After per-session rate, payment schedule is the second most important factor in choosing a New York City early intervention agency. The difference between getting paid in 14 days versus 30 or more days is not just a cash flow inconvenience. It compounding over a full year into thousands of dollars of effectively interest-free loans you make to your agency. Here is how NYC EI payment schedules work and what to ask before signing with any agency.
How NYC EI billing and payment actually works
The payment chain in NYC early intervention has several steps. You deliver a session, complete documentation in your agency's system, and submit the session for billing. The agency bills New York State Medicaid or the state directly. The state processes the claim and reimburses the agency. The agency then pays you.
The state's turnaround on claims is typically 10 to 21 days for clean claims submitted through EI-Hub. The question is what happens between when the agency receives that payment and when it reaches your bank account.
The most common payment schedules in NYC EI
Weekly: Fastest in the industry. You submit sessions, the agency pays you every Friday (or a set weekly date) for sessions cleared that week. Very few NYC agencies do this, but some do. Typically accompanies slightly lower per-session rates.
Bi-weekly: Every two weeks, on a fixed schedule. Common among digitally-oriented agencies like Bloomer Health. You always know when the money is coming and can budget accordingly.
Semi-monthly: Twice per month, typically the 1st and 15th. Functionally similar to bi-weekly but can create slightly uneven payment amounts depending on how sessions fall in the calendar.
Net 21: Payment arrives 21 days after the billing period closes. For a session delivered on March 1, you might not be paid until March 28 or later. At 15 to 20 sessions per week, you can have $3,000 to $6,000 of earned income in the pipeline at any given time.
Net 30: The slowest standard schedule. Sessions delivered in February may not be paid until the end of March. Most therapists who leave agencies for payment-related reasons are leaving Net 30 situations.
The real cost of slow payment
Consider a therapist earning $65/session, 18 sessions per week. Weekly earnings are $1,170. Under a Net 30 model, they consistently have about $5,000 in earned income that has not yet been paid. That money is essentially a no-interest loan to the agency for the duration of the working relationship.
More practically: slow payment is stressful and creates real financial risk. A single delayed processing cycle means you might go five or six weeks without income from that agency while new sessions accumulate in the queue.
What to ask before signing with a new agency
- What is your exact payment schedule? Is it weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, net 21, or net 30?
- What is your average time from session submission to therapist payment?
- Do you have a minimum submission threshold before payment is processed? (Some agencies hold payment until you have a minimum dollar amount of sessions submitted.)
- What happens if there is a billing dispute with the state? Are you still paid on schedule, or does your payment wait for the claim to resolve?
- Do you pay on submission or on state reimbursement? (Agencies that pay on submission, before the state pays them, offer better cash flow but may be less common.)
How EI Match trust scores weight payment speed
Payment reliability accounts for 40% of the trust score we assign to each NYC EI agency. This includes how closely actual payment timing matches what the agency advertises and how therapists rate the consistency of payments from that agency in our matching data. An agency advertising bi-weekly payment that frequently delays to three or four weeks will score poorly on this dimension regardless of its stated policy.
You can see payment speed ratings for all 14 NYC EI agencies on our agency pages, including the specific pay cycle each agency uses.