Editorial Standards & Content Methodology

Who is responsible for what you read here

Every guide on Telehealth Navigator AI is edited by Paul Paradis, the site's editor and founder. Paul plans the guide library, writes the drafts, checks them against public clinical guidance, and decides when a guide goes live and when it gets pulled for rewrite. If something on this site is wrong, it's Paul's job to fix it.

Paul is not a clinician and is not presented as one. What he does bring is lived experience: more than two years working in a forensic mental health hospital setting, exposure to some of the most severe mental health cases, and personal family experience with mental health struggles. That experience is why this site exists in the first place: not as a content business, but as a starting point for people trying to figure out where to turn. Read Paul's full bio →

This is a consumer-information site, not a medical practice. The aim of our editorial process is narrow and honest: make sure the explanations here match what major public health bodies and clinical organizations already say, and give readers direct links back to those primary sources so they can verify the work.

The sources we lean on, in order

When a guide makes a claim about a condition, a treatment, an insurance rule, or a regulation, it should be traceable to something public. Our source hierarchy:

1. U.S. government health and regulatory bodies. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), HealthCare.gov, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. For HIPAA and privacy, HHS.gov and the Office for Civil Rights.
2. Clinical and professional organizations. The American Psychological Association (APA), the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for plain-language patient materials.
3. Peer-reviewed journals. Where relevant, we cite work from JAMA Psychiatry, The Lancet Psychiatry, World Psychiatry, JMIR Mental Health, and Telemedicine and e-Health. We link to the abstract or the open-access version when one exists.
4. Platform-published facts. For pricing, features, insurance acceptance, and state availability, we read the platforms' own pages and note the date we checked.

If a claim only shows up in marketing material or on a platform's own blog, it doesn't graduate into a guide without a second independent source.

How a guide actually gets written

The process is boring on purpose. That's the point.

1. Paul drafts an outline from the relevant APA, NIMH, SAMHSA, or CMS material, plus the specific platform pages the guide covers.
2. The draft goes through a checklist: are the clinical descriptions in line with current APA/NIMH wording, are the sources cited and linked, does the crisis information appear in the first screen on any page that touches suicide, self-harm, or acute distress, and is there a clear statement that the guide is educational rather than clinical.
3. Claims that the draft cannot tie back to a primary source are either rewritten, sourced, or cut.
4. When the guide goes live, the published date and the last-reviewed date are both added to the page.

We do not run original clinical research, we do not survey patients, and we do not publish individualized medical advice. If a topic is beyond what we can responsibly cover, the guide says so and points the reader to a clinician or a public resource.

Review cadence

We work on a quarterly review cycle. Every ninety days Paul walks the guide library and checks each piece for three things: whether the platform facts are still current, whether the clinical guidance it summarizes has shifted, and whether anything has changed in federal or state telehealth policy that affects the guide. Updated guides get a fresh last-reviewed date.

Quarterly is the floor, not the ceiling. A few situations pull a guide forward in the queue:

• A platform changes its pricing, insurance acceptance, or state availability.
• A federal agency (CMS, SAMHSA, HHS) issues new guidance that affects what a guide says.
• A reader writes in with a correction and we can confirm it.
• We catch a claim that no longer traces back to a current source.

We don't claim monthly audits because, honestly, we wouldn't do them. Quarterly is the pace we can actually keep.

How we handle clinical sensitivity

The site covers topics ranging from "how does HSA reimbursement work for telehealth" to "what does psychosis look like and where can someone get help." Those do not deserve the same editorial weight.

Guides that touch on mental health conditions, medications, crisis situations, or vulnerable populations (children, teens, older adults, veterans) get a slower, more conservative pass. Every such guide opens with the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and 911 information, frames conditions in general educational terms rather than diagnostic ones, and tells the reader plainly that the next step is a licensed professional. Language around suicide and self-harm follows the safe-messaging guidance from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Reporting on Suicide.

Guides on money and coverage (insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, HSA/FSA) get checked against CMS and HealthCare.gov before each quarterly review because the rules change more than people realize.

Version history and dates

Every guide carries a visible publication date and a last-reviewed date. When we materially change a guide (new clinical guidance, a platform that changed hands, a state rule that flipped) the last-reviewed date moves forward and, where appropriate, the guide carries a short note at the top describing what changed. Cosmetic edits don't trigger a new review date. Prices in comparison tables carry their own check date, which moves whenever we recheck the figure.

This page itself carries a "Last reviewed" date at the top. If you want to see what we were saying a quarter ago, the Wayback Machine has us indexed.

How money works, and where the firewall sits

Display advertising pays for the site today. A script from Sovrn Commerce (VigLink) runs on every page and may turn some ordinary links to outside stores and services into affiliate links that can earn us a commission. No link was placed by hand to pay us, and the links it converts are not marked on the page, so treat any outbound link as one that could earn us money. Pages that compare paid services are labeled as commercial comparisons, and the current status lives on the affiliate disclosure page.

• Which platforms appear in a comparison guide is an editorial decision, not a paid slot. A brand cannot buy placement, a better ranking, or a softer tone.
• Comparison guides include criticisms and drawbacks for every platform we cover.
• Advertising units are visually distinct from editorial content.
• When a guide makes a factual claim about a platform, the claim has to be sourced to the platform's own documentation or an independent report, not to our commercial relationship with it.

Clinical review: who has checked what

Of our 79 guides, 62 carry a credit from Lisa Lewis, RN, BSN. Her review covers educational clarity and safety language, and each of those guides says so in a visible line near the top and names her in the reviewedBy field of its structured data, so the claim can be checked against the page.

The other 17 guides, mostly on costs, insurance and access, have not had a clinical review yet. They say that in a note near the top, written by Paul as a non-clinician, and they lean on dated primary sources instead. We would rather show the gap than paper over it. If one of them gets reviewed later, the credit is added on the day and the change goes into the corrections and updates log.

A review credit is never medical advice for any reader, and it doesn’t mean a clinician wrote the guide.

How the free AI guide is used, and its limits

The free AI guide at /chat is one tool on this site, not its author. It helps readers find the right guide, sort through telehealth options and think of questions to bring to a provider. Guides are not generated and published by it; they are drafted and checked by a person against the sources described above.

It is not a therapist, a doctor or any kind of clinician, and it can be wrong. It is set up to decline diagnosis, dosing and crisis counseling, and to point anyone in crisis to 988 or 911. Treat what it says as a starting point and check anything that matters with a licensed professional. More detail is on the About page.

Corrections & Feedback

If you see something on this site that's wrong, outdated, or misleading, tell us. We read every message and we'd rather fix it than leave it.

Email info@telehealthnavigatorai.com. A few notes on what lands best:

• For a specific error, include the page URL and the sentence or claim you're flagging. If you have a primary source that contradicts us, link it.
• Clinicians, researchers, and health information professionals: please say so. We weigh that input heavily and we want to be correctable by people who spend their careers on this.
• We can't provide medical or mental-health advice by email, and this address isn't monitored for emergencies. In a crisis, call or text 988, or call 911.

When we make a correction based on a reader note, the guide's last-reviewed date moves forward that same day. Corrections and other meaningful content changes are listed, with dates, in our corrections and updates log.

The “Last updated” date on each page is the day its own text last changed, including small wording edits to that page’s headings and sentences. Shared parts of the site, such as the footer, the crisis box, the shared disclosure and author blocks, and site-wide heading templates, do not move it.

What this page is not saying

Being honest about the limits of an editorial process matters more than pretending we have capabilities we don't.

• We are not a healthcare provider, a therapy service, or a clinical directory.
• We do not diagnose conditions or recommend treatments for specific individuals.
• We do not collect Protected Health Information under HIPAA.
• Our editor is a writer and curator, not a clinician. Anything on this site that sounds like clinical advice is a summary of publicly-available guidance, not a professional opinion about you.

For anything personal to your situation, the right next step is a licensed professional who knows your history. If you are in danger, call 911 or the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.