Precision tools
GeneSight testing, ordered and read by your prescriber.
GeneSight is a pharmacogenomic test: a cheek swab that shows how your genes influence the way your body processes psychiatric medications. I am a GeneSight provider, which means I can order it for you, and, more importantly, I read the results with you and fold them into your plan. A lab report alone changes nothing. A prescriber who uses it well can save you months of trial and error.
PsychMed Care is the medication management practice of Solutions Psychiatry. If you are looking for therapy, or therapy and medication together, the full practice is at psych.us.
What the report says
Three kinds of answers
The report sorts the medications it covers into plain categories based on your gene-drug interactions. Read properly, it is a map of where your body is likely to cooperate and where it is likely to push back.
Likely to behave as expected
Medications with no significant gene-drug interaction for you. These are the straightforward candidates: standard dosing, standard expectations.
Dose with care
Medications your body processes unusually fast or slowly. Still usable, often successfully, but the dose may need to move, and side effects deserve a closer watch.
Choose carefully, or later
Medications where your genetics predict real friction. Not forbidden, but rarely the first move when cleaner options exist, and knowing that in advance is the point.
Who gets the most from testing? People who have already tried two or three medications that failed or caused side effects they could not live with. People starting medication who have watched a parent or sibling struggle through the same guessing. People on several medications, where one interaction can echo through the whole list. If none of that sounds like you, testing may add little, and I will tell you that instead of ordering it.
Family history deserves one more sentence. Genes are inherited, which means a close relative's medication story is data about you: the antidepressant that flattened your mother, the one that wired your brother. Testing turns that family folklore into something measurable, and it is one reason the report often explains a pattern the family has watched for years without a name for it.
The science, in plain language
Metabolizers: why the same dose is not the same dose
Most psychiatric medications are broken down by a small set of liver enzymes, and the genes that build those enzymes vary from person to person. Pharmacogenomics sorts that variation into a practical spectrum. Poor metabolizers clear a medication slowly, so a standard dose can build to levels that feel like too much: heavy side effects at ordinary doses. Intermediate metabolizers sit a step up, often fine on standard dosing with an eye on the ceiling. Normal metabolizers match the textbook the dose was designed around. Ultrarapid metabolizers clear a medication so quickly that a standard dose may never reach a working level, which can look exactly like the medication "not working" when the real story is that it never arrived.
That single distinction reframes years of confusion for some patients. The medication that made you feel poisoned may have been accumulating. The one that did nothing may have been leaving as fast as you took it. Neither experience means you are difficult, resistant, or imagining things; both can be arithmetic. GeneSight tests the relevant genes for a panel of psychiatric medications at once, which is why the report stays useful: your genes do not change, so a result from this year still informs a decision five years from now, and it travels with you if your care ever moves. We store it in your chart as part of the permanent picture, next to your labs and your medication history, and it gets consulted every time a new prescription is on the table, not just in the month it was ordered.
Honest limits
What the test cannot do
It does not pick your medication
The report narrows the field; it does not make the decision. Your history, your other medications, your labs, and what you have already lived through still outrank any single genetic result. It removes months of guessing. It does not remove judgment.
It does not predict your life
The test says nothing about whether a medication will work for your particular symptoms, only how your body is likely to handle it. Anyone who sells it as a crystal ball is overselling. Used as one input among several, it is genuinely useful. Used as the only input, it is an expensive horoscope.
Cost and coverage
The honest math
GeneSight publishes its own cost figures, and they are better than most patients expect: the company states that 98 percent of patients pay $330 or less out of pocket. For Medicare Part B patients, the typical cost is $0. The test is billed by the lab, not by this practice, and when it is part of your plan it is billed separately from your visit.
The honest complication: coverage varies by plan, and some commercial plans restrict it. UnitedHealthcare's commercial policy, for example, does not cover multi-gene panels the way it covers single-gene tests, so a UHC patient may face the lab's out-of-pocket cap instead of a copay. This is exactly why we check before anything is ordered: the lab confirms your maximum cost up front, and if the number does not make sense for you, we do not swab. No surprise bills is a practice rule here, for visits and for tests alike.
Medicare patients get the cleanest version of this: medication management is covered here in five states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Texas, and Utah), and GeneSight on Medicare Part B is typically $0. If you are weighing the test purely on cost and you carry Medicare, the answer is close to free. The fuller Medicare picture is on the Medicare page.
One billing distinction worth knowing before you decide: the visit and the test are separate lines. Your evaluation and follow-ups bill like any other visit here, through your insurance or at the self-pay rates, and the GeneSight lab bills the test itself. There is no markup from this practice on the lab work, and no version of the plan where testing gets ordered because it is profitable. It gets ordered when your history says guessing has already cost you enough time.
How it works here
From swab to decision in four steps
We decide together
Testing comes up when it will genuinely change a decision: after failed trials, before a difficult switch, or when your list is getting complicated.
The swab
A cheek swab, done in minutes. No blood draw, no fasting, nothing to schedule your life around.
The lab reads your genes
The sample goes to the GeneSight lab, which analyzes the genes that govern how you metabolize psychiatric medications and issues your report.
We read it together
At a follow-up, we walk the report line by line and fold it into your plan: what to try, what to dose carefully, what to stop guessing about.
The service it supports
Testing is one instrument inside medication management, not a standalone product.
Medicare and GeneSight
Coverage for the visit and the test, in the five Medicare states.
Labs that pair with testing
Genes are one lens. Thyroid, B12, vitamin D, and iron are the other, and they pair well.
Ready when you are
Testing starts with a first visit: a 60-minute evaluation where we decide if it belongs in your plan.
“A cheek swab will not fix anything. A prescriber who reads it well can shorten the road by months.”
Questions about fit or cost? Call (800) 303-3221