirming sessions within 48 hours, so there are no delays in session reimbursement.
Headway pays providers twice a month, on the 15th and on the last day of the month.
Sessions confirmed on the 1st - 15th of the month are paid to you on the last day of that month. Sessions confirmed on the 16th - last day of the month would be paid to you on the 15th of the following month.
Learn more about getting paid through Headway: Getting paid.
Payment and 1099s
The practice/business is paid for all sessions submitted by staff clinicians within the group account. When setting up your group practice account you will be asked to verify the identity of the business (Tax ID/EIN) and add the business bank account, which is where you'll be paid out for all sessions.
Client insurance verification
Each insurance client you anticipate billing sessions through Headway will need to create a Headway account so that:
- We can verify their insurance benefits and coverage (you and the client will have visibility on how much they will pay for therapy)
- We can collect the amount for their sessions (co-pay, session amount, cancellation fee, etc.)
- The client can review and acknowledge our standard forms:
Click here to learn more about Headway's client intake and experience.
Storing documentation on Headway
Headway has an EHR that is free to use. However, if you are currently using another EHR platform for scheduling, communication, tele-therapy, and documentation recording and storage, you can continue doing so. A demo of the platform and additional expectations will be shared on your introductory call. To learn more about storing documentation on Headway, visit the following articles:
Onboarding
No – it's completely up to the group practice stakeholders to determine if they'd like to manage their clinician’s accounts for them or not. As a reminder, we offer two different levels of access (full admin access and Sigmund Lite access).
Group practice referral bonus
Yes – as soon as a new clinician confirms their first session on Headway, the practice owner or admin will be sent $100 via PayPal (usually sent within two weeks) to the email address associated with the group’s main point of contact. Click here for more information on Headway's provider referral program.