Fixed-Scope Project · You Own It
Just Licensed and Starting Your Own Practice? This Is Where It Begins.
Your entity and identifiers coordinated, five commercial payers credentialed, your EHR chosen and set up, and your scheduling, billing, and payments running — one flat $6,000, or $1,000 a month for six months at no interest. Every account is in your name. Nothing routes through us, and there is nothing to cancel when we’re done.
Read This First
Is This You?
This package is built for one situation and priced for it. If you’re somewhere else, another package fits better — and we would rather send you there than sell you the wrong thing.
This Is You
Your First Practice, From Scratch
- You’re newly licensed, or close to it, and you have never been credentialed with commercial payers
- You’re opening your own practice rather than joining someone else’s
- One provider, one state, one location — telehealth, in-person, or both
- You want insurance patients, not cash-pay only
- You’d rather be seeing patients than learning payer portals for six months
This Is Not You
Where You Should Go Instead
- Joining a clinic that already has contracts? You don’t need the entity or the systems — see New Provider Credentialing — from $3,000
- Already credentialed and moving to a new entity or Tax ID? That’s a cutover — see Existing Payer Entity & Tax ID Transition, $2,500
- Leaving an established group or a platform like Headway? More moving parts, and it gets quoted to your situation — see Go Independent
- Therapist or counselor, not a prescriber? There’s a self-serve lane built for you — see Credentialing for Solo Therapists
- Multiple providers, multiple states, or a second location? Still doable — it just needs a real quote instead of a flat fee. Tell us and we’ll scope it.
What You Get
Five Workstreams, One Price, Ninety Days
Everything below happens in accounts you own, under your own tax ID and NPIs. We’re EHR-agnostic — we don’t sell software and we don’t take a cut of your billing, so the only thing steering our recommendation is what actually fits how you practice.
- Entity and identifiers, coordinated. We tell you exactly what has to exist before a payer will talk to you, and we refer you to a CPA or attorney to form it — we don’t practice law or give tax advice. Once it exists we handle the rest: your organization (Type 2) NPI, your individual (Type 1) NPI, NPPES setup and taxonomy, and a W‑9 that matches your IRS legal name exactly. That last detail sounds trivial and is the single most common reason an enrollment gets rejected.
- Five commercial payers — credentialing and contracting, both. The full build: your credentialing source file, your CAQH Provider Data Portal profile built and audited, applications submitted to each payer, missing-information requests answered, scheduled follow-up and escalation, and then the part most people forget — the written effective date, confirmation you’re actually loaded in the payer’s system, and verification you appear in their provider directory.
- The connections that get you paid. Payer portals set up, electronic claims and remittances connected, and EFT and ERA enrolled so payments land in your account automatically instead of arriving as paper checks you have to chase and post by hand.
- Your EHR, chosen and set up. A requirements worksheet built around how you actually practice, a shortlist with a side-by-side comparison, a debrief after your vendor demos so you’re not deciding alone, and one configuration review once you’ve picked. You buy the subscription directly and you own it — if you ever leave us, nothing breaks.
- Open for business. Scheduling configured, a walkthrough of how your billing and claims actually flow, and direction on your intake, consent, and new-patient forms — so day one looks like a practice instead of a to-do list.
Plus: ask us anything for 90 days. Not a ticket queue and not a per-hour meter. For the whole project window you can email us the questions that come up at 9pm on a Tuesday — whether a code is right, whether a payer letter means what you think it means, whether you should say yes to something. Most people starting out don’t have anyone to ask. That’s the part of this package clients tell us they valued most.
Where the Work Splits
What We Do, and What Only You Can Do
A few parts of credentialing legally cannot be done by anyone but you. We say so up front, because a provider who doesn’t know that is the most common reason a file sits for months.
AdvanceAPractice
What We Handle
- Enter and maintain your practice, location, and business-identifier data in the CAQH Provider Data Portal as an authorized practice manager
- Audit your CAQH profile against every payer’s requirements before anything is submitted, and tell you exactly what’s missing or expired
- Authorize each of your five payers to access it
- Prepare, assemble, and submit every payer application
- Answer payer missing-information requests and escalate stalled files
- Obtain your written effective date, payer provider ID, loading confirmation, and directory listing
- Track every expiring credential and re-attestation date and warn you before it lapses
You
What Only You Can Do
- Complete your own CAQH profile. The clinical and personal history in it is yours to complete.
- Attest to it yourself. Attestation is your legal act. We cannot and will not attest on your behalf — and we won’t ask for your password to try. You also re-attest every 120 days when it comes due, including any that falls during the project.
- Complete and sign any paper application a payer requires. Some payers still want a personally-signed application from the provider. We prepare it, tell you exactly what to sign, and submit it — but you complete and sign it.
- Form the entity and make the tax elections. That’s your attorney and CPA. We tell you what payers need and coordinate around their work.
- Carry your own malpractice and licensure, and respond when a payer contacts you directly rather than us.
Pricing, Published on Purpose
Flat $6,000. Or $1,000 a Month.
$1,000 / month × 6 — no interest
One flat $6,000 for all five workstreams, or six equal monthly payments of $1,000 at no extra cost — same total either way. We built the six-month option specifically for this package, because you’re paying for it during the exact months you don’t have insurance revenue yet. No monthly minimum, no setup fee, no software fee, and no percentage of your billing. Additional commercial payers beyond the included five are a flat $350 each; Medicare or Medicaid in any state is $500 per payer as an add-on.
What You’d Pay for These Separately
We publish the pieces of this package individually, so you can check the math rather than take our word for it.
Bought Piece by Piece
$4,000+ credentialing + connections
Five-payer credentialing at $3,000, plus payer portal, EFT, ERA and EDI connections at $150–$300 each.
In This Package
$6,000 flat, everything
Those pieces plus entity and identifier coordination, EHR selection and setup, your scheduling and billing configured, and 90 days of unlimited questions.
We start within 5 business days. Once we have your completed onboarding information and documents, we begin payer work within 5 business days — and we tell you the day we start. The clock starts when your completed information is received. Final scope, price, and payment schedule are confirmed in a signed Order Form before any work begins.
Timeline
How Long Until You’re Seeing Patients
Your entity, identifiers, EHR, and front-office setup are typically ready in 30 to 45 days. The long pole is always payer credentialing: commercial payers run 60–120 days per payer on their own clocks, and a payer’s clock generally doesn’t start until it accepts a complete application.
We can’t promise a payer’s timeline, a retroactive effective date, or an approval — no vendor can, and you should be skeptical of anyone who does. What we control is that your applications go in complete on day one, that all five run in parallel rather than one after another, and that you always know exactly where each payer stands.
Don’t schedule yourself as in-network with a payer, or send claims as in-network, until that payer confirms an effective date in writing. Doing it early is how new practices end up writing off their first month.
What’s Not Included
Where the Line Is
- Forming the entity itself, S-corp elections, and tax strategy (your CPA or attorney; we coordinate around it)
- Legal or tax advice of any kind
- Government payer enrollment — Medicare, Medicaid, OHP/CCO, TRICARE (available as a $500-per-payer add-on)
- Professional licensure, DEA, or state controlled-substance applications
- Malpractice insurance placement
- Additional providers, additional states, or a second location (quoted separately)
- Your EHR, clearinghouse, and software subscriptions — you buy those directly and own them
- Ongoing billing and revenue-cycle management (a separate engagement, if you want it)
- Lease, build-out, branding, or website design
- Anything after the 90-day project window closes
Works With Your Stack
We Build Around the Systems You Choose
Picking your first EHR, or already have one in mind? Either way we work with any system, build everything around it, and you own it when it’s done. We don’t sell software, so nothing here steers you toward a platform we profit from.
Start My Practice
No call required to begin. Tell us where you are and Ryan reviews it personally and replies by email with your Order Form and next steps — usually within one business day. Want to talk it through first? Book a Practice Fit Call instead.
Still Have a Question?
Most answers are on this page. If something’s specific to your state, your license, or your timing, ask our AI concierge — it answers instantly, any time.
Common Questions
First Practice Launch FAQ
People say you can start a telehealth practice for $3,000–$5,000. Why is your help $6,000?
Because those are two different numbers. The $3,000–$5,000 figure you’ll see quoted is hard costs — state filing fees, malpractice, a website, your EHR subscription. It doesn’t include the three to six months of your own time spent learning payer portals, and it quietly assumes nothing goes wrong. In practice things do: one lapsed CAQH attestation, one incomplete application, one mismatched legal name on a W‑9, and a payer’s clock restarts from zero. You’ll still pay those hard costs either way — this package is what you spend to not lose a quarter of a year to the parts nobody teaches you in school.
How do I pay for this before I have any patients?
Two things make it workable. First, the six-month option — $1,000 a month, no interest — is deliberately spread across the exact window when you’re not yet billing insurance. Second, you don’t have to wait for credentialing to start seeing people. Cash-pay patients can be seen right away, and published market rates run roughly $250–$400 for an intake and $100–$200 for a follow-up. Plenty of new practices bridge the credentialing window that way, and we’ll help you set that up so revenue starts before your panels do.
Can’t I just do all of this myself?
Yes, and plenty of people do — it’s paperwork, not surgery. The honest tradeoff is time and sequencing. It typically runs three to six months, most of it waiting, and the expensive mistakes are the ones you can’t see coming: applying before your CAQH is attested, a taxonomy that doesn’t match how you bill, submitting to a payer whose panel is closed. If you’d rather learn it yourself, our credentialing checklist is free and it’s the real one we use.
Do I have to use a specific EHR?
No — we don’t have one to sell you. We’re EHR-agnostic and we don’t take referral fees from vendors, so our shortlist is based on how you practice, what your payers need, and your budget. You buy the subscription directly in your own name. If you ever stop working with us, nothing turns off and nothing has to be migrated.
What if a payer takes six months, or says no?
Payers decide, and no vendor controls their timelines — anyone promising you an approval date is selling you something they can’t deliver. What we do is make sure your file goes in complete, that all five payers run in parallel instead of one at a time, that missing-information requests get answered within days rather than weeks, and that stalls get escalated through the payer’s own channels with a documented paper trail. If a panel is closed to new providers, we tell you before you pay rather than after.
What happens after the 90 days?
You own everything — every account, every login, every document — and you get a closeout binder with your effective dates, payer provider IDs, portal access, and a recredentialing calendar so nothing lapses in year two. Most people take it from there. If you’d rather we keep running the billing, that’s a separate engagement you can add whenever it makes sense, not something bundled in to raise this price.
I’m not licensed yet. Is it too early to start?
It’s usually the right time. Credentialing can’t be submitted without your license, but almost everything ahead of it can be done while you wait — entity coordination, your NPIs, your CAQH profile built and ready to attest, your EHR chosen, your documents assembled. Providers who start this while their license is pending tend to be seeing patients meaningfully sooner than the ones who wait for the license to arrive first.
Why is this $6,000 when credentialing alone is $3,000?
Because credentialing is one of five workstreams here. If you’re joining a clinic that already has an entity, a group NPI, signed payer contracts, an EHR, and a billing setup, then credentialing really is all you need — that’s our New Provider Credentialing package and it’s from $3,000. If none of that exists yet, someone has to build it, and that’s the difference.
Advance a Practice
Your First Practice, Set Up Right the First Time
Nationwide, Portland-rooted. Behavioral health is what we do. We’ve spent 16 years inside the billing and credentialing side of practices like the one you’re about to open — and everything we build, you own.
Start My Practice