THE STRUCTURAL FORCES HARMING MENTAL HEALTH PROVIDERS: CASE STUDIES & EXAMPLES

Susie Morozowich, LMSW, LCSW, is a behavioral health provider, practice owner, and advocate whose work focuses on challenging and reshaping the systems that govern how care is delivered, reimbursed, and sustained. Her work sits at the intersection of clinical practice, insurance systems, and structural reform, with an emphasis on helping providers move from understanding these systems to actively responding to them. She is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of TelebehavioralHealth.US, a multi-state group practice established in 2016 during the early adoption of telemedicine in behavioral health. As an early adopter of the direct-to-consumer model, she was among the first providers in the country to implement telemedicine as a primary mode of care delivery. Under her leadership, the organization became the first fully digital behavioral health provider to partner with Medicare, while operating across multiple states within an insurance-based system. In addition to operating within these systems, she has developed provider-owned practice models designed to address workforce conditions, reimbursement limitations, and administrative burden. Her work emphasizes building structures that support clinical integrity, sustainability, and provider autonomy, offering alternatives to increasingly corporatized models of care. She has created widely used advocacy resources and professional trainings that translate complex issues such as insurance practices, utilization management, corporate consolidation, and regulatory dynamics into practical guidance. These resources are designed not only to inform, but to equip providers with the tools, language, and strategies needed to engage in structural resistance and more intentional practice design. She is a founding board member of the Mental Health Professionals Equity Alliance (MHPEA), where she contributes to national advocacy efforts focused on reimbursement reform, workforce sustainability, and restoring provider autonomy within behavioral health. Her work in this space connects individual provider experiences to broader systemic patterns, while supporting collective efforts toward change. With over 20 years of experience, she brings a perspective grounded in both direct clinical care and the realities of building and sustaining a practice within complex payer and regulatory environments. Her work is focused on helping providers better understand these systems, navigate them more effectively, and take informed steps toward building models of care that are ethical, sustainable, and aligned with the values of the profession.