LiveHealth Review: Is this Online Therapy Legit?

Nowadays, you may find a ton of teletherapy providers. It is great to have easily accessible online healthcare platforms at your disposal. However, most of them essentially offer more or less the same type of services. So much so, it leads to overkill and affects your ability to choose the right digital platform.

You spend long hours researching the services, looking for the best features within your budget. But end up being lost like a puppy. Therefore, I decided to include another review article in my series today.

This blog will evaluate the good and the bad of LiveHealth Online services to help you understand its key offerings. This way you can thoughtfully part with your cash and decide whether or not it is worth spending on this telehealth platform.

About LiveHealth Online

LiveHealth Online was established as a virtual mental and physical healthcare platform in 2013. It was launched as a collaboration between Anthem Inc. and Amwell and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The platform provides affordable, high-quality, 24/7 mental health services. It includes therapy as well as medication management by licensed therapists and psychiatrists, respectively.

Apart from mental healthcare, LiveHealth Online also offers 0n-demand urgent plus allergy care by board-certified doctors for adults across all 50 states of the United States.

LiveHealth Online Review: Features, Pricing, Insurance Coverage and More

This section breaks down the review into seven different parts. Each part explores the performance of LiveHealth Online concerning a key aspect that will help you make the right decision.

1. How Does it Work?

Let us explore how appointment systems work on LiveHealth and some key features as well in this section.

For starters, I could easily register on the platform for free through its Android app. You can also install the iOS app on your Apple device to use the services of LiveHealth Online.

The services of LiveHealth Online are easy to access on multiple devices such as smartphones, tablets, or personal computers with audio-video recording capabilities.

A webcam and decent internet connectivity was all I needed to attend my sessions anytime, anywhere. So, it is super convenient to access all the services. Plus, it is an all-in-one digital healthcare platform, that not only provides mental therapy/psychiatry services. But also 24/7 services of primary care physicians for urgent care and allergy treatments.

During sign-up, I was asked to provide my active phone number, which I was a little hesitant to submit. However, this is to ensure I was notified well in advance about my upcoming appointment via a quick text message.

What happens if a provider abandons an ongoing session with you?

My provider had to leave a few of my sessions midway due to some unforeseen circumstances. So, I was not able to complete a particular session due to the temporary unavailability of my provider. But thankfully, this was handled with pure professionalism.

In such cases, I was always contacted through a text message shortly about reconvening later. Whenever he was free for the remaining conversation, he would quickly message me to meet online and pick up where we left off. If you are not happy with your health provider, feel free to switch to another therapist/doctor.

How do you book appointments, and what is the duration?

A typical mental counseling session lasts for about 45 minutes. Whereas consultations with doctors for allergy/urgent care have a duration of around 10 to 15 minutes. I think the session duration with doctors can be increased by a few minutes for a more comprehensive evaluation. It should be tweaked depending on the nature of the condition being diagnosed.

For scheduling appointments for children under 18 years of age, it is mandatory to add them to my account. Once logged in, I was able to make the necessary selections from an existing drop-down menu that provides options to add minors needing special care.

Also, my account allowed me to access LiveHealth Online therapy, urgent care, allergy care, psychology, and psychiatry services on a single consolidated dashboard. To add to my convenience, I could pay for appointments on a pay-as-I-go basis that required no subscription commitment.

How to book services?

For therapy or psychology services, I just had to follow the steps below:

• Log in as usual
• Check different provider or therapist profiles available
• Select the right one and schedule an appointment. You can do so by either setting the criteria as “choose by date” or “choose by provider. These options are available in my desktop mode
• Schedule follow-up sessions if recommended by the provider or if I feel so, at the end of the session

For psychiatric assistance and medication management, here are the steps I followed:

• Log into my account
• Choose Mental Health in desktop mode
• Choose LiveHealth Online Psychiatry
• Specify if it was my first appointment or a follow-up session
• Fill out additional details such as emergency contact number, insurance information, and more
• Set an appointment date as per my schedule
• If I have any provider preference, I am supposed to select “choose by provider” (applicable only in desktop mode). And then I was to set a particular date and time as required.

The psychiatrists at LiveHealth Online are not authorized to prescribe any controlled substances as part of medication management.

For allergy treatments, the doctor generally checks with the patient to know their major symptoms and medical history on a video call. Since I had no troublesome allergies, I did not dive deeper into this section. However, the process of consulting allergy or urgent care doctors is the same.

You simply need to log in and select the board-certified doctor you want to consult. You will then be prompted to answer a few initial questions and make the payment. After reviewing your symptoms and medical history, the doctors will formulate a holistic treatment plan. If necessary, they will also have your prescription sent to the pharmacy of your choice.

The allergy care by LiveHealth Online also offers a variety of helpful resources such as instruction-based guides, exclusive coupons for allergy relief items, and access to an app that tracks pollen counts in your area. Overall, the structure of services and the comprehensiveness of the platform seem impressive to me!

2. Pricing/Affordability

Is LiveHealth Online the right healthcare platform to choose if you are on a budget? Let us find out in this section.

There are four major pricing plans offered by LiveHealth Online. You can choose the one based on your needs.

• Therapy costs $85 or less depending on your health insurance plan or Employer assistance plan (EAP)
• For a session with a licensed psychologist, the cost is $100 per visit or less depending on your health plan or EAP.
• Psychiatry costs $185 for the initial mental health evaluation. Whereas follow-up appointments cost $80 per session
• Urgent care costs $55 or less depending on your EAP or individual health insurance plan
• Allergy care costs $55 or less depending on your EAP or individual health insurance plan

LiveHealth Online’s services are priced moderately. Also, there is no subscription model to commit to. Therefore the pricing is quite flexible and easy to follow, helping with quick decision-making.

3. Insurance Coverage

This section will evaluate if LiveHealth Online provides Insurance coverage.

LiveHealth Online accepts many different employer EAPs and multiple health insurance plans making the services more affordable.

Thankfully, there is not much room for uncertainty when it comes to pricing. It is straightforward so I was always able to view my total appointment cost before the start of my scheduled session. The prices also do not change based on requirement demand on particular days or hours of the week. This is great for people who are on a budget and carefully plan out all their spending on healthcare.

Any doctor you visit through LiveHealth Online who accepts the following insurance plans will be considered an in-network physician:

• Empire Blue Cross
• Anthem Blue Cross
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia
• Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield and more

Most health insurers provide coverage for video appointments on LiveHealth Online. So, make sure to check with them first. Also, since LiveHealth is co-founded by Anthem Inc., all Anthem-based insurance plans are automatically accepted to fund treatments on the platform.

4. Accessibility

Is LiveHealth Online accessible globally? I will provide more details in this section.

The services offered by LiveHealth Online are currently restricted to all 50 states of the USA. The platform has yet to provide international healthcare coverage.

5. Privacy

Let us address all your concerns and questions about LiveHealth Online’s privacy policy in this part of the article.

LiveHealth Online is 100 percent HIPAA-compliant. The video technology used by the platform follows all HIPAA regulations. And the company also promises not to disclose any of your personal information to any third-party organizations without your explicit consent, unless legally mandated to do so.

6. Available Treatments

This section explores all the various treatments available at LiveHealth Online.

LiveHealth Online can help you address the following mental health issues and more:

• Stress
• Depression
• Life transition
• Relationship problems
• Anxiety
• Grief management
• Coping with illness
• Panic attacks

The platform also has licensed doctors to treat the following physical health conditions 24/7 under urgent care:

• Cold and fever
• Flu
• Minor rashes
• Skin infections
• Headache
• Tooth pain
• Allergies
• Diarrhea
• Sore throat
• Pink eye and more

Here is a list of allergy treatments available on LiveHealth Online around the clock:

• Itchy and puffy eyes
• Runny nose
• Itching in general
• Itchy throat
• Watery eyes
• Rashes
• Headaches
• Nasal congestion
• Sneezing and coughing

Additionally, the platform has credentialed psychiatric providers for addressing more complex, high-severity mental disorders with medication management. I am mentioning some of them below:

• Severe stress, depression or anxiety
• Bipolar disorder
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Frequent and severe panic attacks
• Medication concerns
• PTSD

7. Pros and Cons

Last but not least, I will consolidate a crisp list of the key pros and cons of LiveHealth Online to help you decide if the platform is the right fit for you.

Conclusion

All in all, LiveHealth Online seems like a reliable platform that can address all your healthcare needs in one place. However, the negative reviews garnered a poor cumulative rating of 1.2 stars out of 5 stars on Trust Pilot is a bit concerning.

So, which provider you choose will make a world of difference to your treatment outcomes. Make sure you vet the profiles carefully and discuss your healthcare requirements in the initial session itself. Also, take the option to switch providers at the right time if you do not see major positive progress.

The sessions are economically priced as compared to traditional in-person visits. However, they are not super low-cost either. So, explore the platform and its providers at your own pace, and take your time to go through reviews on other websites. Only then make your final decision after evaluating the key pros and cons.