Going direct

Leaving a platform takes about 25–30 hours of work, spread over roughly three months.

That estimate comes from clinicians who completed the transition and documented it publicly in 2026. One of them found her direct contracts paid $5–10 more per session than the platform had passed through. The work is front-loaded, most of it is waiting, and nearly all of it can run while you keep seeing clients through the platform. This page is the full sequence.

Why the platform contract doesn't follow you

Platforms credential you through delegated credentialing: you're added to the platform's group contract with each payer. It takes weeks, which is the recruiting pitch. It also means the credential belongs to the contract, and the contract belongs to the platform. When you leave, you're not paneled with anyone. Independent credentialing takes about 90–120 days per payer, which is why the transition starts long before the resignation.

The sequence

1. List your payers by revenue. Pull three months of platform payments and rank the payers behind them. You'll apply to all of them, starting with the largest. (~1 hour)
2. Get your CAQH profile current and self-controlled. Update every section, re-attest, and confirm the contact information is yours — address, phone, email. Every payer application reads from this profile. (~2 hours)
3. Apply for individual contracts with every current payer. Each payer has a provider-enrollment portal; submit to all of them the same week rather than sequentially, since the 90–120-day clocks run in parallel. Newly licensed clinicians should expect some rejections and reapply — one documented case took nine months with a single payer. If a payer says its panel is closed to individual clinicians, note the date; panels reopen, and a dated record helps the reapplication. (~4–6 hours of forms, then waiting)
4. Set up the billing rail. A clearinghouse (Inovalon, Availity, Office Ally, or your EHR's built-in) runs about $50 per month and files claims to every payer. If your EHR includes claim filing, price the per-claim fee against the subscription. (~3 hours once)
5. Photograph every client's insurance card, front and back. Do it now, while scheduling is routine. You need member IDs to bill directly, and collecting them after you've announced a transition is awkward. (~minutes per session)
6. Run parallel billing as contracts come through. As each individual contract activates, move that payer's clients to your own billing while the rest stay on the platform. This is the step that makes the income dip small: you're never unpaneled, you're split-paneled. Expect 14–35-day claim cycles on your own contracts against the platform's weekly deposits, and hold a month of buffer. (~2–3 hours per week during the overlap)
7. Tell your clients, plainly. Clients have self-determination; platform policies discourage but generally cannot prevent a client from following their clinician — friction, not law, is the mechanism. Give each client the practical facts: same clinician, same insurance, new billing entity, and whether their copay changes (usually it doesn't). Continuity of care is the clinical frame, and it's also the true one.
8. Cancel the platform account in writing, and verify your public profiles come down. Therapists report deletion requests ignored for months and directory profiles left live after departure. Screenshot your request, follow up monthly, and check the payer directories again — a live listing that routes to a platform you've left is a directory-accuracy problem you can report to the payer and your state insurance department.

What independence costs

Roughly: a clearinghouse at ~$50/month, an EHR you already pay for, and 2–3 hours a week of billing attention during the overlap, dropping once claims run clean. Against that: the platform's share of each session (community reports on the rates page put it at $20–110 per session) is yours, there's no membership fee, and the contract and credential stay with you.

Limitations

This guide has several. First, it's drawn from documented individual accounts, and credentialing timelines vary by state and payer. Second, some payers in some states are reportedly declining new individual contracts, and no sequence of steps can force a panel open. Third, clinicians whose caseloads are mostly Medicaid or rare payers may find only one platform services them, and a partial exit is still worth running for the remaining payers. Nevertheless, clinicians who complete steps 1–4 report the rest of the transition is mostly waiting.

When your first direct contract activates, you'll have a number few clinicians get to see in advance. Adding it to the table gives the next clinician a baseline.