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The Center for Active Minds is a private pay clinic which means that we are not in-network with any insurance companies.

I do offer paperwork to make it easy for you to submit out-of-network claims.

 

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I take this approach because it places YOU in charge of your services. So what exactly are you in control of?

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      Sharing Relevant Mental Health Diagnosis.   In order to have insurance cover services, they often require information about the dates you received services, what types of services you received, and you or your child's mental health diagnosis. This information can impact your insurance coverage and potentially impact your future endeavors including potential job opportunities. Did you know that unless you receive a diagnosis that meets criteria for medical necessity, insurance companies may not cover services? What if you want to therapy services but you do not meet criteria for one of these diagnoses? Of course, there are times that having a diagnosis will benefit you, including getting accommodations or additional services in some schools (often talked about as a 504 plan or an IEP / Individualized Education Plan).  The private pay model allows YOU to make this decision: You can determine what information about your mental health you want to share and with whom you share it. 

     Timing for Services.  I have a shorter waitlist which means you and your child can receive services right when you need them.

       Session Location.  This means we can best adapt to your needs - if your child is home sick from school or there is a snow day, we can either do an online session or a phone session.  If it is necessary to observe your child at your home or in their classroom to get a good sense of the struggle they are experiencing, this model affords us the flexibility to do that so we can provide more targeted treatments.

       Session Length. Insurance companies can determine how many sessions they will cover for a calendar year or for a particular time period.  This may not be what is in the best interest of you or your child, given that insurance companies are often interested in reducing their costs. In this model, we can flex our time during sessions based on how things are going: if you are having a particularly difficult week or need more time than 1 hour a week to help you through right now.

    Session Content. You are pursuing therapy to help improve your life in some way.  The goal for most insurance companies is to reduce their costs.  Are these goals consistent with each other? Maybe.  Sometimes insurance and clients can achieve their goals through the same means, but often times I find this is not the case. If your insurance pays for your services, it can relieve your financial burden, but at what cost? In my experience, I have found that insurance companies coverage is not aligned with the assessment and treatment recommendations from experts that we know work (see this as an example). As a therapist, this places me in an ethical bind - do I provide services I know are most effective for you knowing insurance will not cover the cost of these services, or do I simply follow what the insurance company wants me to do, even though this may lead you to spend more time doing assessments or treatments? I prefer to place my client's needs first and know that I am providing you the most effective treatments.

       Flexibility. Because insurance companies often care about their bottom line, the information they request to pay for services allow them to determine if the services rendered by your therapist are focused on the diagnosis the treatment is addressing. Although the idea behind this is important, that you are receiving focused therapy, this does not allow for much flexibility. Life is messy and often issues that you are seeking treatment for are complex and do not occur in a vacuum, so treating them as simple, isolated issues feels short-sighted and is often not in your best interest. Also, therapy treatments should not be approached with a one-size-fits-all approach. In particular, having a child in therapy often impacts the entire family, and the family's stressors often impact the child's therapy. For example, there  have been multiple times when a parent comes to their child's session feeling overwhelmed due to life stressors, and being able to focus on that during a session helps the entire family more so than continuing with a treatment plan.  This allows me to utilize my clinical judgement, a skill that I have developed through extensive training, rather than insurance companies, to dictate what is most important for us to focus on during each session that will ensure you continue to make progress in the ways that you want to.

       

 

This model allows us to provide you therapy YOUR way, in an ethical manner, based on our collaborative expertise (you about yourself and your family; me about techniques that are most effective in helping people like you).

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