Headway faces backlash after unveiling new opt-in patient marketplace with $10 per-session fee. Venture-backed digital mental health platform Headway yesterday announced a new opt-in marketplace offering for clinicians in response to requests to connect with more patients. For every session initiated through the new marketplace option, the company will now charge clinicians a $9.99 fee per session. In response, multiple clinicians on its platform and others across the sector who are not part of the platform spoke out against the move on social media and directly to Behavioral Health Business. Broadly, the industry's collective concern is that the per-session marketplace fees for clients acquired via this new opt-in choice will squeeze the providers on its platform even tighter financially on top of current reimbursement rates and other industry pressures already have. Headway has stated that the $9.99 per-session fee does not apply to other patients that the providers bring in on their own via their direct original link. "There's no fee for clients who book through a provider's own Headway booking link," a spokesperson from the company told BHB. "That includes clients who find a provider on Psychology Today, their own website, or anywhere else [and] then book through that link. The fee applies only when a client finds and books a provider through the Headway marketplace." Existing caseloads are also exempt from the fee. Essentially, when clinicians opt in to the new marketplace, they will have a separate, unique UTM tracking portion of the link. If they accept marketplace patients who come to Headway.co without a specific therapist in mind, the new search and matching flow function will apply the fee to each session they have with that patient. Clinicians do have the option to opt out of Headway's new marketplace option entirely and continue using the platform in the way they always have with their direct Headway link. There is also no penalty for doing so, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to BHB. Because Headway aims to be a back-end solution for small practices, the $9.99 fee may turn some clinicians away and could lead to attrition. Headway confirmed that it will reinvest additional revenue from new marketplace session fees to make its new marketplace and patient app offerings more robust over time. The company has already invested $150 million in its new marketplace platform and to get its patient app up and running this year alone, the spokesperson confirmed. "We've invested a lot into getting this patient marketplace up to where it is, but we have 90,000 providers on the platform, many of whom want access to more patients," Headway's spokesperson said. "So, to drive that sort of demand and that amount of patients for our providers, we need to invest a lot more. If we could do this without introducing a new fee, I'm sure we would have. But this is to make sure that we can invest on top of that $150 million." Headway did not confirm the number of providers it anticipates will opt in to the new marketplace patient option with fees. The company also did not comment on how much it expects to bring in from the new fee revenue. Earlier this year, Headway also introduced biometric verification for patients on its platform - a move that also raised concerns over data privacy risks from some clinicians. The company reached a $2.3 billion valuation in 2024 after raising $100 million in a Series D round. Headway has historically been a B2B focused company, but the launch of the marketplace and its new app are the company's inaugural steps to become more "patient-facing," the spokesperson said. That will be a focus for Headway moving forward. Ashleigh Hollowell is a professional journalist who has spent her career covering a range of local news, contributing to independent magazines and trade publications, and providing in-depth national health care reporting. Her work has appeared in Becker's Hospital Review, VentureBeat, PopSugar, MSN Singapore, and related outlets. She received her bachelor's degree from Colorado State University-Pueblo and her master's from Syracuse University. In her free time, she volunteers with local organizations, enjoys hiking, reading, and yoga. October 2, 2026 September 29, 2026 September 28, 2026

The therapy session is being monetized. Here is what clinicians need to know. Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) co-founder and chair Linda Michaels joined hosts David Dayen and Matt Stoller on the Organized Money podcast to talk about what is really happening to the therapy profession in the United States, and why it matters far beyond the consulting room. The episode, titled "The Chatbot Will See You Now: Tech in Therapy," covers the full landscape: insurance companies that underpay therapists and obstruct access, venture capital-backed Practice Management Companies (PMCs) like Headway, Alma, Rula, and Grow Therapy that extract data and profit from therapist labor, and the push to replace human care with AI chatbots, all while obscuring what is actually being taken from patients and clinicians alike. What Therapy is, and what it is not. Linda grounded the conversation in what makes psychotherapy work, and why shortcuts fail. "Trust is core," she said. "Without it, therapy doesn't work. People go to therapy with their most vulnerable, perhaps embarrassing and shameful problems and parts of themselves. If there is no trust, there is no confidentiality, there is no privacy, people are not going to open up." When host Matt Stoller raised Mark Zuckerberg's claim that AI could serve as everyone's therapist, Linda was direct: "That's not what therapy is. Therapy is for people who have serious, complex problems, multiple problems, problems that maybe go back generations in their families that they cannot unwind or understand or change by themselves." The PMC model: what therapists are not being told. Linda drew on Psychotherapy Action Network's research survey of nearly 700 mental health professionals to describe how PMCs recruit therapists with promises of administrative relief and better pay, while obscuring the actual terms of the arrangement. Eighty-five percent of therapists using PMCs do not know who owns the company they work for. Most do not know what cut the PMC takes. What they are signing is, in effect, an Uber contract, in which the platform owns patient data and clinicians become 1099 contractors. "If the value proposition were explained honestly," Linda said, "you would hear: you are going to become a contractor to a company owned by the very insurance companies that are the bane of your existence, you will give up ownership of your patient records, and there is a 50-50 chance you will actually earn more money. How does that sound?" AI documentation tools and the recording of therapy sessions. Linda explained how PMCs use the threat of insurance clawbacks to push therapists toward AI documentation tools that record entire therapy sessions, generate transcripts, and feed that data to third-party vendors. Buried in terms of service are provisions allowing that data to be used for analytics, AI training, and, as Talkspace has stated directly in investor reports, to build proprietary large language models. Headway, one of the largest PMCs, is currently the subject of a class action lawsuit alleging the sharing of patient data with Google. Google Ventures is an owner of Headway. "This is all built on transcripts and recordings of what patients should believe are private conversations between them and their therapist," Linda said. The Illinois model: proof that advocacy works. The episode also covered Illinois House Bill 1085, passed in 2025 with significant advocacy support, including from Psychotherapy Action Network. The law raises reimbursement rates for therapists toward parity with medical and surgical rates, reduces administrative barriers for therapists joining insurance networks, and is projected to expand access to psychotherapy for 2.5 million people in Illinois. "If it happened in Illinois, it can happen elsewhere," Linda said. "We are working on a model bill based on the Illinois legislation that other states can use." This is the work. Support it. The fight Linda describes on Organized Money is exactly the fight Psychotherapy Action Network exists to wage. Psian stand against the commodification of care and the extraction of patient data for profit. Psian stand for therapists and patients who deserve better than what corporate medicine is offering them. Listen to the full episode onApple Podcasts,Spotify,YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.