psychiatrist

licensed clinical social worker

clinical psychologist

psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner

mental health therapist

LifeStance Health

“Family Innovations was built in 2001 for one purpose, which remains at the center of who we are to this day: To provide an environment of healing and freedom for everyone who comes to us. Whether you are seeking guidance through a difficult season or freedom from a past trauma; whether you need help in a relationship or to finally be at peace with yourself; whether your issues seem insurmountable or inconsequential. We are the beginning of something better.” 
When applying at Family Innovations one can expect to encounter a learning curve like no other. There are many positives with starting with such a company along with draw backs that an individual can experience like most other employers. Family innovations has many reasons to stay and aid in preparing any individual for the field of mental health. 
Learning beyond the classroom and other institutions is what one can come to expect when starting at Family innovations. An individual will learn the importance of keeping up to date and accurate paperwork, a skill, that can be taken to the next level with in Family Innovations as a company, or onto the next site one choses to pursue. While working with Family Innovations you will be taught how to maintain records, write accurate case notes, and diagnosis assignments, and keep additional documentation, such as psych evaluations, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires (SDQs), and Children and Adolescence Services Intensity Inventory (CASII) to name a few. When working with the company you will receive supervision by you team supervisor which provides guidance’s, offers another experienced perception on cases, and allows you to voice concerns, questions, and help your growth in the mental health profession. This supervision will also count toward your own licensure hours toward the license you are pursuing upon graduation from graduate school. 
Though a position with in Family Innovation has an outstanding range of positives there are also challenges that come with a job as an in-home Community Based Therapist. While you do spend a lot of time on the road this challenge can be combated by organizing your caseload accordingly. Making sure that you group together client’s that live in proximity together and attempting to place your last client of the night close to home. driving can feel long at times and it offers a chance to decompress from difficult sessions by listening to music, calling additional service providers, catching up with friends and family, and the commute helps you learn the ins and outs of the metropolitan area and surrounding suburbs.  Another draw-back may be the independent feeling of working alone. Unlike an office setting, a Community Based Therapist spend much of their day working solo, because you are not able to walk across the hall to do a quick consultation, Community Based Therapist are impowered to seek out other clinicians or contact their supervisors or bring it up in supervision when faced with a challenging case or session.
Working with Family Innovations gives you an inside look into the families’ lives that we serve. Your position will give you the opportunity to help families in need, and leave a lasting impact on an individual, their siblings, and the family. As a member of the Family Innovation team you learn new ways of approaching issues, gain a better understanding of the impact of systems and how poor mental health can cause disruptions, develop therapeutic questions that you might have not before your homebased career, and help your client and their family overcome challenge from their own couch.

Pros
There are some wonderful people who still work for this organization. Many of the individual therapists and supervisors I worked with were truly lovely people who in secret agreed that this is not a great company that put the clients first.
Cons
This was my first job out of grad school, and I was very excited to learn more about therapy and being a therapist and doing the work. From day one, this organization was not prepared. I had been hired for almost 4 months at this point, and when I arrived on my first day they didn't have anything ready for me. By the time I left the organization 9 months later I still had never received business cards or a phone number (I used Google voice to give to my clients). It took them almost two months to have my own office set up, and they did not have my work laptop ready to go to even be trained on for my first week. I spent the first week on payroll literally doing nothing. They had promised me that there was a huge waiting list and they were ready to give us clients immediately. I had one client in my first month of work. Once things got moving, I would regularly have clients put on my calendar that were well outside of my scope of practice or with little to no description at all only to find that they are again well outside of my scope of practice. All of this was very frustrating to me, however also manageable. I was able to work around this and it was fine. Then they started just pulling clients off my case load without telling me. I had to investigate with the admins to figure out what was going on. Turns out, the intake department was regularly putting clients on my case load with insurances I didn't accept. Instead of telling me, allowing me to have termination sessions with the clients and helping them find meaningful referrals, the intake department called the client to let them know that they would be transferred to a different therapist. I was furious. Thankfully the client was not suicidal or working through some significant trauma, however I made it abundantly clear that this was not ok. Then it happened again. And again. And again. The last two times it happened I was able to catch it before they reached out to the clients, and I was able to force them to pay for termination sessions. This was the last straw for me. I would hear regular stories from other providers there who were quitting or had quit of unethical behavior in terms of medication management and treatment of clients. Everyday I walked into work it felt like I was walking onto a sinking ship. This place is 100% a lawsuit waiting to happen, and it's all because the values of this company boils down to making money. All company wide communications were centered around taking on more clients and giving incentives to do so. I can honestly say I have never worked for a more unethical or greedy organization, and I've worked for a bank! Also to top it all off, you will definitely NOT get paid to the levels they advertise. They told me I would make $50 - $70 a year. I was making closer to $40. You have to be seeing 30+ clients a week to see that kind of money. That is also the unspoken expectation.
Advice to Management
- Take trauma informed care seriously. It's more than just what happens in the patient rooms. It needs to be systemized. - Pay your admins a living wage. There is a huge turnover in all of these departments, because they are overworked and underpaid. - Put people with experience with therapy in charge of creating systems of care. It is clear this is not the case as clinicians are constantly being pressured to increase their client load (when the expectation is already well over full time).

Multiple changes from corporate continue to decimate this company; as a result, morale is at an all-time low.

PROS:
- Flexibility to work from home.
- We have a tight knit team.

CONS:
- The admin team is consistently understaffed and overworked.
- Chronic understaffing leads to long phone queues, delays in prior authorizations. Admin may not be able to collect payments prior to the patient being seen (problematic for self-pay patients), and insurance may go unverified for multiple visits.
- Patients are frustrated because LS went to a call center system for the phones,  patients may be on hold up to 2-3 hours. This leads to an incredibly high number of messages being sent to the provider related to insurance, billing and scheduling issues.
- There is no "above market compensation with unlimited/uncapped earning potential". Current advertising is extremely misleading about what the actual earning potential is.  
- Your schedule may have up to 3-10 patients per week initially. This almost forces new hires to take the salary advance, which some were still receiving at the 1-year mark while working at LS. The salary advance must be paid back in full, leaving you more in debt than before you started.
- It is hard to fully ramp up your schedule, considering that you are FFS that affects your income.
- You are paid a split percentage; rates are the same across the board regardless of insurance type. You make a fraction of what is being billed.
- You may not be paid for visits, no shows/late cancellations. EVER.
- You are not paid for required annual training/mandatory staff meetings. You will not be paid for admin time; charting, lab reviews, sending prescriptions, answering the never-ending messages or filling out any required forms for patients. 
- There is no PTO/sick time, no bereavement leave, no paid holidays, no quarterly/annual/holiday bonuses.
- The company is extremely unorganized. There is no transparency from upper level management; no guidance, established policies or procedures.
- There isn't a way to communicate problems to human resources, upper-level leadership. When you do ask questions you get the same generic canned answer, Oh, we'll have to look into that", but never any resolution. 
- Policy changes are poorly communicated to staff.
- No chance for career growth/progression unless you are a yes man and are morally and ethically bankrupt. 

The takeaway: Nearly nonexistent benefits, zero paid PTO/sick time, mandatory unpaid training/office meetings. no RVU based bonus structure, inconsistent compensation.  Ongoing policy changes hurt the providers and adversely affect the patients. Corporate REFUSES to correct or acknowledge any ongoing issues. This is an unsustainable business model.

I have had a very positive experience working at LifeStance overall. I receive excellent supervision and work alongside a supportive cohort of therapists. I truly enjoy my clients, and I appreciate the autonomy I have in creating my own schedule, taking time off when needed, and specializing in areas that interest me most. Management is supportive and hands-off (no micromanaging), and the company makes a genuine effort to filter clients that are a good fit for my specialties. They also provide access to many resources, including low- to no-cost continuing education credits. I enjoy the flexibility of working from home up to two days a week, and my office is conveniently located with an easy commute. There are a lot of upsides!

The main challenge is compensation. As an LCSW candidate, I receive free supervision and the company covers overhead costs, but this means I earn only 45% of each session (about $46/session), and I’m only paid for completed sessions. To avoid burnout, I cap myself at six clients a day, which puts me at about $3,000/month take-home. While LifeStance does offer good benefits and a matching 401K, I currently can’t contribute because of the rising cost of living. This creates financial stress and little room to handle emergencies, like car repairs or vet bills. I am hopeful that once I’m a fully licensed LCSW and move to the 65% pay tier, things will improve.

Turnover is fairly high—like many agencies that run at a fast pace—and in my observation, those who stay long-term often have additional financial support at home. That said, I do see the company making intentional changes toward improving compensation. For example, they recently evened out the payout structure, which personally gave me a 5% raise, and they now offer bonuses for meeting certain criteria (though the highest tier requires seeing 36 clients per week, which feels unsustainable).

As far as the industry goes, I still believe LifeStance is one of the better companies to work for. They foster inclusivity and diversity, and they genuinely promote respect and kindness for both clients and staff. They also appear to be preparing thoughtfully for upcoming challenges in the mental health industry, such as looming Medicaid cuts.

All in all, I’m grateful to LifeStance for providing me with a secure (for now) and meaningful job that aligns with my values and respects my individuality as a therapist. I think it’s a great place for newer therapists to gain experience, “pay their dues,” and build the kind of therapy practice that best reflects their skills and belief system.

I started at LifeStance as a part-time psychologist almost one year ago while keeping my agency job (with benefits) for the rest of my work. I have found most aspects of working at LifeStance to be satisfactory or better. I enjoy working with my patients, get new intake slots filled quickly, and support staff respond to my questions/concerns, or if not, they find someone else who can help. That being said, this is a job for self-starters who can manage the stress of setting up a private practice within a company, including estimating how many patients you will need to see and perhaps over-scheduling a bit to account for no shows. You are mostly left to your own devices--this will work for some, but not for others. 

On a typical day at work for me, I schedule about 7-8 patients and see 5-6 (sometimes more, sometimes less). While the company has tried to make compensation more transparent in recent months, including instituting across-the-board fees for sessions (rather than based on each patient's insurance), my pay each month still feels rather mysterious. There is no way to see a breakdown by patient or session so I don't really know how I made what I earned. The company now gives a small fee for no shows but until a few months ago, they gave nothing. This is concerning as the no show rate can sometimes be a bit high--on some days, I see fewer than half of the patients I have scheduled. The LifeStance portal sends out text and email reminders about appointments a couple of days in advance, which seems helpful in theory, but in my experience, most of my cancellations or no shows occur at the last minute so it's not as if patients didn't know about their appointments.

I wanted the setup of a private practice without the hassle of dealing with finding new patients, insurance/reimbursement, and renting an office space--LifeStance takes care of all of that. I especially appreciate how well they've matched me with patients seeking treatment within my specialty areas. That being said, I recognize that I am compensated a bit less than if I operated solo in order to finance all of that--which is a reasonable tradeoff to me. As I've scheduled more and more sessions, I see my salary go up a bit each month. Scheduling is flexible and very much up to the clinician. I'm pleased enough with my experience here to be quitting my agency job and going full time at LifeStance.


I haven’t been a part of this “system” very long. I’ve been a practicing psychotherapist for many years and worked for well established large healthcare systems and smaller outpatient clinics. So far, Lifestance is living up to the reputation my patients and other therapists have told me. Like many therapists, we chose this field knowing several things:  we wouldn’t make a lot of money (especially starting out), we have to get a lot of supervision after graduation to even be able to practice, there will always be a need for us, and self-care is very important. I believe most of us chose this career because we care about people and their mental health. We are helpers. Lifestance is a business with a business mindset. It’s structured just like that. The “top” people get paid a ton of money to make decisions they know nothing about, and the people doing the actual work (therapists, administrative type staff) get paid poorly with no transparency. I trust a money hungry company to pay me correctly once a month. I couldn’t even tell you what I get paid per session. In prior outpatient practices I was informed of each insurances’ rates. In established somewhat well managed hospital settings I was salary with raises, PTO, and bonuses. I also don’t know who or where my manager is located. I’ve had patients stop seeing me since becoming a part of Lifestance because of poor prior experiences with the company. I know 4 therapists who quit when they were bought out by Lifestance, and one stayed only because they offered him a “supervisor” type role. Overall, it all comes down to making money for the people on the business end of things. It’s disheartening that this place came in to buy out clinics to make profit off the need for mental health services. It’s definitely a recipe for burnout and turnover which impacts patient care tremendously. It’s also discouraging for the profession as a whole. Therapists have to work very hard without getting paid much right after graduation with the hopes that one day they can be in a private type practice, but Lifestance is taking that option away for many. I seriously feel like I’m back at the beginning of my career, but at least with those jobs I knew how much I was getting paid and had PTO. It might be an alright job for a new graduate because I think they hire people who aren’t fully licensed, but my personal opinion is that outpatient work takes experience to provide quality care. Again, money making operation with no focus on the patient. 

As a therapist, Iv worked there for almost 6 months. I enjoy the work life balance because I get to make my schedule. The first couple of months my salary exceeded my expectations. The cultural is friendly and my office is nice and clean. Its a very comfortable work environment.
My concerns are the following
1. We get paid once a month which is not a problem for me but for some.
2. There is no consistency with the salary payments which makes it harder for me to plan and budget each month . Its one reason why Im not saving for retirement. I can't gauge what my salary will be since my income depends on clients and whether they decided to come or not. Retirement at lifestance is very expensive ( 300.00 per pay period). That's a big chunk out a salary that is up one month and maybe down the next. Insurance is very expensive too ( for a family - me and 2 kids , it would have been ).
3. I open my schedule up to see 33-36 clients per week, with no shows I ended up seeing around 26 -28 clients per week which is a weekly goal for me. As of lately, I have not been meeting goals. My schedule is still open to seeing 34 clients a week and IV been averaging 19-22 clients a week. I went from seeing 122 clients each month to somewhere in the 80s ( December) and i might make it to the 90s this month. This a big change in my salary and Im not comfortable with it. When I ask for clients they do send them but its not enough to compensate for the amount of now shows plus open availability for clients that I need to actually see each week to make the salary. 
I was told that if I see 6 or 7 clients per day. I would make 64 or 65k. My schedule is aligned with this recommendation but in reality it does not happen because of the no show rate and my open schedule is not full ( not being sent enough clients). 

Other than these concerns, its a cool place to work. If you able to handle these shifts then id say work there. Great work life balance. No micromanagement and everyone is friendly. 




Lifestance is a large for-profit organization that has ventured into the mental health game. It is not a good place to work, although it will seem appealing at first with a sign on bonus (greatly reduced  after taxes). 

The payment model for therapist is Fee for Service. Quoted salaries are under the most ideal and unrealistic circumstances. Imagine more like $40k-$50k. The only bonus is getting stock options if you average something like 25-28 clients a week for a whole year (no shows and cancels don't count)

Benefits are sparse. We didn't have time off until the state mandated it, and even then it's lacking. Pay raises don't happen and there's no path for advancing with the company.  You also don't get paid time off for the holidays, so even if the office is closed on Thanksgiving/Christmas/etc, you don't get paid for that day. 

Management is non-existent. I get no direction or feedback. The front desk turn over rate is ridiculous, and the company is structured that other front desk staff will sometimes field calls from your clients, which isn't always communicated to you. Be prepared for clients to randomly show up or disappear on your schedule. 

On that note, there's not much support. Clients book appointments online and often don't fill out intake paperwork. No front desk means there's no one there to give them the paper work. Client often struggle with navigating  the website and the telehealth portal, requiring me to assist them or risk losing them (or getting a negative review as a result)

This is a deeply unsatisfying job that does a better job of marketing itself than providing a quality place to work or quality care for clients. It is unacceptable that the company started in 2017 and has over 500 location in 30 states is 'still working' on getting therapist time off for the holidays or better pay rates.  


I've worked at LifeStance for about a year. I truly love the work itself and appreciate having a designated office to work out of and having CEU opportunities. I have supportive coworkers and the Practice Coordinator at my office is great. My office is working to build more community for providers. There is a lot on the managerial side of LifeStance that is difficult. The onboarding training was very inadequate (feedback I also received from every coworker I talked to when I was being onboarded). There was one training in which the trainer didn't show up, so we all just sat waiting for 30+ minutes. There's so much you don't get taught but are then expected to know. So many questions were answered with "I don't know, ask your local leadership". There are many state-specific policies, so having a standard training across all states wasn't helpful. Intakes were booked for me on top of trainings, so I missed the last training day and was reassured I didn't need to attend. There are constant company policy changes that require employees to attend unpaid trainings, and many times the changes just add more work onto the providers. Many clients have shared that getting ahold of anyone when they call the general LifeStance number is very difficult, and some clients have shared rude experiences with the intake staff. Many changes feel like the company doesn't trust providers to make their own educated clinical decisions, and the company is becoming more corporate-focused rather than making changes that support their employees. You don't make as much money as they say you will, even if you constantly have intake slots open. Monetary incentives feel nearly unobtainable, even for providers working 6 days a week and/or provider who have 40+ appointment slots each week (the expectation is 28). 

I have worked for Lifestance for 3 years. There have been a lot of changes that have occurred most recently in the past year that have had a pretty strong ripple effect. With that being said, these changes that are happening are a good thing. Processes are getting streamlined, management handles the headaches associated with that, and I get to do what I love to do which is be a clinician. I do have supervisory duties and feel supported in what I am able to do, especially since the managerial shifts have been happening. Communication is getting so much better, but there is some impediment brought on by waiting on national levels to stick to timelines and get the processes started and consistent. I do feel strongly that the changes that have happened have been for the better and are getting better every day. Change has been tough for some, especially as they are asked to move from a less person centered model to a more business centered model. It is part of the process with change and ultimately - we have to eat and pay bills to. Has it been easy? Some days no, it can be terribly frustrating. However, at the end of the day I continue to do what I love and see that the company is listening to the feedback and surveys and are making the changes that the clinicians are asking to be made. Its a pseudo-private practice that gives me the best of both world - being a therapist and letting someone else pay the taxes and overhead. 

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