A portfolio-wide mental health vendor for PE-backed physician platforms.
One vendor across every site, contracted at the MSO level, reporting in the aggregate. A clinician-tier mental health channel built for dermatology, GI, ortho, and vet platforms where physician retention is the asset thesis.
via telehealth
licensed clinicians
and 3 hours
out-of-network
A single clinician-tier mental health channel across the whole platform.
This page is for the C-suite, CHRO, and CMO of PE-backed physician platforms scoping a portfolio-wide mental health vendor that contracts once at the MSO level and rolls out across every acquired site. If that is you, the rest of this page is the briefing document.
CEREVITY operates as a clinical network with direct relationships between the network, the clinicians, and the platform. There is no third-party broker layer. Physicians are matched, not first-served. Scheduling and intake run through CEREVITY infrastructure. Care is private-pay, out-of-network, and structurally outside any site-level EAP by design, which is what lets a single contract cover physicians across heterogeneous acquired practices.
Our clinicians are independent licensed professionals. Many have worked with practicing physicians before and understand what it means to carry a clinical panel under production pressure. CEREVITY exists because the EAPs inherited from a dozen acquired practices were scoped for general workforce concerns, not for the presenting profile of the physicians whose retention underwrites the platform's value.
Physician retention is the asset thesis, and the inherited EAP stack was never built to protect it.
When a PE platform aggregates dozens of practices, it inherits dozens of disconnected benefits arrangements and the physicians who never used them. The reasons physicians do not engage are not failures of any single EAP. They are inherent to how those systems were scoped.
Physicians present with a recognizable clinical profile: chronic burnout sustained under production targets, the cumulative weight of clinical responsibility, litigation and documentation stress, and the specific identity strain of practicing medicine inside a financialized structure. These are not the workforce-wide concerns a generalist EAP roster was built to address. They are the presenting issues of the exact population whose retention the platform depends on.
Site-level EAPs are structurally important for the broader staff, but they are scoped around acute, broadly applicable workforce support and capped session counts. They are not a private-pay channel for ongoing depth-oriented work, they vary practice by practice, and they are not built for the confidentiality posture a physician requires in order to engage when the employer is also the entity setting their production targets.
What changes when the channel is built around this profile: one vendor contracted at the MSO level instead of a dozen inherited arrangements, matched clinicians with experience treating practicing physicians, session formats long enough to do real work, and a confidentiality posture that gives the platform aggregate utilization without visibility into who engaged.
What CEREVITY clinicians actually treat across a physician platform.
The clinical scope is built around the presenting profile of practicing physicians under platform ownership, not the workforce-wide profile an inherited EAP was built for.
Production-target burnout
RVU targets, throughput expectations, and the sense that clinical judgment now competes with the panel. Different from acute stress, and treated differently. The most common presenting issue across PE-owned specialty groups.
Autonomy loss after acquisition
The practice a physician built is now one site in a platform. The grief and disorientation of losing operational control is a clinical issue, particularly acute for selling physicians in the first two years post-close.
Litigation and documentation stress
The chronic background anxiety of liability exposure and the acute stress of an active claim. Malpractice litigation is independently linked to physician depression and burnout, and it is treated as the clinical event it is.
High-functioning anxiety
Performance maintained at cost. The clinic runs, the panel is covered, the numbers look fine; the cost is invisible until it is not. Common in senior partners and in physicians carrying leadership roles.
Compassion fatigue
The erosion of the capacity to care that drew the physician to medicine. Recovery capacity goes first, then the work itself starts to slip. A treatable issue, not a character failure.
Identity fusion with practice
Decades of being defined by the practice means separating self from role is its own clinical project. Particularly acute around earnouts, retention-cliff transitions, and runway to retirement.
Multi-site leadership strain
Medical directors and regional clinical leads carry the platform's clinical risk and the goodwill of physicians who used to be peers. The isolation of these dynamics is itself a treatable issue.
Decision fatigue
Hundreds of consequential clinical decisions a week, each with patient and liability implications, layered on top of platform-level operational demands. Eventually the cost shows up, and not in the obvious places.
Three session formats, each chosen for the work.
Most benefits programs offer one session length. CEREVITY offers three, because different kinds of clinical work need different amounts of time. The choice is made between the clinician and the physician, not by what a payor will reimburse.
The steady cadence of ongoing therapy. Most clients spend most of their care in this format.
For work that needs more room than a standard hour. Focused work on a specific transition or decision.
For work that needs uninterrupted time to reach resolution within a single session rather than broken across weeks.
Because CEREVITY operates outside the insurance reimbursement model, session length is set by the clinical work, not by what a payor will reimburse. That is the structural reason all three formats can exist on the same network, and the same network can serve every site on the platform.
Ready to scope a portfolio-wide briefing?
Briefings are scoped to your platform. We respond personally within 48 business hours with proposed times and any prepared materials relevant to the multi-site rollout you are evaluating.
Request a briefingHow a physician gets matched, in five steps.
Matched, not first-served. Here is the process that produces the match for a physician, the same way at every site on the platform.
The eligible individual submits a confidential intake form covering presenting issues, modality preference, professional context, and scheduling parameters. The form is operated by CEREVITY, not by a broker.
Intake is reviewed by CEREVITY's clinical leadership against the network's active capacity, current licensure footprint, and modality availability. This is the step that does not exist in an EAP.
A specific clinician in the network is matched to the physician based on the review. The physician receives the match with the clinician's profile, modality, and credentials, plus a direct online scheduling link.
The physician schedules directly through CEREVITY infrastructure. No phone handoff. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of the match.
Care continues with the matched clinician on the cadence the clinical work requires, in 50-minute, 90-minute, or 3-hour sessions, without an employer-imposed cap.
Capability comparison for PE-Backed Physician Groups.
A vendor evaluation framework on the dimensions that matter when scoping a leadership-tier offering for physicians. Both models have a place. They are designed for different populations.
| Dimension | Typical EAP | Executive-tier point solution | CEREVITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network model | Broker layer between platform and roster of contractors; scales well to workforce-wide coverage | Single-vendor platform with W-2 or contracted clinician pool | Independent clinical network with direct relationships, no broker layer |
| Clinician assignment | First contractor to reply with availability; optimized for speed-to-first-session | Algorithmic matching on intake-form inputs | Clinical review of intake by network leadership against active capacity |
| Intake and scheduling | Phone handoff to clinician's line; verbal scheduling on callback | App-based intake; in-app scheduling | Network-operated intake; direct online scheduling, no phone handoff |
| Session formats | Standard 50-minute; capped session counts per issue | Standard 45 to 50-minute sessions | 50-minute, 90-minute, and 3-hour formats; no employer-imposed cap |
| Clinical scope | Acute, broadly applicable workforce concerns; intentionally generalist | Workforce-wide therapy and coaching, with executive tier branded on top | Built around presenting issues specific to PE-Backed Physician Groups |
| Modality fit | Generalist talk therapy; modality-agnostic roster | Generalist therapy; some specialty referral | CBT, DBT, and psychodynamic clinicians, matched to presenting issue and modality preference at intake |
| Reach | National via roster density; varies by region | National via telehealth, with roster density variation | Nationwide via telehealth across all 50 states |
| Payment model | Platform-sponsored; covered through benefits plan | Per-employee-per-month seat pricing | Private-pay; out-of-network; structured through partnership agreement |
| Platform visibility | Aggregate utilization reporting; broker-mediated | Vendor dashboards with engagement and utilization metrics | Administrative reporting only; no clinical content visible |
| Where each model fits | Workforce-wide acute support | Mid-tier ongoing care with executive add-on | PE-Backed Physician Groups, end-to-end |
What the platform sees, and what the platform does not.
For a clinician-tier-tier mental health channel to function, the participating physician has to trust that engaging with it does not create platform visibility into their care. CEREVITY is designed around that requirement.
- Confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals.
- Aggregate utilization at the partnership level, where contractually appropriate.
- Invoicing and eligibility reconciliation.
- Nothing tied to a specific named physician's clinical content.
- Whether a specific named physician has scheduled, attended, or engaged with care.
- What clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned.
- Session notes, treatment plans, diagnostic information, or progress data.
- Any attendance detail at the individual level.
Clinicians in the network are independent licensed professionals operating under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. Protected health information is held within the clinical infrastructure and is not transmitted to the partner organization, and the agreements governing it are defined in writing before the partnership goes live.
Clinical records, session content, and individual engagement data sit inside the clinical platform and are not shared with the partner organization. The administrative layer is structurally separate from the clinical layer.
Eligibility lists are maintained on the partner side and confirmed against the network side at the point of intake. Administering eligibility does not require the partner to receive clinical information back.
A Business Associate Agreement is executed where the partnership structure requires it. The partnership agreement defines the administrative reporting scope explicitly, in writing, before the partnership goes live.
What the first 30 days look like.
The hardest part of a clinician-tier-tier partnership is not the contract. It is the period between signature and the first physician in care. Here is how CEREVITY runs that period.
A 60-minute kickoff with your team and CEREVITY's partnership lead. We confirm the partnership shape, the eligibility model, the administrative reporting scope, and the internal owner on your side. The Business Associate Agreement, where applicable, is executed in this window.
Your team provides the eligible-individual list in the format your administrative systems support. CEREVITY confirms it against the network side and establishes the verification path that runs at the point of intake. No clinical data flows backward; only eligibility confirmation flows forward.
CEREVITY provides a confidential, clinician-tier-appropriate internal comms template explaining the benefit, the privacy posture, and how to access intake. Your team adapts it to your voice. The communication is designed to be received without stigma.
Eligible individuals begin intake on their own cadence. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of each intake. By day 30, the partnership is operational and your internal owner has a quarterly review cadence with the CEREVITY partnership lead.
The business case for the platform CFO and CMO.
Three axes the deal team and clinical leadership can defend in a budget conversation. The numbers will vary by platform; the structural argument does not.
Physician retention is the asset, and it is a per-departure problem.
Estimates place the cost of replacing a single physician between several hundred thousand dollars and more than one million, counting recruitment, lost billings, and onboarding. Across an aggregated platform, the retention math is leveraged: physician departures erode the very multiple the thesis was built on. A clinician-tier channel pays for itself across very few prevented departures.
Physician capacity is a leveraged input.
A physician running at reduced capacity is not a proportional loss. It is a leveraged loss across panel throughput, the staff that physician supervises, and the patient relationships that drive site goodwill. Recovery of clinical capacity flows downstream through the entire platform.
A portfolio-wide benefit is a recruiting and diligence signal.
Physicians evaluating a platform increasingly weigh whether ownership treats clinician wellbeing as infrastructure or as an afterthought. A named, confidential, portfolio-wide mental health channel is a differentiator in physician recruiting and a defensible answer when an LP or a selling physician asks how the platform protects the people who make it work.
Questions physicians and their teams ask first.
Clinicians in the CEREVITY network are independently licensed professionals operating under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. The handling of any protected health information, and the specific agreements that govern it including any Business Associate Agreement, are defined in writing in the partnership agreement before the partnership goes live, scoped to your platform's MSO structure and to each covered site.
No. Administrative reporting only. The platform receives confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals and aggregate utilization where contractually appropriate. The platform does not see whether a specific named physician has scheduled, attended, or engaged, what clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned. This is contractually scoped before the partnership goes live, and the boundary is identical at every site.
CEREVITY contracts once at the MSO or platform level and layers a single clinician-tier channel over the inherited site-level EAPs. Most platforms keep existing EAPs in place for general workforce coverage and add CEREVITY as the physician-tier private-pay channel for ongoing depth-oriented work, so the rollout does not require unwinding a dozen legacy arrangements.
Clinicians in the CEREVITY network are bound by their licensure-specific mandatory reporting obligations. CEREVITY is not a reporting workaround and does not represent itself as one. For physicians with impairment-level concerns that would trigger a Physician Health Program referral or board reporting, the PHP remains the appropriate channel.
No. CEREVITY is private-pay and out-of-network by design. The structure is intentional: it is the only way to deliver the clinical scope, session formats, and confidentiality posture practicing physicians require, and to keep the channel structurally separate from the employer.
Pricing depends on the shape of the engagement, the size of the eligible physician population across sites, and how the platform administers benefits. The briefing call is where we identify the right structure, including per-site versus platform-wide arrangements, and the cost falls out of that, not the other way around.
First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of intake, depending on modality requirements and scheduling parameters. The intake and matching experience is identical at every site on the platform.
Through a briefing call. Use the form below or email [email protected] directly. Briefings are scoped to your platform; we respond personally within 48 business hours.
Tell us about your platform. We respond within 48 business hours.
Briefings are scoped to your platform. Share a few details below and we will respond personally with proposed times and any prepared materials relevant to the portfolio-wide physician channel you are evaluating.
The structural argument on this page is based on the firsthand experience of CEREVITY clinicians who have served on EAP panels, combined with widely-published industry estimates of EAP utilization and PE-Backed Physician Groups-specific data where cited. Specific contractual scopes, including the administrative reporting boundary and the BAA structure, are confirmed in writing in the partnership agreement before any partnership goes live.
