Frequently Asked Questions

You join Hazelnut as an independent contractor and get credentialed under our group to provide nutrition counseling via telehealth. From there, you continue building your practice exactly as you would as a solo provider — seeing your own clients, maintaining your own brand, setting your own schedule.

The difference is what happens behind the scenes. Hazelnut handles your insurance credentialing, claim submission, and denial follow-up. You chart the visit; we handle everything after.

You would be an independent contractor (1099). Hazelnut is not your employer. You are in private practice; we are your back-office partner.

You set your own hours, see your own clients, and operate under your own brand. We simply provide the infrastructure and handle the insurance side so you don't have to.

Our compensation structure is based on a tiered model per payer. It’s designed so that the majority of what Hazelnut collects is passed on to the clinician. With our leveraged group contracts, we’re able to offer higher rates for several payers than clinicians can get billing independently.

It depends on where you're starting from. If you are already credentialed with our payers, it may be as little as 2-3 weeks to get you added to our contracts. If not, credentialing can take 2-4 months.

Our goal is for the partnership to make sense for your practice, not to lock you in.

Our agreements are designed to be flexible and non-exclusive. You can choose to send specific payers through Hazelnut while maintaining other parts of your practice independently. We want to be a resource you want to use, not one you’re stuck with.

No — and that's intentional. Hazelnut partners are independent clinicians who source their own patients through their own referral networks, websites, online profiles, and word of mouth.

This is actually one of the things that distinguishes us from the larger platforms: your client relationships belong to you.

It's also a big part of why we can pay what we do. Platforms that provide patients take a significant cut to cover the client acquisition and front-office admin costs.

Through our group, you can see patients with:

• Aetna

• Asuris

• Bridgespan

• Cigna

• Blue Cross Blue Shield
  (Regence, Premera, Anthem, etc.)

• First Choice Health

• HMA

• Kaiser PPO

• Meritain

• United Healthcare

• and more