RATES + INSURANCE

I use IvyPay to keep a credit card on file, which will be charged at the time of your appointment. Payments can be made using any major credit card, or your HSA account. If I am unable to collect payment, this may result in the cancellation of your upcoming appointments until your balance is paid.

• All cancellations require 48 hours’ notice. You can call, text, or email to cancel/reschedule. You may switch to telehealth if you can’t come in person, or avoid a fee by rescheduling within the same week.
• Late cancellation fee: $150.  No-Show fee: $175. Some exceptions are possible for contagious illness, true emergencies, or unavoidable circumstances (i.e. jury duty). (NOTE: Forgetting or not planning ahead does not count as unavoidable.) 
• If you are more than 15 minutes late, your appointment may be canceled and a fee will be assessed at that time. If you accrue more than 2 late cancels/no-shows in a row, you may be removed from my schedule or discharged.  
• If you are involved in a court-related case, phone calls or court appearances may incur additional fees. Letter writing or document preparation may also incur a fee.

These policies exist to allow other clients access to services, and to protect the financial health of my business. Thank you for understanding!

Whether someone shows up or not, self-employed therapists are still responsible for office rent, software, taxes, advertising, gas to get to the office, and other business expenses. Late cancellations and no-shows not only take away a spot from other clients, but they also hurt our business and impact our income. Multiple late cancels in a week can lead to hundreds in lost income, so it adds up quickly. 

These fees are not meant as punishment - they exist simply to protect my business and my finances. I will do my best to make exceptions when absolutely necessary, but I do have to be selective.

In my career as a therapist, I've worked with most types of insurance. Unfortunately, many insurances come with restrictions that make it difficult to serve my clients. In the spirit of transparency, I no longer do business with many insurance companies due to their poor treatment of providers and patients. 

For example, many insurance companies place limits on frequency/number of appointments, impose harsh audits, and require excessive paperwork/administrative tasks. They also tend to experience many errors on their end, leading to denied claims and long phone calls/email chains to fix the issue. This can lead to clients not getting the care they need, therapists being denied payment for weeks or months, and excessive billing-related costs. These types of issues accumulate quickly and lead to therapist burnout, which takes away from my ability to provide quality care.  

In an ideal world, I'd be able to serve everyone no matter what insurance they have. Unfortunately, the reality of our healthcare system does not make this feasible. My priority is to provide good therapy to you, with minimal stress or limitations for both of us. If I don't accept your insurance, I'm happy to provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement, or provide you names of in-network clinicians.

There are lots of misconceptions surrounding this question. The problem isn't so much what therapy costs, but rather that our healthcare system does not adequately cover these services. The cost of therapy is based on therapist experience, skill level, training, and the cost to run a therapy business. It takes into account the amount of money, education, and training it takes to become a licensed therapist, as well as the time and effort spent working in the field and completing continuing education to stay up to date in the profession. Our fees are proportionate to these factors.

Although we set our out-of-pocket rates, therapists have no control over how much insurance companies pay for treatment, or whether they cover treatment at all. Therapy tends to be expensive because of the lack of adequate coverage by insurance, and due to the subpar treatment of providers by insurance companies, which leads many of us to opt out of being in network.

In an ideal world, therapists would be fairly compensated for their labor, and therapy would be affordable (or even free) for everyone. Unfortunately, our system does not view mental health care the same way as physical health. This results in a) therapists having to take huge pay cuts to provide affordable care, or b) patients paying large amounts out of pocket for services. This is a larger systemic issue we have been fighting for decades, and will continue to fight until we see meaningful change.