Payment & Office Policies

Payment

We accept the following forms of payment:

• Medicaid (straight Medicaid and Turquoise Care with Presbyterian and BCB)
• Presbyterian Health Plan (commercial and Turquoise Care)
• Blue Cross/Blue Shield (commercial and Turquoise Care)
  
• Self-pay (credit cards)

* We do not accept any form of Medicare

Our regular fee for self-pay clients is $175 (plus tax) for the initial session and $150 (plus tax) per 50-minute hour for follow-up sessions. We do not have a sliding scale. All fees are subject to gross receipts tax.

Cancellation policy

When you make an appointment, we reserve that time specifically for you. We try to keep regular appointment times for you and make times that fit your schedule, so we expect that you will respect our time. We cannot bill your insurance company for appointments that you do not come to, so except in unusual situations, we will charge a fee if you cancel less than 24 hours before your appointment or if you do not show up for your appointment.

The fee for late cancellations and no shows is $150 plus gross receipts tax.

Please call our voice mail and leave a message to cancel and reschedule your appointment. Our voice mail has a time and date marker that indicates when your call was received. If you cancel or miss a session, we will call you to see what happened and to see if we can reschedule.

This means, if you or your child is starting to feel sick the day before, it is wise to cancel or reschedule. Likewise, you need to anticipate when something may come up at work or school that would prevent your attending your scheduled session.

HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA was designed to protect Americans who were previously ill from losing their health insurance when they change jobs or residences. This law, which took effect on April 14, 2003, protects private health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent and sets standards for safe storage of such information. We use electronic transmission (Internet) of billing information to obtain payment and therefore we fall under HIPAA and must use secure methods for transmission. Electronic transmission does not include using a FAX machine or the telephone for providing information. We maintain strict confidentiality and safe keeping of client records (all records are kept in locked filing cabinets).

Client records

The laws and ethical standards of my profession require that we keep treatment records. The main purpose of these records is to benefit you, the client. Keeping records allows a therapist to document and review the delivery of therapy services. They also provide a history and current status of your therapy in the event that you seek therapy services from another mental health professional and you authorize us to transmit these records or information about your treatment to that professional. Record keeping allows us to plan and implement an appropriate course of therapy services, to review our work as a whole, and to monitor our work more precisely.

At the minimum, these records include identifying information (e.g., name, age, psychosocial history), dates of services, types of services, fees, any formal assessments or test results, the treatment plan, notes of consultations with other professionals or sources of collateral information, and authorizations to release information. The informal therapy notes we make about sessions and that are kept in your file are a work product and not available for inspection as part of the record.

You are entitled to inspect your records with certain limitations. Because these are professional records, they can be misinterpreted and/or be upsetting to untrained readers. If you wish to inspect your records, we recommend that you review them in our presence so that we can discuss the contents. Alternatively, we will be happy to send them to a mental health professional of your choice who can help you understand the content. You will be charged an appropriate fee for any materials and time spent in preparing information requests.

A subpoena, even when issued by an attorney, carries the authority of a court and cannot be ignored. We would need your written authorization or a legal mandate to release information. Without your written authorization, we would consult with an attorney and be guided by his or her instructions. We will keep you informed about all actions we are required to take.

If you choose, we will prepare and send a summary of your treatment, including the DSM diagnosis, psychosocial history, and treatment progress to your attorney or other professional whom you designate, and there will be an extra charge for these services. Sometimes an attorney demands the entire record, which we advise against your authorizing. Even so, if you want the entire record sent, you must provide us with written authorization to do so.

Please be aware that making your records available to an attorney and subsequently to the court means you will lose confidentiality in all that you have discussed. We may also be required to testify, and anything that we have discussed may become part of the legal record. Of course, there will be an appropriate charge for preparing a summary, copying and sending the entire file, or testifying in court. Furthermore, litigation can lead to the termination of our therapy relationship, because our participation in such legal proceedings may negatively affect our work.