Practice Policies

Cancellations and rescheduling

You must cancel or reschedule your appointment at least 48 hours before your scheduled appointment time using your therapist’s email or phone, which can be found on the staff page. Any cancellations or rescheduled appointments within 48 hours of the appointment will result in a charge for half the session fee. No-shows or cancellations within 24 hours of the scheduled appointment time will be charged at the full session rate.

Do not contact the practice manager, director, or any staff member other than your therapist to cancel or reschedule. Do not use the contact form on the web site for this purpose. Only your therapist can schedule or reschedule their own appointments. If you do not contact your therapist directly to cancel or reschedule, the appointment will be considered a no-show.

These policies help ensure that expectations are clear for both clients and therapists so that sessions can be thoughtfully planned, therapists' schedules remain sustainable, and other clients have the opportunity to access care when openings arise.

Late fees

If you are more than 10 minutes late to an appointment without communicating with your therapist during that time, you will be charged the full session fee and your appointment will be cancelled. Exceptions can be made at the therapist’s sole discretion in true emergencies where notification is impossible. If you join an appointment late and provide notice, you will be charged the full session fee regardless of appointment length.

Unpaid fees

Your fee is due at the time of your appointment. Unless you have made other arrangements in writing with your therapist, you are required to place a payment card on file before your session that will be charged on the day of your appointment. If your card does not have sufficient funds, the charge may be attempted multiple times. Your therapist will not continue to schedule appointments with you while your balance is outstanding unless you have made a payment plan with a clear timeline in writing. Please communicate with your therapist if you are experiencing financial hardship to arrange a payment plan. Unpaid balances may be referred to a collections agency.

Insurance

Our practice does not participate in insurance networks. We are out-of-network with every insurance network, including Medicare and Medicaid. While we try to make therapy affordable by offering need-based sliding scale rates and single-case agreements, we would not be able to cover our overhead and provide our staff with fair pay if we accepted the rates insurance companies offer in-network providers. We believe insurance network participation unethically depresses wages for all healthcare workers.

If you plan to seek out-of-network reimbursement from your health insurance plan, you are responsible for the full fee at the time of your appointment. You will be provided with a superbill to submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. This practice cannot guarantee that your insurance company will reimburse you in part or in full for your session fee. It is your responsibility to learn about your insurance plan's coverage before your appointment.

While our staff will make an effort to inform you accurately about your insurance benefits if requested, we rely on insurance companies to provide us with these details, which means that this information may be incomplete or inaccurate. We cannot guarantee that your insurance company will never reject a claim or reimburse you less than expected.

Your insurance company may request that your therapist share information about your treatment in order to remit payment. Your therapist will share this information at their discretion.

Client location at time of session

The locations where therapists are allowed to practice depends on the states in which the therapist is licensed and the client’s physical location at the time of the session, not on the client’s home address or the therapist’s location. If you anticipate traveling to another U.S. state or outside the U.S. and would like to continue therapy via telehealth while you are there, you must tell your therapist beforehand so that they can determine whether they are legally allowed to treat you there.

Do not show up to your telehealth session while driving a car. Make sure there is no one else in the room during your telehealth session, including children. Your therapist will not continue a telehealth session with a client who is driving or not alone.

Client contact and boundaries

If you need to communicate with your therapist, use their email or phone number, which you can find on the staff page. Your therapist will not answer communications from you outside of their working hours and may not be immediately available for urgent appointments.

If you are experiencing a crisis and need help immediately, please do one of the following:

If your therapist is unavailable and you have a question about payment, scheduling, or other logistical issues, contact practice manager Gemma Barbaro at gbarbaro@triskapsychotherapy.com.

If your therapist sees you in public outside your sessions, they will not acknowledge or greet you unless you first acknowledge them. This is to protect your privacy. Therapists do not accept contact from current or former clients on social networking sites for the same reason.

Families of adult clients

Other than in life-threatening emergencies, therapists do not accept contact from the family members, friends, or workplaces of adult clients. This remains true even if you request that your therapist contact your family members or if a family member is paying for therapy (outside of minimal contact to facilitate payment). Do not ask your therapist to contact your family members, update them about treatment, or coordinate appointments with them. Do not bring family members to your sessions without discussing it with your therapist beforehand.

Families of minor clients

A client 17 years of age or younger is considered a minor. Minors over the age of 13 have the right to healthcare privacy in the state of New York. It is this practice’s policy to extend this right to all minors regardless of age or state of residence. These policies exist to protect the therapeutic alliance, which cannot develop into a trusting relationship if a minor client sees the therapist as the parent’s ally. For this reason, after the therapist collects information during the intake, contact between the therapist and the minor client’s parents or guardians will be brief and limited to discussions of logistical matters, such as insurance or outside referrals.

Therapists will not update family members about the progress of treatment, accept treatment suggestions from family members, engage in treatment-related conversations of any length with family members (even if these conversations do not involve confidential details), or invite family members to sessions unless requested by the minor and clinically appropriate. Minors are responsible for remembering their own appointments, which means that automated reminders will be sent directly to the client and not to any other party. In an emergency, your child’s therapist may contact you to coordinate care, but confidentiality will be maintained and you will not be given details irrelevant to the emergency.

Termination

Your therapist reserves the right to terminate treatment at their discretion. Reasons for termination may include (but are not limited to) failure to participate in therapy, treatment needs outside the scope of their competence, conflict of interest, dual relationship, or lack of payment. Your therapist will provide you with a list of qualified therapists upon request. If you fail to schedule an appointment for three consecutive weeks, unless you and your provider have agreed otherwise, they will consider the therapeutic relationship terminated.