Attendance & Cancellation Policies
Please understand that the below policies are not meant to be punitive but rather are a necessity of maintaining my small business. Therapy sessions are scheduled in advance and are a time reserved exclusively for you or your child and cancelled sessions are difficult to fill even with advanced notice.
Lack of attendance and late cancellations hurt three people:
1. You or your child
2. Your therapist
3. A member of your community in need of mental health support
Regular and consistent attendance is essential to reaching your goals in therapy. Even with the best intentions, it is unlikely that progress will gain momentum without regular appointments. Therefore, three (3) or more cancelled appointments (sickness, late, regular, and no show cancellations) within a 6-month period, OR 2 consecutive cancelled appointments may result in removal from your regular appointment slot or a discharge from services. Any therapist-initiated cancellations will not be counted against attendance.
Please note that this also applies to the summer. If you are planning on extensive travel or disruptions to sessions over the summer, please take this into consideration as it may result in losing your regular appointment slot. If the decision is made to take a break from sessions or decrease session frequency over the summer, your former appointment time cannot be guaranteed for you upon the Fall.
Attendance Policy
All cancellations require a minimum 48 hour notice via email, secure portal messaging, or phone call. All cancellation fees will be automatically billed to the credit card on file. Please note: Insurance companies do not provide reimbursement for cancellation fees.
Definition of a Regular Cancellation
1.) Notice given prior to 48 hours before an appointment. No cancellation fee but does affect attendance.
Definition of a Late Cancellation ($120)
1.) Cancellations made less than 48 hours before a scheduled appointment but prior to the start of the scheduled session time.
Late Cancellation Fee: $120
Definition of a No Call/No Show
1.) Not showing up for a scheduled appointment without appropriate notice (as outlined above) given.
2.) Arriving 15 or more minutes late to a scheduled appointment, which results in the session automatically being considered a cancellation.*
*Please note that if you arrive less than 15 minutes late, your session will still end at the scheduled time and the full session fee still applies.
No Call/No Show Fee: Full session rate
Sickness Cancellations
We all get sick, and sometimes illness comes on quickly and unexpectedly. Sometimes depending on type of illness and severity of symptoms, it’s possible to give advanced notice or pivot to a telehealth session. Sometimes it’s not possible and the priority needs to be rest and recovery. Just as these occurrences of illness negatively impact your plans, they are also unfortunately disruptive to BYTC’s business.
Sickness Cancellation Fee: 24-48 hours notice: $75 fee; Less than 24 hours notice: $100 fee
Free Cancellation
I also recognize that we all have lives to live outside of therapy and that life happens with emergencies and situations that cannot be avoided. Therefore, one “freebie” cancellation is provided for the duration of therapy which you may use no questions asked.
This “freebie” will not count against attendance and will not be charged a late cancellation fee, if one would usually apply based on the criteria above. Note: Freebie cancellations cannot be applied towards No Call/No Shows.
Rescheduling (Ways to Avoid a Late Cancellation Fee)
Anyone wishing to avoid a late cancellation fee or impact on attendance may reschedule their session to another time within the same week as long as the request is made prior to the start of the scheduled session. Please note that there are no guarantees that our scheduling/availability will line up. The more in advance you are able to reach out about rescheduling, the more likely I am to be able to accommodate you.
For parents of minors, if a minor is unable to attend an appointment, you may also switch your child’s session to a telehealth parent session to avoid a late cancellation fee or impact on attendance.
If you would like to reschedule a session in advance, you are welcome to do so by request or self-scheduling in your client portal.