Patient resources
How a telehealth psychiatry visit works.
Every routine appointment at this practice happens by secure video, for patients across 34 states and Washington DC. This guide covers the visit from your side of the screen: what to set up before it starts, how the call itself runs, how prescriptions and labs are handled around it, and the one standing situation where care leaves the screen and meets in person instead.
One practice, two ways in: therapy and medication care at psych.us is the full practice, and medication management only at PsychMed Care is the dedicated prescribing door. Locations, insurance, fees and booking for both live on this site.
On your end
What you need: a screen and privacy.
The equipment list is short: a phone, tablet, or computer with a camera and a microphone, a connection steady enough to hold a video call, and a place where you can speak without being overheard. That last item matters most. A parked car, a bedroom with the door closed, or an office over a lunch break all work. A shared room with other people in it does not.
When you book, you receive the visit link and the joining instructions. Join a few minutes early the first time, let the camera and microphone permissions through, and settle in before the hour starts. Visits then run their full scheduled length, 60 minutes for an intake and 30 minutes for a follow-up, the same as any appointment at this practice.
A few small comforts help more than patients expect. Set the camera near eye level, so the conversation feels level too. Keep water nearby, and a notebook if you like to write down dose changes and dates while they are said out loud. If other people are home, a note on the door and a closed latch buy you an uninterrupted hour, which is the entire setup working as it should.
During the visit
The same conversation you would have in an office.
A video visit here is not a shortened version of care. Your clinician works from the same chart either way: history, medications, labs, and the notes from every visit before this one. What has changed, what is working, and what to adjust gets the same attention it would get across a desk, because the work of the visit is the conversation itself.
Prescriptions are sent to your pharmacy once decisions are made in the visit. Labs, when they are part of the plan, are drawn at a LabCorp location and read by your clinician before the next appointment. Between visits, established patients reach the practice through the patient portal or on Spruce, systems built for health care, never through a form on a public website.
Video has one quiet advantage worth naming: you take the visit from your own setting, and you skip the waiting room, the commute, and the rearranged workday. For care built on regular follow-ups across months, removing that friction is part of why patients stay with a plan long enough to judge it fairly.
Most patients also find the format stops feeling like a format quickly. The first minutes of a first video visit can feel slightly formal; by the second or third appointment the screen mostly disappears, and what remains is the rhythm that matters: review what changed, decide together, adjust what needs adjusting, set the next step. That rhythm, repeated steadily, is where the results of this kind of care actually come from.
The exception
When a visit leaves the screen.
There is one standing exception to video care, and it comes from federal and DEA requirements rather than from anyone's preference. Patients whose treatment includes controlled substances can be required to be seen in person, typically once a year. When that applies to you, the practice raises it early, and the visit is arranged in the state where you are, planned with you well in advance rather than attached to a refill deadline.
That arrangement is the whole of the in-person side. The model here is telehealth by design: the offices in San Francisco, New York, and Austin are the practice's homes in those cities, not walk-in locations, and routine appointments do not take place in them. If an in-person visit ever becomes part of your care, you will know why, where, and when long before the date arrives.
Fit and limits
Who video care suits, and where its edges are.
Video care fits most outpatient psychiatry: medication management, therapy, and the two together, for adults and older teens, ages 17 and up. It suits people whose schedules, distance, or health make a standing trip to an office the hardest part of getting care, which is more people than the old office-only model ever admitted.
It also fits the geography of this practice. One clinician serves patients across 34 states and Washington DC and keeps offices in three cities. Video is what lets a patient in rural Texas and a patient in Manhattan see the same prescriber in the same week, under the same standard of care and the same chart, without either of them traveling to do it.
Its edge is emergencies. This is an outpatient practice, not an emergency service, and video visits are scheduled appointments rather than an open line. In a crisis, call or text 988, text HOME to 741741 for Crisis Text Line, or call NAMI at 1-800-950-6264, and use the crisis page linked in every footer for the full list of resources.
Coverage and cost
Video care is billed like care, because it is care.
Telehealth visits carry the same fees as any visit at this practice: $350 for the 60-minute intake and $250 for each 30-minute follow-up. Insurance is verified before your first visit, and most in-network patients pay a copay between $0 and $40. Sitting in one of the 34 states and Washington DC rather than near an office changes none of that arithmetic.
Where you are sitting does matter for licensing. You take each visit from a state where the practice provides care, so if you travel, mention it when you book and the practice will confirm the visit works from there before the day arrives.
Book the video visit.
New patient intakes run 60 minutes. Follow-ups run 30. Booking happens on IntakeQ, and every plan is verified before the first visit.