Clients are informed of this appointment policy in their intake form and again in appointment reminders. They will receive a text message 48 hours prior to their appointment and an email at 8am the day before, both of which reminds them of their appointment. While I endeavour to remind clients of their appointments through these reminders, these should not be relied upon and it is their responsibility to remember appointments they have made.

If for some reason you need to cancel or reschedule your appointment,

please inform me prior to 9.00 am the day before your appointment (by calling, texting or email)

Otherwise you will incur a cancellation fee that is the regular session fee.*

Aim

The aim of this policy is to minimise late cancellations, late rescheduled and missed appointments so that other clients do not miss out on the opportunity to access therapy and I can reduce the preparation time and income loss caused by late changes.

Policy Rationale

Sometimes there are good reasons for cancelling or rescheduling appointments.  However, unlike brief medical appointments, it is impracticable to fill a mental health appointment that runs for 50 minutes at short notice. If several clients are late in cancelling, or reschedule or miss their appointments in one day, then I lose a large amount of my income. Imagine if a salaried employee was told they would only receive half of their salary for that day? If you consider the situation in these terms, as well as the overhead costs associated with private practice, then you can understand why I must charge a cancellation fee for late cancellations and late rescheduled appointments and missed appointments.

My appointment policy is based on the same rationale as many other industries, one example being the airline industry, where you pay for your seat whether you arrive at the airport or not. Given that the time has been set aside for you, if you do not use it, then it is unlikely at short notice it can be used by anyone else.  I trust you will agree that this is a fair and reasonable policy and I thank you for your understanding.

A late cancellation, late rescheduled appointment or failure to attend your appointment is a loss to three people:

  1. The client who is delaying their therapy progress
  2. Another client who has been sitting on the waiting list to see me urgently but cannot organise other things at such late notice
  3. Arron as the mental health social worker who spent time preparing for the session, set aside the time in my calendar and lost income.

Please, therefore, ensure that you attend your appointments!

Appropriate notice

So that I have ample time to fill your spot I require cancellations before 9am the day before your appointment. You can give me notice of cancellations via text, phone or email. If by phone you are welcome to leave a message outside of business hours if it is before the cancellation deadline of 9am the previous day.

* Specific Funding Differences and fees

Cancellation and no-show fees differ slightly for each funding stream as stipulated below.

Privately Funded: Clients will be charged 100% their usual fee.

Medicare: Medicare is not applicable to cancellation fees. Therefore 100% of a clients usual fee will be charged and will not be eligible for a rebate. If clients are typically bulk billed they will be privately charged 100% of the bulk bill rate.

Workcover/Motor Vehicle Accident claimants: Most insurers do not cover the fee of a cancelled appointment, therefore clients will be privately charged a 100% fee if their insurer does not cover cancelled appointments.

Victims Services claimants: Victims services clients are eligible to up to 2 no-shows. I will lodge this as a ‘no show’ with victims services. If these get used up then I reserve the right to conclude our business together as further fees are not covered by victims services.

Sickness

I understand that you cannot know when you will get sick, but I offer online or telephone sessions so you can still attend the session from the comfort of your home if need be.

(The Office of Fair Trading states that a business is within its rights to charge a cancellation or “no-show” fee for appointments, so long as this has been communicated to a new patient or customer before making the appointment.)