Why don’t you take insurance?
Health insurance companies pay for care when patients are sick. That is, they pay for "sick care". Their goal is not to optimize health. They only want to fix illness as fast as possible, even if this creates more unwanted side effects for patients.
Mental healthcare coverage is still far behind physical medicine. The companies still deny care when a patient is not getting better fast enough. They do not do this with diabetic care – that would be unfathomable. But this is still done with mental healthcare. If the patient is getting better they want them in a lower level of care. Even in outpatient psychiatry, they look at the frequency of services and try to manage that.
It is not just insurance companies either. Large provider systems, as well as large outpatient practices that have been bought by venture capitalists, are run by MBAs rather than MDs. “How much do we have to bill per patient per month in order to make our revenue?” These kinds of questions have nothing to do with patient care. Worse yet, this approach to healthcare can lead to unnecessary care – sometimes even involuntary treatment.
Our providers have seen these problems first hand in the course of their work prior to joining SAS – and although the various players in healthcare may all have a role in the system and may all have certain benefits as well, we feel called to provide a different kind of care.