Insurance accepted
Using UnitedHealthcare at The Denning Center
The practice is in network with UnitedHealthcare and bills it directly. The wrinkle worth knowing about UnitedHealthcare specifically is that your therapy benefit is usually not administered by the name on the front of your card.
Your card says UnitedHealthcare. Your therapy claim goes to Optum.
For most UnitedHealthcare members, outpatient mental health is administered by Optum Behavioral Health, which maintains its own network, its own authorisation rules and its own member services number. This is not a problem — it is simply how the plan is built — but it catches people out in two specific ways.
The first is that calling the main medical number gets you an answer about medical benefits, which may not describe your behavioral health benefits at all. Look on the back of the card for a separate mental health or behavioral health number and call that one.
The second is that provider directories go stale in both places at once. A listing is not a benefits check. Neither is a therapist saying yes.
What decides your share
The usual three: whether an outpatient behavioral health deductible applies and whether you have met it, whether your plan charges a flat copay or coinsurance, and whether your particular product requires prior authorisation for outpatient sessions. Most commercial UnitedHealthcare plans do not require authorisation for routine outpatient therapy; some employer and Medicare Advantage products do, and they will not pay retroactively for sessions that happened without it.
What we do before your first session
Give us the plan name on your card and we verify benefits before you commit. Do not send the member ID through the website form or by ordinary email — that belongs in the secure client portal, or on the phone.
If insurance turns out not to be the right route
Private pay is $130 for a standard 50-minute session, with no claim, no authorisation and no session limit set by anybody else. For some people that genuinely works out better, and we will say so if it does. Full fees and the questions to ask your plan.
Written and clinically reviewed by Jim Denning, MA, LPC. Last reviewed 1 September 2026.
We review health content at least once a year, and sooner when clinical guidance, fees, insurance, or crisis information changes. Tell us if something here looks wrong.
Questions
UnitedHealthcare, specifically
Which number should I call, the one on the front or the back?
The back, and specifically the mental health or behavioral health line if one is printed there. The main medical line frequently gives people a confident answer about the wrong benefit.
Does an Optum listing mean I am covered?
No. A directory listing says a provider is contracted. It says nothing about your deductible, your plan’s benefit design, or whether your specific product includes outpatient therapy. Those are separate questions and only the plan can answer them.
Tell us your plan and we will check it
Send the plan name — not the member ID — and we will verify where you stand before you commit to anything.