How it Works

At last, treatment that respects you

Obtaining treatment for depression and anxiety requires overcoming insurance denials, unexpected bills, difficulty scheduling appointments, scrambling for prescription refills, and waits at the pharmacy. The healthPiper system provides simplicity, control and respect, while at the same time making the advice and guidance of your clinician as instantly and effortlessly available as possible. We did it by carefully harnessing mobile technology to turn an aggravating experience into a satisfying one. Using healthPiper, you sign up, meet with your clinician via video chat, agree on a treatment, and can have your medication shipped to your door. We track how you are doing via our mobile app, and your clinician is available throughout the day and most weekends to promptly answer questions via instant message, and adjust treatment as needed, collaboratively. Treatment the way it should be. With Respect.

No travel for most patients

We have replaced travel with a simple, elegant, healthcare-secure mobile app, available for both iOS and android. You can also access healthPiper using a web browser on any Windows or Mac computer. Our goal is for you to manage all aspects of your care through the app and never have to travel. Not to your clinician’s office, not to the pharmacy. You use our secure video chat for your appointments with your clinician. And while usually there is no reason to add the obstacle of travel, if it is ever best to meet in person, we can provide that for most of our clients when needed. And your clinician is available throughout the day and most weekends to answer your questions, provide guidance, and make treatment adjustments via the secure instant messaging built into the app. You don’t have to wait for your next appointment to find out if it’s okay to take your medication with food. Send an instant message whenever you have a question or need something. Our clinicians respond to all their client messages, everyday. Including weekends and holidays.

Excellent clinicians who are also really nice

A wonderful clinician needs to not only know the facts, they have to be welcoming, kind, and good-natured. We constantly are scouring the country for terrific clinicians- if a clinician is on healthPiper, that means that not only are they smart, it means they have embrace the healthPiper approach- they are nice, will listen to you, and work together with you as a partner to get clear you of symptoms, and keep you clear.

Dedicated service Concierge

We assign your own personal assistant, whom we call your “Concierge”. Your Concierge is dedicated to making sure you get wonderful service. If Starbucks can find people who lift your spirits when you order a cup of coffee, we figured we could do the same for healthcare. Your Concierge helps make sure things go smoothly. So you can focus on getting better, instead of wrestling with healthcare bureaucracy.

Your Concierge and your clinician, at your fingertips

MDs traditionally charge for appointments, and nothing if you call or email them between visits. Not surprisingly, it is often challenging to communicate with your MD unless you travel to their office for an appointment. Under the healthPiper pricing, you pay a flat fee of $299/month, and communicate whenever a question or issue arises, by instant message or video chat. Your clinician will ask for video chat meetings if they think it would be helpful (you can ask for them as well) and your clinician and your Concierge are available to you throughout the day and weekends by instant message, when you need them. We have found it a terrific way to work together seamlessly, and we think you will too.

Have your medications shipped to you, or pick them up at the pharmacy of your choice.

We initially had a partnership with a mail-order pharmacy, but since we began service 7 years ago, Amazon, CostPlus and Walmart joined Costco in offering quality, extremely low cost mail-order pharmacy services and we have found that a better solution. We can transmit to any of them, or to virtually any local pharmacy . If you are using insurance to pay for your medications (many of our clients use their insurance to pay for medications), your insurance company may require you to use their in-house mail order service. If so, it is no problem for us to transmit your prescription to them and have them fill it. If your treatment includes a controlled medication, such as Adderall or Ritalin, usually only insurance mail-order, such as optimum or Caremark can ship them. Most of our clients with controlled medication prescriptions have us transmit the prescription to their regular local pharmacy, and pick them up there.

Is healthPiper right for you?

We started healthPiper because we think it is far too hard to get quality medication treatment for depression and anxiety. Since then we have added other conditions, including OCD, ADHD and inaccurate perceptions. We greatly streamline and simplify the current system of poorly coordinated insurance companies, clinicians, and pharmacies. But our streamlined model is not right for everyone. Some reasons healthPiper might not be right for you: you prefer to meet your clinician in person, rather than communicate via video chat and instant messaging (we can and do sometimes meet in person, but our process is built upon harnessing the possibilities of remote communication).You don’t want medication treatment for your depression or anxiety (for example, you want only talk therapy). Your symptoms are strong enough that you don't feel confident you won't hurt yourself (if this is the case there is nothing to ponder – call 988 or go to an emergency room.) You already have a clinician you like and want to keep who doesn't use the healthPiper platform and doesn’t want to join. You prefer to use your health insurance to pay for clinical care (you can use insurance to pay for medications though healthPiper). You have done well in the past, (or are doing well in the present) with traditional in-person treatment.

If you’d like, we will help you decide if we are a good fit, for free.

As soon as you create an account, without paying anything, a board-certified psychiatrist will go through a "pre-evaluation". We will have you complete our proprietary Symptom Scan™ and ask you some additional questions to help assess whether we think the approach taken by healthPiper is best for you. A clinician will review your results, (and may ask you some questions via the app). If we think you would do better in a more traditional setting, we will explain why, and suggest some options. For all that, you pay us nothing. The pre-evaluation gives a helpful perspective to most people who create an account with us, whether or not they end up getting treatment through healthPiper. But know we haven't started treatment unless and until you complete the videochat or in person evaluation with a clinician and you choose to proceed. And if you ever have any doubt as to whether your symptoms might risk your immediate safety, call 988. The pre-evaluation isn't designed to assess your safety or whether you need emergency treatment, so you shouldn’t rely on it for that.

Refundable one-time $25 to reserve and appointment

If we think that healthPiper would be a good fit for you and you decide that you want to proceed, you will be assigned a clinician and pay a one-time refundable deposit of $25. You will then schedule a video meeting with your clinician, but because you and your clinician are already connected via the secure instant messaging built into the healthPiper app, you can begin communicating with each other immediately. You and your clinician will together come up with a plan for your treatment and can begin it immediately. (If instead you and your clinician decide that you’re getting your treatment via healthPiper isn’t as good a solution as a more traditional approach, then your clinician will refer you to treatment that is better suited to your needs. The evaluation, if you decide to start treatment, costs $299, so if you start treatment, you pay the remaining $274. If you decide not to, we refund the $25 deposit, and you own nothing.

$299/month inclusive bundle price

As with our app, we designed our pricing to be simple and to support attentive care. A conventional clinician charges you every time that you meet with them, while with healthPiper, you pay the same amount every month, and almost all communication is by messaging (everyone has a videochat before we start treatment, which is a one-time charge of $299.) We feel for most people, our approach is better – you don’t have to worry that whenever you have a question or concern you will be told to schedule an appointment, take time off from work or school, have to wait to get your answer, and pay for a session. With healthPiper, you simply message us and you usually will get your answer within minutes, and we virtually always will respond the same day, unless you message after your clinician has already gone to sleep, in which case we will reply first thing in the morning. We guarantee that you will be pleased – each month, we provide treatment before you pay for it, and we message you to make sure you’re delighted before we charge your card. If you ever are not, the month is free, and we will help you find treatment elsewhere, with our apologies for not doing a better job. We are confident that won’t happen though- we have provided thousands of months of service, and most people spontaneous send us messages that they are pleased; frequently they comment that they are amazed and grateful that we exist.

If you have health insurance, you can use it for your medication

While we have you pay us directly for our services, if you have health insurance it will pay for the medications we prescribe just like it would for any clinician of yours. And we can provide an invoice that you can submit to your insurance. Typically they will reimburse some or all of the initial evaluation, but is less common that they will reimburse the monthly package price. We think that many of our clients, after including the cost of co- pays, travel time, and unpredictable insurance denials, will actually find healthPiper a better deal than using their insurance elsewhere. And, for the increasing number of people with health insurance policies that have high annual deductibles, the issue of accepting insurance may be moot, as an entire year’s treatment with healthPiper may be less than your deductible. This means that, unless you had enough other medical expenses so the total exceeded your deductible, your health insurance wouldn't pay anything as you are usually responsible for the full deductible amount before insurance kicks in