Frequently Asked Questions

I am currently accepting United (UHC/Optum) and BCBS. 

Your health plan may still cover a large portion of your therapy costs if you have “out-of-network” benefits for mental/behavioral health. Look up your plan details (specifically

under the out-of-network Mental Health Outpatient Services). If you don’t have out-of-

network benefits, consider switching to a plan that does during the Open Enrollment

period.

I will be working with Mentaya, a platform that helps clients get money back on out-of-

network therapy sessions. If you have out-of-network benefits, Mentaya will file claims

and handle the insurance paperwork to make sure you get reimbursed. They charge a

5% fee per claim and have helped people get thousands of dollars back per year. You can

sign up using this link:

https://app.mentaya.com/register?p=GFmcIM8jNU3PgkvsfH2O

Note: Mentaya's goal is to save you time and money. It's completely optional, and as

your therapist I do not benefit in any way from your participation.

Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s), Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA’s), and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA’s) can be used to cover the cost of therapy and often decrease the cost of treatment significantly.

• Consultation: 15 minutes - FREE

Private Pay Rates:

• Initial Intake Session: 60 minutes, $190
• Therapy Sessions: 60 minutes, $165

Insurance rates vary. 

ESA  & GAMHA Assessments with Letter: 60 minutes, $130

You have the right to receive a “Good Faith Estimate” explaining how much your medical care will cost.

Under the law, health care providers need to give patients who don’t have insurance or who are not using insurance an estimate of the bill for medical items and services.

• You have the right to receive a Good Faith Estimate for the total expected cost of any non-emergency items or services. This includes related costs like medical tests, prescription drugs, equipment, and hospital fees.
• Make sure your health care provider gives you a Good Faith Estimate in writing at least 1 business day before your medical service or item. You can also ask your health care provider, and any other provider you choose, for a Good Faith Estimate before you schedule an item or service.
• If you receive a bill that is at least $400 more than your Good Faith Estimate, you can dispute the bill.
• Make sure to save a copy or picture of your Good Faith Estimate. For questions or more information about your right to a Good Faith Estimate, visit www.cms.gov/nosurprises or call 800-985-3059.

This document outlines my office policies related to use of Social Media. Please read it to understand how I conduct myself on the Internet as a mental health professional and how you can expect me to respond to various interactions that may occur between us on the Internet.

If you have any questions about anything within this document, I encourage you to bring them up when we meet. As new technology develops and the Internet changes, there may be times when I need to update this policy. 

Friending

I do not accept friend or contact requests from current or former clients on any social networking site (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). I believe that adding clients as friends or contacts on these sites can compromise your confidentiality and our respective privacy. It may also blur the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. If you have questions about this, please bring them up when we meet and we can talk more about it.

Facebook 

I keep a Facebook Page for my professional practice to allow people to share my blog posts and practice updates with other Facebook users. All of the information shared on this page is available on my website.

You are welcome to view my Facebook Page and read or share articles posted there, but I do not accept clients as Fans of this Page. I believe having clients as Facebook Fans creates a greater likelihood of compromised client confidentiality and I feel it is best to be explicit to all who may view my list of Fans to know that they will not find client names on that list. Note that you should be able to subscribe to the page via RSS without becoming a Fan and without creating a visible, public link to my Page. You are more than welcome to do this.

Following

I publish a blog on my website. I have no expectation that you as a client will want to follow my blog.

Social Media Policy

My primary concern is your privacy. If you share this concern, you are welcome to use your own discretion in choosing whether to follow me.

Note that I will not follow you back. I only follow other health professionals on Instagram and I do not follow current or former clients on blogs or social media. My reasoning is that I believe casual viewing of clients’ online content outside of the therapy hour can create confusion in regard to whether it’s being done as a part of your treatment or to satisfy my personal curiosity. In addition, viewing your online activities without your consent and without our explicit arrangement towards a specific purpose could potentially have a negative influence on our working relationship. If there are things from your online life that you wish to share with me, please bring them into our sessions where we can view and explore them together, during the therapy hour.

Interacting

Please do not use messaging on Social Networking sites such as instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn to contact me. These sites are not secure and I may not read these messages in a timely fashion. Do not use Wall postings, @replies, or other means of engaging with me in public online if we have an already established client/therapist relationship. Engaging with me this way could compromise your confidentiality. It may also create the possibility that these exchanges become a part of your legal medical record and will need to be documented and archived in your chart.

If you need to contact me between sessions for quick, administrative issues such as changing appointment times, the best way to do so is by direct email. See the email section below for more information regarding email interactions.

Review Sites

You may find my psychology practice on sites such as Yelp, Healthgrades, Yahoo Local, Bing, or other places which list businesses. Some of these sites include forums in which users rate their providers and add reviews. Many of these sites comb search engines for business listings and automatically add listings regardless 

whether the business has added itself to the site. If you should find my listing on any of these sites, please know that my listing is NOT a request for a testimonial, rating, or endorsement from you as my client.

Of course, you have a right to express yourself on any site you wish. But due to confidentiality, I cannot respond to any review on any of these sites whether it is positive or negative. I urge you to take your own privacy as seriously as I take my commitment of confidentiality to you. You should also be aware that if you are using these sites to communicate indirectly with me about your feelings about our work, there is a good possibility that I may never see it.

If we are working together, I hope that you will bring your feelings and reactions to our work directly into the therapy process. This can be an important part of therapy, even if you decide we are not a good fit. None of this is meant to keep you from sharing that you are in therapy with me wherever and with whomever you like. Confidentiality means that I cannot tell people that you are my client and my Ethics Code prohibits me from requesting testimonials. But you are more than welcome to tell anyone you wish that I’m your therapist or how you feel about the treatment I provided to you, in any forum of your choosing.

If you do choose to write something on a business review site, I hope you will keep in mind that you may be sharing personally revealing information in a public forum. I urge you to create a pseudonym that is not linked to your regular email address or friend networks for your own privacy and protection.

If you feel I have done something harmful or unethical and you do not feel comfortable discussing it with me, you can always contact the BHEC, which oversees licensing, and they will review the services I have provided.

Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council
George H.W. Bush State Office Building
1801 Congress Ave., Ste. 7.300
Austin, Texas 78701

Main Line (512) 305-7700
Investigations/Complaints 24-hour, toll-free system (800) 821-3205

Location-Based Services

If you used location-based services on your mobile phone, you may wish to be aware of the privacy issues related to using these services. I do not place my practice as a check-in location on various sites such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, etc. However, if you have GPS tracking enabled on your device, it is possible that others may surmise that you are a therapy client due to regular check-ins at my office on a weekly basis. Please be aware of this risk if you are intentionally “checking in,” from my office or if you have a passive LBS app enabled on your phone.

Email

I prefer using email only to arrange or modify appointments. Please do not email me content related to your therapy sessions, as email is not completely secure or confidential. If you choose to communicate with me by email, be aware that all emails are retained in the logs of your and my Internet service providers. While it is unlikely that someone will be looking at these logs, they are, in theory, available to be read by the system administrator(s) of the Internet service provider. 

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to review my Social Media Policy. If you have questions or concerns about any of these policies and procedures or regarding our potential interactions on the Internet, do bring them to my attention so that we can discuss them.