No. In Colorado, EMSELLA is not covered by insurance. It is an FDA-cleared elective medical procedure, and elective is the operative word: carriers reimburse pelvic floor treatment when it is billed as physical therapy by a therapist, not when it is delivered by a chair that produces roughly 11,200 supramaximal pelvic floor contractions in a 28-minute session. Your consultation and office visit are a different matter and are usually billable. HSA and FSA funds commonly apply, because this is a medical expense, and Cherry financing is available. So the real question is not whether insurance pays. It is what a full course actually costs you.
Most people ask about coverage because they want to know whether this is affordable, not because they care how a carrier classifies it. That is the right instinct and the wrong question.
Why a carrier says no, and what that does and does not mean
Elective is a billing category, not a verdict on whether it works
Insurers reimburse against procedure codes and medical-necessity rules written long before HIFEM devices existed. Pelvic floor rehabilitation has a covered pathway when a therapist bills it as physical therapy over a course of visits. A 28-minute treatment delivered by an FDA-cleared electromagnetic device does not map onto that pathway, so it is classified elective. That classification is administrative, and it says nothing about whether the treatment helps you.
What the evidence actually shows
The device class has been studied in peer-reviewed journals. Samuels and colleagues reported on safety and efficacy for urinary incontinence and quality of life in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine in 2019, and a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in Neurourology and Urodynamics pooled the trials in women with urinary incontinence. Read them as what they are: encouraging evidence for a non-invasive option, not a guarantee for any individual.
The number most people should actually compute
Set the treatment cost against what the problem already costs you. Pads and liners bought monthly for years. Laundry. The run you did not do, the trip planned around bathrooms, the trampoline you stood beside. Patients rarely tally this, and it is usually the larger number. It is also the one that keeps growing while you wait.
Where a physician changes the math
Bladder leaking is a symptom, not a diagnosis. It can come from stress incontinence, urgency, prolapse, a neurological cause, or a combination, and those do not all respond to the same thing. At Dynamic Athlete you are evaluated by Aneesh Garg, DO, CAQ before anything is booked, and you can read how the treatment works on our EMSELLA therapy page or compare the options on our pelvic floor therapy page. Paying out of pocket for the wrong protocol is the expensive outcome.
What to ask any clinic before you pay
Out of pocket means the clinic answers to you, not to a carrier. Use that.
- Does a physician evaluate me before the first session, or do I go straight to the chair?
- How many sessions are in the course, and what happens if I need more?
- Is anything paired with EMSELLA, and what is the reason for the pairing?
- Is the quote for the whole plan, or per session with extras added later?
- Can I use HSA or FSA funds, and will you give me documentation for it?
Before you book, ask
- Will a physician take my history and examine me before the first treatment?
- Is this quote for the complete plan, and what specifically is included?
- What would make you tell me I am not a candidate?
The one that matters most
A clinic that cannot tell you what would make you a poor candidate has not screened you. Ask that question third and listen closely, because a treatment nobody will decline you for is being sold rather than prescribed.
Frequently asked questions
Is EMSELLA covered by insurance in Colorado?
No. EMSELLA is an FDA-cleared elective medical procedure, and insurance in Colorado does not cover it. Coverage decisions turn on procedure codes and medical-necessity rules that predate this class of device, so pelvic floor rehabilitation has a covered pathway when a physical therapist bills it over a course of visits, while a 28-minute treatment delivered by an electromagnetic device does not fit that pathway. Being uncovered is an administrative classification rather than a judgment about whether the treatment works. Your consultation and office visit are a separate matter and are usually billable in the ordinary way, so you can be evaluated and find out whether you are even a candidate before committing to anything out of pocket.
Can I use my HSA or FSA to pay for EMSELLA?
In most cases yes. EMSELLA is a medical expense delivered in a medical practice, and HSA and FSA funds commonly apply to it. Because plan rules vary, the practical step is to confirm with your plan administrator before you start rather than partway through a course, and to ask the clinic for itemized documentation that describes the treatment and the medical reason for it. We provide that documentation. It is also worth doing this early in the plan year if your FSA has a use-it-or-lose-it deadline, because a standard course runs over several weeks and you want the whole course inside the eligible window rather than split across two.
How much does EMSELLA cost in Boulder?
We give a quote after a thorough evaluation. We price the plan for optimal outcomes, not line items off a menu, and every patient leaves with a good understanding of the next steps. That is not evasion: a per-session number would be the least useful thing we could tell you, because clinics do not deliver comparable courses. What decides your cost is how many sessions your protocol needs, whether anything is paired with the EMSELLA sessions, and whether a physician is involved in the decision. At Dynamic Athlete, EMSELLA is never administered alone; it is delivered as Dynamic Core+, paired with focused shockwave, which is the only such combination offered in Boulder.
Why is EMSELLA elective if pelvic floor physical therapy is covered?
Because coverage follows billing categories rather than mechanisms. Pelvic floor physical therapy is delivered by a therapist over a series of visits and bills against established physical-therapy codes with established medical-necessity criteria. EMSELLA delivers roughly 11,200 supramaximal pelvic floor contractions in a 28-minute session using high-intensity focused electromagnetic technology, which is a different delivery model that those codes were not written for. The result is that two treatments aimed at the same muscles get different coverage answers. This is worth understanding because it means an insurance denial tells you about the code set, not about whether the treatment is appropriate for you.
Does Medicare or Kaiser cover EMSELLA?
Not for the procedure itself. At Dynamic Athlete, Medicare and Kaiser are accepted for consultations and office visits, so the evaluation that determines whether you are a candidate can be billed in the ordinary way. The EMSELLA course is elective and out of pocket, the same as it is with commercial carriers. If you are on a fixed income this actually makes the evaluation more important rather than less, because the worst financial outcome is paying out of pocket for a protocol that was never going to address your particular cause of leaking.
Is EMSELLA worth paying for out of pocket?
That depends on what the problem is currently costing you, and most people have never added it up. Count the pads and liners, the extra laundry, and then the things you have quietly stopped doing: the run, the trampoline with your kids, the trip planned around where the bathrooms are. For many patients that total is already larger than a course of treatment and it keeps growing while nothing changes. The honest counterweight is that no treatment works for everyone, which is why we evaluate first and tell you if you are not a good candidate rather than selling you a course.
What should I ask a clinic that quotes me a price over the phone?
Ask whether a physician examines you before the first treatment, whether the quote covers the complete plan or just the sessions, and what would make them tell you that you are not a candidate. That third question is the most revealing one. Bladder leaking is a symptom with several possible causes, including stress incontinence, urgency, prolapse and neurological causes, and they do not all respond to the same treatment. A clinic that has no criteria for declining you has not screened you, and a price quoted before anyone has examined you is a price for a package rather than a plan.
Do I have to travel to Boulder for this?
Patients come to us from across the Front Range, including Denver, Broomfield, Longmont, Louisville, Lafayette, Erie, Superior and Westminster, and the practice is set up for people driving in. A standard course is six sessions, and each session is 28 minutes and fully clothed, so the visits are short and predictable and most people fold them into an ordinary week. If you are weighing the drive, the thing to compare is not distance but whether the clinic near you delivers a physician-screened protocol or hands you a chair, because that is the difference that shows up in the result.
Get a plan and a price built around your pelvic floor
Same-week evaluations with Aneesh Garg, DO, CAQ. We take the history, examine you, and tell you plainly whether EMSELLA fits your cause of leaking, what a complete course involves, and what it costs. If something else fits better, we say so.
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1790 30th Street Suite 270 · Boulder, CO 80301 · 303-997-1733