We see patients with a variety of difficulties between the ages of 3 and 60. Minors need to be accompanied by all legal guardians for the initial appointment. If this is not possible, arrangements may need to be made for several initial consultation appointments. Divorced parents sharing custody - please provide copy of court documents explaining custody arrangements and medical decision making power.
Prior to your consultation, it is important that you complete the Registration Form and the Biographical Information Form in as much detail as possible. Much of the information will be readily available to you, but some of it may take an effort to obtain. The information will not only be of use in your consultation, it also should help organize your thinking about your (or your child's) psychiatric history. After completing the forms, make a copy for yourself and mail (or fax) the originals to the office. If there is a question on the form that you do not wish to answer or cannot answer, leave it blank. Once we receive and review the forms we will call you to schedule your office visit. You can expect your appointment to be within two weeks from the time we receive your forms.
The forms are available for download in the Resources section of this site.
Length of Appointments. You can expect the initial visit to last up to 90 minutes. A detailed Biographical Information Form may help to save evaluation time. Follow-up visits vary in length depending on the recommended treatment plan.
Fees. Fees are assessed at $400/hour. For example, a 90 minute initial consultation would cost $600. A 30 minute medication follow-up appointment would cost $200. A sliding scale fee schedule is available for low income patients, based on 2007 federal government guidelines (copy of last year federal tax return submission will be necessary to be considered).
Payments. To make it possible to spend more time on items directly related to medical care, we request that you pay the bill at the time of your visit. If you cannot afford the fee or are not able to make your payment at the time of the consultation, please discuss the issue during the appointment. We will be glad to see you anyway, but we want to avoid the time it takes to send multiple bills. The office accepts all major credit cards.
Insurance. As insurance plans have become more numerous and complex in the past few years, it has become impossible for us to monitor the status of patient claims. Consequently, it is now our policy to have patients fill out and monitor their own insurance forms. The amount of reimbursement from the insurance company will depend upon your policy. We also believe that this arrangement will give you more control over your privacy and treatment decisions. Some insurance companies ask that physicians give patients they insure preferential treatment. Under the preferential treatment plan a patient might be charged a different fee depending on which insurance company the payment is coming from (patients with no insurance might end up paying the highest fee). Many physicians and practices have decided against giving preferential treatment to one or other insurance company - we are one of them. For example, although we do not “participate” in Cigna, we see patients covered by Cigna. The patient is responsible, however, for making his or her own application for reimbursement. Every time a patient leaves the office, we give him or her (sometimes this has to be mailed) a “routing slip” that includes the diagnosis and the services provided. You should attach the routing slip to your insurance reimbursement form for out-of-network providers and send it directly to the insurance company. If questions or problems arise during your application for reimbursement, we will try to help you with them.