Differences in Self-Payment Versus Insurance Payment for Psychiatric Services

Project Description

Increasing reimbursement rates is often a proposed policy for increasing insurance plan participation among psychiatrists and other behavioral health professionals, yet there is limited data available on how much reimbursement rates would need to increase to match self-pay payments. This study seeks to measure the full cost of office-based behavioral health visits and determine the difference in cost between self-pay and insurance payments by Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial payers for a set of routine psychiatric services, as compared to other specialty services (such as cardiology, neurology, and endocrinology visits) over time.