Scott’s Addition-based sleep therapy clinic launches

Virginia Sleep Center’s clinician team includes, from top left, Amanda Thenor, Priscilla Wright, Matthew Fuller, Edna Daniel, Yasmeen Burnell, Sue Fryant, Rachel Hunter and Diana Antonio. (Courtesy Virginia Sleep Center)

From its hub in a Scott’s Addition coworking space, a recently launched virtual clinic says it’s addressing a deficit in the state’s sleep-therapy resources with an emphasis on a particular treatment for insomnia.

Virginia Sleep Center, which is based in Venture X at 1806 Summit Ave., is seeing patients now. The practice caters to people with chronic insomnia and offers telehealth service with plans to potentially introduce in-person appointments.

The clinic’s therapists focus on a psychological treatment called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBT-I, in which they provide care intended to address patients’ feelings and behaviors that lead to sleep problems.

“What we do is specifically for chronic insomnia. This is for people with bad insomnia for a while,” founder George Wang said.

Wang said the center was established in response to what he called a shortage of sleep therapists trained in CBT-I nationally and in the state. He said about 600 clinicians in the country are versed in the treatment, and until Virginia Sleep Center was established, fewer than a dozen CBT-I trained clinicians worked in Virginia.

“Virginia was one of the states where there is a critical lack of sleep therapy providers. We wanted to come in and try to fill that gap,” said Wang, a native of Northern Virginia with a background in the administrative and consulting side of healthcare.

The company’s launch also comes during a rise in popularity for virtual sleep therapy, which the company said was less common pre-pandemic.

While Virginia Sleep Center is a virtual operation, the center has rented space in Venture X to serve as a headquarters and venue to provide in-person therapy appointments in the future.

Wang said the clinic can rent meeting rooms on demand at Venture X to see patients when it expands into in-person treatment. There isn’t specific medical equipment involved, so spaces don’t need to be specialized to deliver therapy.

“We wanted space that’s flexible. When we initially launched the practice, we had no idea how many people would want to be in person versus virtual,” he said, noting that the center has had requests for in-person appointments.

The clinic began to operate in mid-February and had seen 100 patients as of early last week. The center’s clinicians handle appointments from home, with most based in Richmond and some in Northern Virginia.

• A therapy session costs $150, or a copay of around $25 with Medicaid or a copay of up to $40 with insurance, according to the clinic’s website.

Wang said the clinic has patients inside and outside the Richmond region.

The center is credentialed to see only virtual patients who are living in Virginia. Wang said the clinic hopes to expand beyond the state and could potentially look into Maryland and D.C. in the future.

Wang said the clinic could look to move into its own commercial space in the Richmond area at some point.

Virginia Sleep Center has nine clinicians and three support staffers. Some of the center’s clinicians work on a contracted basis. The clinic uses a HIPAA-compliant version of Google Meet to facilitate its telehealth service.

The company declined to identify the center’s owners, who split time between Virginia, California and New York.