1.) PAY - Don’t be misled by what is stated here on Glassdoor regarding pay for therapists at Thriveworks. There is absolutely no way you will ever be paid $105K a year. The pay is awful and severely undercuts industry standards. Pay for full time licensed clinicians (25 clients per week or more) is about $60k per year (pre tax). The only way to make over $100k a year is to see about 40-50 clients per week. The only way to make more income is to see more clients - period. When asked how I can make more $ I was told I could become a regional clinical director or a recruiter. After earning my master’s degree to be a therapist, working for years as an intern, and passing my licensure exam - I would like to continue being a therapist AND get paid well - not switch job roles and stop seeing clients! The are no raises, no matter how well you perform your job. You can get a small bonus (about $2 per client session) if and only if you make zero mistakes in billing or notes in the two week pay period. But one mistake and no bonus.
2.) BENEFITS - Benefits are awful and employees have to pay for half of their premium. There are cheaper and better private health insurance plans you can find on your own.
3.) RESPECT - Clinicians are treated like staff that work for the lead administrative and compliance teams - not as the backbone of the company that financially supports everyone who works there and plays an important role in helping individuals and our community. Clinician feedback is typically dismissed, ignored, and/or clearly not welcome.
4.) SUPPORT - Clinicians give over half their earned clinical pay to the company for Support and Billing. Insurance and self-pay rates are at least double what clinicians actually get paid. Might be worth it if they did an exceptional job, but both Support and Billing departments have created more damage than they have helped me or my clients. I have spent hours of unpaid time trying to fix billing and scheduling issues and doing damage control with my clients. I have had clients leave due to the consistent lack of customer service availability, their inability to actually help, and billing issues. After reading Glassdoor reviews from these staff members, I have compassion for them as they are clearly also underpaid and not trained correctly before being thrown into the fire.
5.) ETHICS - Thriveworks’ billing practices feel unethical and scammy. Clients are charged a $39 a month “membership fee” that is virtually impossible to cancel. This membership includes access to mental health resources and information that can be found via a Google or YouTube search and customer service that should be standard. Clients are told this $39 is what pays for Billing and Support. Eh hem, if only half of what insurance pays is given to me as a clinician, the other half should be enough to cover the minimal support me and my clients get from those departments! Our clients have mental health diagnoses and the last thing they need is to feel unsupported and scammed by their therapy provider!!
6.) PRIDE - Our office space is run down and needs new furniture and deep cleaning. Clients have made comments. Maintenance requests take months to go through and we’re lucky if they ever happen. It is the clinicians’ responsibility to track and alert admin if we need supplies or maintenance. Regional clinical directors are rarely, if ever, on site. There is zero in-office/live support for clinicians in crisis. A three week wait for an email response is typical from your regional clinical director. It’s also typical to just never get a response.
7.) ACCOUNTABILITY - As a clinician, I feel constantly blamed for any issue I encounter. There is rarely, if ever, an apology or recognition of fault from Support, Compliance, or any higher ups. Responses from Support and Compliance are either defensive and curt or dripping in toxic positivity to the point where I can’t tell if they are being sarcastic or not. Never an apology or compassionate word. If there is an issue, it is on me to address and fix. It’s normal to ask Billing, Compliance, or Support to help and be told you must reach out to clients and handle it yourself. Clinician mistakes are constantly being pointed out with vague compliance emails and used against us (no bonus) while there is literally no accountability or any repercussions for the administrative/billing/support team when they make mistakes. I don’t think they lose a bonus when they book something incorrectly, overcharge a client, fail to email back for 2 months.
8.) VALUES - It truly feels like money rules this company and determines Thriveworks’ decisions - not client care, a passion for improving this world, or respect for their clinicians. If corporate mental health is the way of the future, I’m very concerned for myself and my clients.
9.) FOLLOW THROUGH - At the time I left I had been waiting almost a year and was still not credentialed with 2 major insurance companies.
I can sum this whole list up with a simple and sad example of how much Thriveworks values their clinicians - after working for this company for years, my holiday “bonus” was a crappy Thriveworks logo t-shirt that they probably got for $5 a pop. I decided to pass on being a walking billboard for this company and have donated all my Thriveworks t-shirts to the thrift store.
