Payment Questions
Can I use my insurance for treatment?
I accept some insurance, including the following:
Blue Cross, including: Personal Help Connection, Managed Care Behavioral Health Network, Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO, Indemnity and Blue Cross PPO.
I also accept Medicare. I see a number of people who have “out of network” benefits for other plans; usually you pay a little more, but you can still see me. I can usually take care of the insurance paperwork for you, and you just pay your part.
If you would like me to see whether your insurance will cover me, let me know; I will ask for some information from you and then I will call them.
My standard fee is $125 per hour.
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here to review the Psychologist - Client Services Agreement & HIPAA Privacy
Information
Why don't you accept more insurance?
I have worked with public and private insurance for years and have come to the conclusion that HMO insurance is a mixed blessing. On one hand, you and your employer pay a lot for it and certainly you may want to use it when you need care. However, managed care companies ask for sensitive clinical information to make their decisions about exactly how much care they will pay, and increasingly they are moving to require “outcome measures,” which involves detailed forms that you and I send them during the course of therapy so that they can monitor how treatment is going (that’s the “managed” part). Any insurance company that is paying for treatment can request your entire chart, although in practice few do. However, it may be that the trade-off in privacy is worth it to you if using your managed care insurance is the only way you can get therapy.
How can I afford therapy?
Here are some things
clients have done to manage the cost:
*If your employer offers a higher level of insurance benefit, and you think you may be in treatment for awhile, you may choose to switch at open enrollment to one that covers my services more fully. I will be happy to help you compare plans and help you figure out what to ask your HR person.
*Take advantage of Flexible Spending Accounts offered by your employer, which will cover co-pays, deductibles, phone sessions or other medically necessary expenses which are not covered by insurance. Whenever you request, I will give you a statement with the information they need, you send it in, and they send you a check which represents money you have had deducted from your paycheck before being taxed on the rest of your paycheck. This can reduce your cost by about 30%.
*If you are seeking treatment because you are the victim of a violent crime, or a survivor impacted by a crime such as the homicide of a family member, you may be eligible for funding through the Victim Compensation and Assistance Division of the Attorney General’s office. You may be eligible if you reported the crime to police within five days (unless there is good cause for delay), you cooperate with law enforcement officials in the investigation and prosecution of the crime, you apply for compensation within three years of the crime, and the expenses are not covered by insurance. See www.ago.state.ma.us or call the Attorney General’s office at (617) 727 4765 for more information.
*If none of these options works for you, we can still figure
out how to contain costs by deciding how often you should come, and for how
many sessions at a time. Sometimes
people come for a few sessions and then come back later if they need to, some
people work on one problem at a time with time off in between, and others come
weekly or biweekly to work on more complicated issues. We will decide
together what makes the most sense clinically and in terms of your time and
your budget. I will not encourage you to come more frequently or for
longer than is likely to provide the most benefit to you, and you can change
your scheduling arrangements as needed.
If I don’t think you will make progress because you can’t come often
enough, we can discuss whether it might be better to see someone who can see
you more often and I will help you find someone.
However we decide to manage payment, I ask that people pay their portion of the fee at each session, which prevents people from building up unmanageable bills and reduces my billing expenses. I can take checks or cash. I also generally charge a half-fee ($62.50) for same-day cancellations, which insurance will not pay for.
