UPDATED: June 23, 2022
A cancelled appointment hurts three people: you, your therapist, and another client who could have potentially used your time slot. Therapy sessions are scheduled in advance and are a time reserved exclusively for our clients.
When a session is cancelled without adequate notice, we are unable to fill this time slot by offering it to another current client, a client on the waitlist, or a client with a clinical emergency. In addition, we are unable to bill your insurance company for sessions that are not kept.
Without a cancellation fee policy in place, your therapist will lose money or the opportunity to schedule another client if you late cancel or do not show up.
Our cancellation policy is this: Clients can cancel or reschedule an appointment anytime, if they provide 24 hours’ notice. If you cancel an appointment with less than 24 hours’ notice, or fail to show up, you will be charged a $100 fee for the appointment.
Some practices have a 48-hour policy. Some even have a 72-hour policy. Ours is 24 hours, and we are firm at 24 hours.
Our cancellation policy in not a penalty or a punishment. Most clients understand this. Very rarely, there will be a client who will feel that he or she is being punished when they are charged a late cancellation fee. We want to make sure that you don’t feel this way, if someday you miss an appointment.
It is likely, if you are in counseling long enough, at some point you might forget about an appointment, or something will come up in your schedule that will result in you missing an appointment. Maybe you’ll need to work late. Maybe you’ll get a sudden onset of the flu. Maybe your kids will have doctor appointments, or your car will break down, or something unavoidable will come up.
We are not upset with clients when they miss an appointment. We know that’s life. In return, our clients understand that scheduling an appointment with one of us is like buying tickets to an event. If you miss the event, it doesn’t matter why you missed it, or even if it was your first time, you can’t turn in your tickets for a refund.
A fee of $100 will be charged when you miss or cancel an appointment without giving 24 hours advance notice. This means that if an appointment is scheduled for 3:00 pm on a Tuesday, notice must be given by 3:00 pm on Monday at the latest. *For Monday appointments, you need to cancel on Friday.
You can cancel your appointment by calling or texting your specific therapist. If you are more than 10 minutes late to your appointment time, it will be treated like a late cancellation. It’s important to remember that insurance will not pay for missed appointments, so you will be responsible for the full $100 fee, not just a copay.
The only time we will waive this fee is in the event of serious or contagious illness or extreme weather or other unavoidable circumstance. If you are unsure, please contact our office for further guidance.
Please understand that therapy should be viewed as any other important medical appointment would be viewed. This cancellation policy is important for our counseling practice because while a medical doctor can see 35 patients in a day, a therapist generally sees a maximum of 6 to 8 clients a day.
We reserve for you a full hour of our time for the session and clinical notes. If a client cancels with less than a full 24-hour notice it is unlikely that we will be able to fill that time slot, and we lose an entire hour from our work schedule.
While it is a time commitment, this is for your personal growth and consistency is key in order to achieve this.
– If you are a weekly client and you miss three scheduled appointments within a three-month time period, the therapeutic relationship may be terminated and appropriate referrals to other practices will be offered.
– If you are a bi-weekly client and you miss two scheduled appointments in a two-month period, the therapeutic relationship may be terminated and appropriate referrals to other practices will be offered.
Clients who are unsure if they can commit to therapy appointments scheduled for them should seek services elsewhere. We will provide referrals, if needed.