Frequently Asked Questions

Therapy is an opportunity to discuss/talk about issues that are important to the client, while having a trained objective person (Therapist) help work through not only the current situation but in dealing with similar situations in the future. Therapy can be about one specific problem, or it can be about multiple. Therapy is a collaborative event, requiring an active role from both the client and the therapist for change to occur.

People see a therapist for a variety of issues including but not limited to stress management for a specific diagnosis, career counseling, educational supports, behavior modification, bettering relationships, providing a referral to medication management, etc. Sometimes an event occurs that causes an individual to seek out help, while for others, they may attend therapy because it provides a trained objective person to help them work through some issues they may have been struggling with for years.  Counseling can be beneficial because a client may feel a sense of control in their life and have the tools to be able to make better decisions or changes in their life.
 
Our practice has therapists who are in-network with several commercial and non-commercial insurances. Addiitonally, GHDC is sometimes able to work with out-of-network benefits, wher many insurance policies offer partial reimbursement to see an out-of-network therapist. Please refer to our billing page for more information on the billing process with insurance.
This service is in process, but developement has been slowed by the mental health crisis and there being a shortage of prescribers. Psychotropic medication is prescribed by Psychiatrists and Psychiatric Mental HEalth Nurse Practitioners, the designations are MD and PMHNP respectively. At the present time, our staff are familiar with medications and may have recommendaitons for you to discuss with your prescriber based on your diagnosis and presentation in counseling; however, we are not able to give the final determination of what medications are appropriate for your situations at the present time. While we are in the process of building our medication management team, we do have trusted providers who we often refer to. Additionally, we will communicate with medication prescribers if you request us to do so in order to help them to better assist you.
Confidentiality is one of the most important components in therapy, as successful therapy requires a high degree of trust. With few exceptions, the highly sensitive material that is discussed between you and your therapist will not be shared with anyone else without your permission. For example, your therapist may share information with someone on your healthcare team (your Physician, Naturopath, Attorney), but by law will only be allowed to release this information after obtaining your consent. In addition, therapists are legally mandated to make certain disclosures in cases where there is suspicion of harm to oneself, harm to others, or child abuse. All such disclosures will be discussed with you in advance, where appropriate to do so.

While we understand that court  can be one of the most stressful and difficult undertakings in someone’s life, we  do not appear in court on your or your dependent’s behalf without a formal subpoena. Additionally, we rarely recommend bringing a therapist to court, as this puts extreme stress on the therapeutic relationship and confidentiality. In the courtroom, counselors must answer all questions honestly and cannot favor your side of a case. Opposing attorneys may be skilled at asking questions in a way that force counselors to paint individuals favorably, unfavorably, or in a way that is discreditiny to the client. This can often be extremely damaging to the therapeutic relationship and ultimately our client, and most court appearances  end the therapeutic relationship.

If GHDC is subpoenaed to court, then our agency has specific fees that we are required to charge as part of our agency billing systems, and no insurance will cover those costs. In some cases, a counselor may be called to appear in court, only to be sent away for a common reason. Under these circumstances, the client would still be required to pay the full amount for the counselor’s attendance and services. 

Letters for court are approached with extreme caution. GHDC will consider whether a letter will help you and can provide letters if absolutely necessary. However, letters will always be written directly to the patient, and will provide basic information about outcomes measures and treatment recommendations that are already known to/available to the client. Additionally, a fee will be issued, where appropriate, for time spent in the development of letters in this form. Again, GHDC understands that having to go through any legal battle is exceptionally stressful. We wantbe of help, while also protecting our goals of maintianing the therpaeutic relationship and providing support in a sustainable fashion. 

Um…. maybe? Emotional support animals can be an amazing form of therapeutic support; however, GHDC has extensive rules and regulations for recommending them in the course of treatment. Thinking about ESAs from an accomodation standpoint, our organizaiton assesses information about how long a person has been in treatment, whether they have tried more traditional forms of symptoms management, severity of symptoms, whether their housing situation is appropriate for an ESA, what form of ESA would be appropriate given various factors, etc. 

What clients should know about the ESA recommendation process is that the service can not and should not be used to bypass appropriate housing fees for having a pet on-site, and we will only consider writing an ESA letter for individuals who we have been counseling for a 6-month period with minimal issues in the coordiantion and implementations of care. Additionally, the recommendation for an ESA may come with a large disclosure of protected health information that could open the individual up to more harm if the diclosure of information is not done based on medical necessity. 

Letters are placed after a therapist’s name to indicate their various credentials. Most, if not all, credentials are regulated by a supervising organization. Credentials may include, but are not limited to, most recent degree earned, licensure status, professional certifications, and other specialities that the the counselor has earned. 

The length of therapy varies based on a range of factors, including prognosis per diagnosis, length that the mental health problems have gone non, signs of multi-systems involvement, etc. GHDC will always base its recommendations for treatment off medical necessity, and our organization will discuss transition and discharge with you from the start of services so that there are no surprises. That said, our organization usually recommends 6 to 12 months of counseling per individual, unless a brief therapy, solution-focused, or referral-out model has been indicated for short-term problem resolution. 

Yes! GHDC prides itself on having a model for psychotherapy that is rooted in care coordiantion and high fidelity wraparound. What a pyshotherapist can due within insurance billing paramaters may be limited, but the staff of GHDC will always do their bestt to connect with and coordiante services for best outcomes in your development. Care coordination may include, but is not limited to, one-to-one conversations with a provider, time spent developing recommendation letters for your treatment team, in school advocacy at IEP meetings, and, occasionally the organization and coordiantion of multidisciplinary treatment team meetings for the individual/family’s success.

GHDC holds our counselors under supervision to the same standards as licensed professional counselors. Your counselor will be trained and in training to provide services that are consistenet with the Joint Commission Standards of care, as well as the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics. Counselors are often supervised at several levels, including each provider having been registered with the Board of Counseling as a mid-level provider in training. 

For billing insurance, all claims will appear under the agency supervisor(s), as per policies and regulations for supervisory billing in behavioral health services. Throught the experience of working with supervisees, clients should always be made aware of the supervisor’s contact information, and they should reach out to send along positives and concerns that they may be experienceing in services. 

At the first appointment clinets will have an opportunity to ask questions about their intake forms, and can complete any missed steps in the intake process. Additionally, clients will work with the therapist on collecting background information, observations, and other components for builiding the initial diagnosis and treatment recommendations. Besides the administrative tasks of the first session, your counselor will als work to connect with you, building a relationship that carries the provision of treatment.

Session lengths vary from 30 minutes up to 2 two hours for some. In many cases, GHDC recommends and prefers 55 minute sessions across all of our service types. The additional length of service, when compared with the use of 45-minute sessions, allows our clinicians additional time to complete outcomes measures, treatment plans, and other administrative tasks which would take away from rapport building and time spent discussing recent conflict and concerns if these things were completed in a shorter session.

The cost of sessions varies by a number of factors, including agency rates, contracted rates per insurance, discount programs that the agency may be running, and the lengths of sessions. For detailed informaiton on these topics, we encourage all of our clients and potential clients to look at our billing page for up to date information.
You and a consultant or therapist will discuss any issues that you are currently looking to work on. This is also a good opportunity for you to ask additional questions that you may have about our practice. At the end of the consultation, you and the consultant will decide what the next step will be with regards to therapy and service linkage.
Our cancellation policy requires 48 hour notice of cancellation or rescheduling. Cancellation with less than 48 hours notice requires payment of a $95 late fee. If you are unable to attend your session in person, you can always do it via phone or video.
Our therapists offer psychotherapy by Microsoft Teams, Doxy.me, Kareo, or by other HIPAA approved platform for telehealth. Unless a payment source, such as your insurance company, decides otherwise, video session will be billed to you at a rate that is equal to what GHDC charges for in-person counseling sessions.

Mandated reporting events are situations in which the counselor is forced to disclose protected health information, often to preven the harm of person. Mandated reporting does not necessarily include situations like chronic substance abuse, consenting relaitonship of a similar age, truancy that is being managed by behavioral health services, or other common issues. However, counselors are required to disclose protected helath information under mandated reporting laws when a statement or situation arrises which indactes that someone may be at risk for harm.

In mandated reporting situations GHDC will attempt to only release sufficient information to address the risk for harm. Additionally, if appropriate, GHDC will work to make the mandated report with you as a member of the process so that you are aware of what is being stated and what may be likely to happen from the report. Lastly, GHDC will support clients after a mandated report is made by assisting them in resolving the situations leading up to the report of concern. 

GHDC can bill for some crisis services, but we do not provide formal crisis services as a program model. In many cases, individuals who work with a GHDC clinician will have stup a safety plan that specifies what actions should be taken in the event of a crisis. Depending on the counselors schedule, this safety plan may include some after hours supports; however, 24 hour supports and crisis support sessions are only done in rare instances. For manageable crisis situations the majority of our pateints reach out by phone or email to schedule an emergency session for an upcoming business day. For unmanageable crisis situations, clients are encouraged to utilize their agency safety plan and/or contact 911 for immediate assistance.