Practice Policies

APPOINTMENTS AND CANCELLATIONS Please remember to cancel or reschedule 24 hours in advance. Two or more late cancellations and/ or now shows MAY result in termination by the practice with referral to another provider.

The standard meeting time for psychotherapy is 53 minutes. Initial Assessment appointments typically last  60 minutes. Please plan accordingly to ensure you schedule adequate time for your appointment.  A $70.00 service charge will be charged for any checks returned for any reason to cover fees applied by bank and for special handling.

Payment is due at time of the service and is considered past due 3 days post-service delivery. A 5% late fee will be assessed for past due payments with an additional 5% charged each monthly cycle in which a past due balance remains on the account. The credit card on file will be set to autopay and will draft

immediately following completed services.

Accounts that go beyond 90 days past due are subject to collections. Should an account be sent to collections, an additional 30% will be applied prior to doing so to cover legal costs and costs associated with using a collections agency.

Cancellations and re-scheduled sessions will be subject to a $25* fee if NOT RECEIVED AT LEAST 24 HOURS IN ADVANCE. This is necessary because a time commitment is made to you and is held exclusively for you. If you are late for a session, you may lose some of that session time. If you arrive more than 15 minutes late to session, it will be canceled by the therapist and late cancellation fee applied. *For Medicaid and EAP recipients, (while a late fee will not be applied) two late cancellations or no shows may result in termination (at discretion of the practice) with referral to another provider system.

GOOD FAITH ESTIMATE 

Clients who are self-paying will be responsible for the following fees:

Initial Session/ Assessment: $133.48

Psychotherapy (60 mins): $112.27

If you are unsure of your insurance coverage, please contact them directly prior to services beginning to ensure that you understand your benefits. The practice will estimate your fees in accordance with our contracted rates with your insurance company. Billing inquiries should be directed to billing@innovativecarellc.com ; please allow up to five business days for a response.

SELF PAY CLIENTS: A Good Faith Estimate will be provided in advance of sessions starting in order to be transparent about costs of service for self-pay clients.

TELEPHONE ACCESSIBILITY If you need to contact your therapist between sessions, please leave a message on the practice voicemail. Innovative Care therapists may not be immediately available however someone from the practice will attempt to return your call within 24 hours. The practice phone number is 804-608-6577. If a mental health crisis arises, please call 988 or your local emergency services/ crisis program rather than the practice voicemail.

LEGAL INVOLVEMENT: At this time, Innovative Care LLC elects NOT to participate in any court-involved cases. The practice does not specialize in legal matters. This means, the practice will not provide evaluations, testimony or records for legal proceedings, including custody disputes. Specialized Legal matters, such as custody evaluations, should be handled by professionals specifically trained for those assessments. If you are seeking care through the practice and are involved in any legal proceedings, by proceeding to intake, you are acknowledging and in agreement that you will not at any time request the practice to be involved in legal proceedings; this is a condition of receiving services. Violation of this agreement complicates the therapeutic relationship and therefore will result in termination of services. 

SOCIAL MEDIA AND TELECOMMUNICATION Due to the importance of your confidentiality and our commitment to minimizing risk of dual relationships, our individual clinicians do not accept friend or contact requests from current or former clients on any social networking site (Facebook, Linkedln,

lnstagram, etc.). We 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. The Innovative Care practice has a social media presence and you are welcome to follow us or share our posts; however we will never "invite you" to follow us or tag you, etc.

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION The practice cannot ensure the confidentiality of any form of communication through electronic media, including text messages. If you prefer to communicate via email or text messaging for issues regarding scheduling or cancellations, we will do so. While we may try to

return messages in a timely manner, we cannot guarantee immediate response and request that you do not use these methods of communication to discuss therapeutic content and/or request assistance for emergencies. The client portal is the most secure way to communicate with your therapist and is the practice's preferred method of communication.

Services by electronic means, including but not limited to telephone communication, the Internet, facsimile machines, and e-mail is considered telemedicine by the State of Virginia. Under the Virginia Telemedicine Act of 1996, telemedicine is broadly defined as the use of information technology to deliver medical services and information from one location to another. If you and your therapist chose to use information technology for some or all of your treatment, you need to understand that: (1) You retain the option to withhold or withdraw consent at any time without affecting the right to future care or treatment or risking the loss or withdrawal of any program benefits to which you would otherwise be entitled. (2) All existing confidentiality protections are equally applicable. (3) Your access to all medical information transmitted during a telemedicine consultation is guaranteed, and copies of this information are available for a reasonable fee. (4) Dissemination of any of your identifiable images or information from the telemedicine interaction to researchers or other entities shall not occur without your consent. (5) There are potential risks, consequences, and benefits of telemedicine. Potential benefits include, but are not limited to improved communication capabilities, providing convenient access to up-to-date information, consultations, support, reduced costs, improved quality, change in the conditions of practice, improved access to therapy, better continuity of care, and reduction of lost work time and travel costs. Effective therapy is often facilitated when the therapist gathers within a session or a series of sessions, a multitude of observations, information, and experiences about the client. Therapists may make clinical assessments, diagnosis, and interventions based not only on direct verbal or auditory communications, written reports, and third person consultations, but also from direct visual and olfactory observations, information, and experiences. When using information technology in therapy services, potential risks include, but are not limited to the therapist's inability to make visual and olfactory observations of clinically or therapeutically potentially relevant issues such as: your physical condition including deformities, apparent height and weight, body type, attractiveness relative to social and cultural norms or standards, gait and motor coordination, posture, work speed, any noteworthy mannerism or gestures, physical or medical conditions including bruises or injuries, basic grooming and hygiene including appropriateness of dress, eye contact (including any changes in the previously listed issues), sex, chronological and apparent age, ethnicity, facial and body language, and congruence of language and facial or bodily expression. Potential consequences thus include the therapist not being aware of what he or she would consider important information, that you may not recognize as significant to present verbally the therapist.

MINORS If you are a minor, your parents may be legally entitled to some information about your therapy. Your clinician will discuss with you and your parents what information is appropriate for them to receive and which issues are more appropriate to be maintained as confidential. 

RECORD RELEASE What records the practice releases to the patient and / or Parent / Guardians is at the discretion of the treating provider. If the treating mental health professional believes that releasing records would pose a risk of harm to the patient, access will be denied. NOTE: Psychotherapy notes are not released by the practice to the patient or others under any circumstances as psychotherapy notes are defined by Virginia Code as: "comments, recorded in any medium by a health care provider who is a mental health professional, documenting or analyzing the contents of conversation during a private counseling session with an individual or a group, joint, or family counseling session that are separated from the rest of the individual's health record." A treatment summary that includes dates of services, diagnosis, treatment modalities used, and progress made during treatment may be provided upon request; Fees apply. 

TERMINATION Ending relationships can be difficult. Therefore, it is important to have a termination process in order to achieve some closure. The appropriate length of the termination depends on the length and intensity of the treatment. Your clinician may terminate treatment after appropriate discussion with you and a termination process if it is determined that the psychotherapy is not being effectively used or if you are in default on payment. We will not terminate the therapeutic relationship without first discussing and exploring the reasons and purpose of terminating. If therapy is terminated for any reason or you request another therapist, we will provide you with a list of qualified psychotherapists to treat you. You may also choose someone on your own or from another referral source.

Should you fail to schedule an appointment or respond to outreach efforts for three consecutive weeks, unless other arrangements have been made in advance, for legal and ethical reasons, the professional relationship may be discontinued.