I understand that it can be incredibly frustrating to want to seek therapy & find a provider you could see yourself working with & them not accept your insurance. Being that I am a very transparent person I want to take an opportunity to explain my policy & reasoning as to why I don’t accept insurance at my practice.

Insurance companies require therapists to agree to many stipulations in order to be paneled. To begin, the ability for them to bill for services & to be reimbursed in a fair & timely fashion. The current reimbursement rates for therapy are often lower than what is a livable wage. As a result of this, you may hear of some therapist having an additional occupation or leaving the field as whole, due to not being able to sustain a healthy balance, feeling burned out & lacking a sustainable quality of life.

This is largely in-part to the necessity of Mental Health reform, as a whole. But that is a story for another day.

As we know, the cost of living has drastically increased in the last decade, let alone year.

Insurance companies require therapist to provide a diagnoses within the first 2-3 sessions of meeting you. This is not a realistic timeframe for me to get to really know you & make a sound & most importantly, ethically based diagnosis.

It is my professional opinion that parameters like these, enforced by insurance companies, not only put a clinician in an ethical dilemma, where they may actually do more harm to their client, (which is the direct antithesis to what a therapist is supposed to do), but also could potentially leave the client in a position where they may not feel heard, seen or worse, treated appropriately.

You may be dealing with something in your life currently, but at the baseline of your functioning, you don’t fully meet the criteria for a formal diagnoses. As clinicians, & i’ll add as an ETHICAL clinician, a formal diagnoses should only be formulated on the basis of chronicity, monitoring symptomology & ensuring that nothing else is influencing your current state of being, meaning we need time to really come up with a diagnosis, not just in 2-3 sessions.

Although I firmly believe that this is a larger systemic issue, it is the unfortunate reality of the current climate in the mental health system.

In my professional experience, electing to not be paneled with insurances, has allowed me to better serve my clients. I am able to be paid an amount I feel is fair for my training & skill set. This in-turn allows for less burn out which then affords me the ability to take more courses to refine my skill-set and bring more variety of interventions to my practice, thus allowing me to creatively individualize my interventions per client in my practice.

I am a Clinician that works with integrity. I firmly believe in providing my clients with the best quality of care. I am unwilling to sacrifice that to be paneled by an insurance company that will dictate how I provide care for my clients & stifle the creativity that has been so healing for those whom I have had the honor of working with.

I hope that this explanation can clarify any questions you may have around this topic. This is frankly why a lot of Clinicians choose to not be paneled. It is something that is a bit taboo, in our industry, however I operate from a place of transparency & hope you can appreciate that, in this response.

Given that I am an out-of-network provider, I am able to provide you with a Superbill (itemized bill) at the end of the month that reflects the sessions that have taken place. Please be advised, that I do not  submit anything on your behalf, & you must ask for the superbill if you are needing it. It is the sole responsibility of the person wanting to be reimbursed to handle everything insurance related. Please be advised, that I can not guarantee any reimbursement, as I do not work with any insurances, nor am I paneled & I also do not contact anyone from any insurance company on your behalf, as I have a limited schedule. In these cases, you will likely be referred to have the representative email for any specifications & should a phone call be required, you will be asked to pay a “short term consultation call” fee that is 30 minutes long. This phone call would have to be scheduled ahead of time & will not be able to be super billed as insurance companies do not reimburse for that.

The purpose of a consultation call is to see if we connect & feel like we are a good fit to work together. I really believe that this initial meeting can set the tone for the work we have ahead of us. I am of the school of thought that you need to feel comfortable with your clinician as I am supposed to be your co-pilot on this healing journey. Please find below what the process of the consultation call will be like.

Prior to meeting for our consultation call, you will be provided with a brief survey that you will need to have filled out before the consultation appointment. Filling this out will give me good insight into your process & what is bringing you to therapy. It will also help us maximize the time that we’re meeting as the consultation calls are limited 15 minutes.

Consultation calls are a one time courtesy for the first 15 minutes. If you are wanting additional meetings, or a longer consultation you will be asked to schedule a short term consultation call or prolonged  consultation call. These come at an additional fee and must be paid for ahead of time.

Consultation calls are done via-Telehealth or through the phone only. I do not provide in-person consultations. I only meet with clients in person, once they are admitted into the practice.

Please be advised that a consultation call does not guarantee you being admitted into my practice, or serve as a therapy session.

PLEASE NOTE: Upon completing your consultation call, if you are interested in working together, you will be sent a link to our client portal/ intake paperwork. You will have 72 hours to submit the intake paperwork & let me know what availability you have to meet. If I do not hear back from you within 72 hours, & have your intake paperwork completed, I will cancel the potential admission & remove you from the waitlis

For you to be you. Therapy can be one of the most meaningful platonic connections you will experience. I, as your therapist, ask for you to show up in your truth. To speak honestly, & openly so we can get down to what is coming up for you.

Therapy is very individualized & is contingent on just how deep you are willing to go. There are some clients that require assistance & time to develop insight into their process. This is a very personal decision that typically involves- processing what’s happened in your life & how are these things impacting the person you are today. Given this, I can not provide an estimate of how long we’d be working together.

Bi-weekly therapy/ Monthly therapy means you are at a place of maintenance. Maintenance meaning, you have sustained the clinical gains you have acquired in therapy. This takes some time to figure out while we’re collaborating.

I do NOT admit any clients into my practice that are looking for this sort of frequency, even if there is a history of therapy. Given that I don’t know you, I can not attest to your readiness to be seen on that frequency, & for liability & ethical purposes as well, I will not take that risk.

I am currently NOT seeing any clients on a bi-weekly or monthly basis, due to limitations in my availability with some social media projects I am currently apart of.