Office Policies

We understand that sometimes life can be unpredictable and full of changes. In the event that you need to cancel and reschedule your appointment, we ask that please provide us with at least 2 business days notice of appointment. When your appointment is booked, we set aside that time just for you to allow us to provide you with quality care and deny other patients that time slot, so we politely ask that you let us know 2 business days in advance to allow other patients the ability to receive care during that time. You will be financially responsible for appointments not cancelled or rescheduled with the appropriate notice, although consideration can sometimes be given for circumstances truly beyond your control. Patients who do not cancel their appointment within 2 business days of their appointment, or fail to attend their visit, will be charged a no-show/missed appointment or late cancellation fee. A late cancellation or no-show is considered a Missed Appointment. The Missed Appointment Fee for Medication Management/Psychiatric Services are $250 for Initial Psychiatric Evaluations and $100 for Psychiatric Follow-up Visits.

If our appointment begins late due to your late arrival, the session will end at the time it normally would have ended. This is done so that other patients may stay on schedule throughout the day. If we begin late because the providers are behind schedule, the session will be of its normal duration, to assure that patient concerns receive full and proper attention. If you arrive after the scheduled session has ended, we can sometimes accommodate you, if an already scheduled appointment cancels or no-shows, but this cannot be guaranteed. Otherwise, the visit will count as a no-show.

We will provide every effort to accommodate crisis situations and the need for earlier appointments. However, you may need to check with us on a daily basis for cancellations, if no appointments are immediately available. Likewise, we cannot guarantee immediate rescheduling of missed appointments. If a true psychiatric or medical emergency comes up, we advise you to see emergency services by going to your nearest ER or calling 9-1-1 immediately

Many insurance companies may require a referral for your visit to our practice. Please make sure to contact your insurance company and/or your primary care physician to ensure that you do get a referral (if it is required). Failure to obtain a referral when necessary, may cause your insurance company to deny your claim and you may have to cover the services provided.

Please let us know at the beginning of the session if we need to devote some of our time to discussing or filling out forms or write notes or letters. We advise you to please fill out forms to the best of your ability prior to the session so that we may use our time more efficiently and focused on you. Letters, forms, record reviews, and interactions with outside agencies requiring significant attention outside of scheduled appointment times, will be subject to fees determined on a time for service basis. Please feel free to inquire about fees. This excludes activities deemed by the provider to be clinically essential, such as interacting with other clinicians directly involved in your care, and executing routing duties such as providing refills, filling out routine authorization’s requests, and brief clinically-focused return of patient phone calls.

We provide refills of your medications at the time of your office visit. Please bring your medication list with you to each appointment to ensure quality of service is provided. Please be sure to give us at least 72 hours’ notice on all refill requests. Chronic or long-term medication refills require an office visit before they may be refilled. In other cases, we request that you contact your pharmacy for medication refills. The pharmacy will fax a request to our office with all pertinent information. You are responsible to notify the office at the time of your appointment if you are running out of medication so that we can avoid medication shortages. If you have mail-in series, you are responsible to mail the forms and prescriptions after we fill them out to avoid any confusion. Medication refills must be taken care of during your appointment, under unforeseen circumstances if you run out of medicines; please contact the office during regular business hours. We will be happy to refill your non-controlled medications if you have a scheduled follow-up appointment or will schedule you with the next available provider. Controlled lost/stolen prescriptions may require a police report and will only be refilled if clinically safe. Refills do not guarantee medication coverage, please speak to your pharmacy regarding coverage

In order to further protect patient confidentiality and abide by HIPAA Regulations, Mindful Mental Health Group does not keep official medical records for patients on file. For these reasons, Mindful Mental Health Group is not obligated to release patient medical records or other patient information under any circumstance. In special cases, with approval from provider and administration, where a request for copies of medical records is received, i.e., personal use, continuity of care, disability, etc. – there is a professional fee for the creation of all medical records. Patients must also sign consent forms before medical information can be released to any party. Please note: Unless specifically expressed or mentioned otherwise, encounters with our providers are for the purpose of assessment, treatment planning, and symptom management only and is not intended as evaluations to determine eligibility for Social Security benefits, competency, or legal defense.