Guide · updated August 2026 · figures from 301 reports
What is a normal reimbursement rate for a 90837?
Therapists reported 202 rates for CPT 90837 between 2021 and August 2026. The median was $114. The middle half of reports fell between $99 and $130, and the extremes ran from $39 to $284.
Those figures pool every payer, license, route, and state, and the spread inside them is the useful part. A licensed professional counselor reported a median of $110; a licensed clinical social worker, $117; a psychologist, $138. Cigna sessions had a median of $97, while Medicaid sessions, often assumed to pay least, had a median of $124 on the strength of California and Oregon reports. Georgia's median was $95 and Oregon's was $153. In other words, the payer and the state move the number more than the license does.
The same code, by license
| License | Median | Range | Reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| PhD / PsyD | $138 | $90–$284 | 10 |
| LCSW | $117 | $88–$210 | 58 |
| LMFT | $113 | $90–$185 | 8 |
| LPC / LMHC / LCPC | $110 | $62–$201 | 85 |
The $7 gap between counselors and social workers is smaller than it looks, and it does not hold within payers. Aetna reports put both licenses at $121. BCBS reports put counselors at $129 and social workers at $119. Optum reports run $116 and $118, Cigna $98 and $95. Psychologists are the one group consistently above the rest, and their sample is ten reports. The license guide takes this apart.
The same code, by payer
| Payer | Median | Range | Reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medicaid | $124 | $81–$220 | 16 |
| Aetna | $121 | $95–$185 | 33 |
| BCBS | $120 | $69–$284 | 47 |
| Optum / UHC | $116 | $88–$190 | 31 |
| Cigna | $97 | $39–$128 | 23 |
Cigna is the low payer in every cut of the data: by license, by route, and by state. The Medicaid figure is a reminder that Medicaid is fifty programs, not one. California Medicaid reports had a median of $151 and Oregon's were $185, while the Georgia rows in the table sit far below either.
The same code, by route
| Route | Median | Range | Reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct contract | $121 | $39–$284 | 103 |
| Headway | $119 | $89–$185 | 45 |
| Alma | $114 | $95–$130 | 16 |
| Grow Therapy | $88 | $64–$117 | 15 |
| Rula | $85 | $70–$90 | 8 |
While direct contracts and Headway report within two dollars of each other, Grow Therapy and Rula reports sit about $30 lower. Ten of the fifteen Grow reports come from licensed counselors in Georgia, the lowest-paid segment in the data, so the platform figure and the geography are confounded. The platform comparison holds the payer constant to separate them.
The same code, by state
| State | Median | Range | Reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oregon | $153 | $77–$201 | 16 |
| New Jersey | $115 | $95–$130 | 6 |
| California | $113 | $88–$175 | 24 |
| Colorado | $113 | $65–$130 | 9 |
| Texas | $112 | $92–$130 | 11 |
| Arizona | $108 | $39–$150 | 8 |
| Georgia | $95 | $64–$125 | 21 |
Oregon's median is $58 above Georgia's for the same code. Part of that reflects Oregon's Medicaid rates and part reflects which therapists in each state chose to report. The 90837 page carries every state with reports and updates as new ones arrive.
What Medicare pays for the same code
Medicare's fee schedule is the one published benchmark, and commercial payers often set their rates as a percentage of it. The Medicare guide covers the 2026 national amounts for 90837 and six other codes, the percentage paid to social workers, counselors, and marriage and family therapists, and the locality adjustment.
How to read an offer against these figures
- Filter to your situation. Payer, state, and license, in that order of importance. A national median tells you little; the table filtered to Aetna in Georgia for a counselor tells you what your peers were paid.
- Look at the range and the count, then the median. Four reports with a $30 spread is a lead. Twenty reports within $10 of each other is a pattern.
- Hold the payer constant when you compare routes. What a platform pays for an Aetna session and what Aetna pays a direct contract for the same session are the numbers to set side by side. The payer pages do this automatically.
Limitations
These figures have four limitations. First, every rate is self-reported and unverified. Second, the sample is self-selected: 26% of all reports come from Georgia, where the launch discussion on r/therapists reached furthest. Third, license is missing on 53 of 301 rows. Fourth, the reports span 2013 to 2026, and 153 of the 202 are from 2025 or 2026, so older rows pull the ranges wider than current contracts would. Nevertheless, they are the only public per-payer, per-state figures available to a therapist weighing an offer, and every added report narrows the ranges above.
Rates change with weeks of notice, and the two largest cuts on record reached therapists mid-caseload. The monthly report below tracks the movers.
Every figure above is a community report unless a primary source is linked. The full table · the CSV · add your rate.