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A confidential therapy benefit built for Big 4 partners.
A partner-tier clinical channel that sits outside the firm-wide EAP, scoped for the realities of busy season, global client demands, and partnership-track pressure. Matched clinicians. Intake SLAs that hold through busy season. No firm visibility into who has engaged.
A private clinical channel for the partner tier of a Big 4 firm.
This page is for the HR and people leaders, partner-affairs teams, and well-being committees at Deloitte, EY, PwC, and KPMG scoping a partner-tier mental health channel that operates outside the firm's existing EAP and workforce benefits stack. 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 partner firm. There is no third-party broker layer. Partners are matched, not first-served. Scheduling and intake run through CEREVITY infrastructure. Care is private-pay, out-of-network, and structurally outside the firm-sponsored channel by design.
Our clinicians are independent licensed professionals. Many have worked with senior professional-services partners before and understand the partnership track, the busy-season cycle, and the global-client cadence from inside their consulting rooms. CEREVITY exists because the structural realities of broad EAP coverage leave the partner tier without an appropriate channel of care, and because that channel needs to be built differently.
The clinical profile of a Big 4 partner is not the workforce-wide profile your EAP was built for.
The reasons your partners do not engage with the firm-wide EAP are not failures of the EAP. They are inherent to how it was scoped. The partner tier sits structurally outside what a workforce-wide benefit was designed to address, and partners read confidentiality risk differently than staff do.
Big 4 partners present with a recognizable clinical profile: high-functioning anxiety maintained at significant personal cost, the compounding fatigue of the busy-season cycle repeated across decades, identity fusion with the firm and the practice, and the specific isolation of partner-level dynamics. These are not the workforce-wide concerns a firm-wide EAP roster was built to address. They are the presenting issues of a small, identifiable population the firm depends on.
An EAP is structurally important and well-suited to its purpose: short-term, workforce-wide support across a very large staff population. It is not a private-pay channel for ongoing depth-oriented work, and a partner who worries that engagement could surface inside the firm will not use it. For the partner tier, the confidentiality posture is the precondition for engagement, not a feature on top of it.
What changes when the channel is built around this profile: matched clinicians with experience treating senior professional-services partners, session formats long enough to do depth work, intake SLAs that are scoped to hold through busy season rather than collapse during it, and a confidentiality posture that gives the firm no visibility into who has engaged or with what.
What CEREVITY clinicians actually treat in the partner tier.
The clinical scope is built around the presenting profile of Big 4 partners, not the workforce-wide profile a firm-wide EAP is built for.
Busy-season burnout
The cycle repeats every year and the recovery window keeps shrinking. What starts as a seasonal load becomes a structural one when the body stops resetting between peaks. Different from acute stress, and treated differently.
High-functioning anxiety
Performance maintained at cost. The work product looks fine to the client, the firm, and the family; the cost is invisible until it is not. Common in audit and advisory partners carrying large books and large teams.
Always-on client demand
Global clients across time zones mean the practice never fully closes. The chronic low-grade vigilance of being permanently reachable becomes its own clinical issue when it stops being situational and becomes baseline.
Imposter syndrome on admission
The partner vote happened. The certainty did not. Common in newly admitted partners, lateral and direct-admit arrivals, and director-to-partner transitions.
Decision fatigue and judgment load
Consequential professional-judgment calls week after week, each with client, regulatory, and firm-risk implications. The cost eventually shows up, and not in the obvious places.
Leadership and rotation transitions
Practice leadership, lead-client roles, mandatory partner rotation off long-tenured accounts. The transitions into and out of these roles are clinical events, not just career events, and the isolation around them is treatable.
Identity fusion with the firm
Decades of being defined by the firm and the practice means the work of separating self from role is its own clinical project. Particularly acute in the runway to retirement, equity transitions, and post-partnership arrangements.
Post-engagement depressurization
The cycle of all-consuming engagement followed by sudden release has a clinical signature. Most partners learn to manage it; some never do. The longer session formats were built partly for this.
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 partner, 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.
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 why a partner with a compressed busy-season calendar can choose the format that fits the week.
Ready to scope a partner-tier briefing?
Briefings are scoped to your firm. We respond personally within 48 business hours with proposed times and any prepared materials relevant to the partner-tier channel you are evaluating, including how intake SLAs hold through busy season.
Request a briefing →How a partner is matched.
Matched, not first-served. Here is the process that produces the match for a Big 4 partner.
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 is matched to the partner based on the review. The partner receives the match with the clinician's profile, modality, and credentials, plus a direct online scheduling link.
The partner 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 Big 4 Partners.
A vendor evaluation framework on the dimensions that matter when scoping a partner-tier-tier offering for partners. Both models have a place. They are designed for different populations.
| // Dimension | Typical EAP | Exec-tier platform | CEREVITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network model | Broker layer between firm and contractor roster | Single-vendor platform, W-2 or contracted pool | Independent clinical network with direct relationships |
| Clinician assignment | First contractor to reply with availability | Algorithmic matching on intake-form inputs | Clinical review by network leadership |
| Intake & scheduling | Phone handoff to clinician's line | App-based intake and scheduling | Network-operated intake, direct online scheduling |
| Session formats | Standard 50-min; capped session counts | Standard 45 to 50-min sessions | 50-min, 90-min, and 3-hr formats, no cap |
| Clinical scope | Acute, broadly applicable concerns | Workforce-wide, executive tier as upsell | Built around Big 4 Partners presenting issues |
| Modality fit | Generalist talk therapy | Generalist therapy with some specialty | CBT, DBT, psychodynamic, matched at intake |
| Reach | National via roster density | National telehealth, roster variance | All 50 states via telehealth |
| Payment model | Firm-sponsored, in-network | Per-employee-per-month seat pricing | Private-pay, out-of-network, partnership agreement |
| Firm visibility | Aggregate, broker-mediated | Vendor dashboards with engagement | Administrative reporting only |
| Right fit for | Workforce-wide acute support | Mid-tier ongoing with executive add-on | Big 4 Partners, end-to-end |
What the firm sees, and what it does not.
For a partner-tier-tier channel to function, the participating partner has to trust that engaging with it does not create visibility into their care. CEREVITY is built 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 partner's clinical content.
- Whether a specific named partner has scheduled, attended, or engaged.
- What clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned.
- Session notes, treatment plans, or diagnostic information.
- Any attendance detail at the individual level.
Clinicians 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 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. The administrative layer the partner interacts with is structurally separate from the clinical layer.
Eligibility lists are maintained on the partner side and confirmed 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 administrative reporting scope in writing before going live.
What the first 30 days look like.
The hardest part of a partner-tier-tier partnership is not the contract. It is the period between signature and the first partner in care.
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. The BAA, where applicable, is executed in this window.
Your team provides the eligible-individual list. CEREVITY confirms it against the network side and establishes the verification path that runs at the point of intake. Only eligibility confirmation flows forward.
CEREVITY provides a confidential, partner-tier-appropriate comms template explaining the benefit, the privacy posture, and how to access intake. Your team adapts it to your voice.
Eligible individuals begin intake on their own cadence. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days. By day 30, the partnership is operational and a quarterly review cadence is in place.
The business case for the partner-affairs and well-being committee.
Three axes the well-being committee, the managing partner, or partner affairs can defend in a budget conversation. The numbers will vary by firm; the structural argument does not.
Partner retention is a per-departure problem, not a workforce problem.
A single partner departure costs the firm far more than a staff departure: client transition risk, lateral search and onboarding, capacity rebuild, and the knowledge that walks out the door. Retention math at the partner tier looks nothing like workforce retention math. A clinical channel built for the realities of partnership pays for itself across very few prevented departures.
Partner capacity is a leveraged input.
A partner running at 70 percent of capacity is not a 30 percent loss to the firm. It is a leveraged loss across every engagement that partner oversees, every manager and senior they develop, and every client relationship they hold. Recovery of clinical capacity flows downstream through the entire pyramid.
Recruiting and lateral attraction.
Senior laterals and direct-admit partners increasingly evaluate a firm's well-being posture as part of the decision. A named, confidential, partner-tier mental health channel is a differentiating signal in the lateral market and a defensible answer in a partner-admission conversation.
Questions partners 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 firm's structure.
No. Administrative reporting only. The firm receives confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals and aggregate utilization where contractually appropriate. The firm does not see whether a specific named partner 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.
No. CEREVITY is a structural complement to the EAP. Most firms keep the EAP in place for workforce-wide coverage across staff and add CEREVITY as the partner-tier private-pay channel for ongoing depth-oriented work that the EAP was never scoped to deliver.
The intake SLA is scoped in the partnership agreement and built to hold through busy season specifically, because that is when partner-tier demand is highest and a standard benefit is least responsive. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of intake, and the busy-season commitment is defined in writing rather than left to capacity.
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 the partner tier requires.
Pricing depends on the shape of the engagement, the size of the eligible partner population, and how the firm administers it. The briefing call is where we identify the right structure, 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, with intake SLAs scoped to hold through busy season.
Through a briefing call. Use the form below or email [PARTNERSHIPS EMAIL] directly. Briefings are scoped to your firm; we respond personally within 48 business hours.
Tell us about your firm. We respond within 48 business hours.
Briefings are scoped to your firm. Share a few details below and we will respond personally with proposed times and any prepared materials relevant to the partner-tier channel you are evaluating, including busy-season intake SLAs.
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 Big 4 Partners-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.
