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Practice policies

REFERRALS:

Self-referrals:

The practice accepts self-referrals, simply contact our office directly and our Office Administrator will ask you to briefly outline your reasons for wanting to use our services to ensure that we can help you and will collect basic information to arrange an initial intake appointment with the appropriate practitioner.

Referrals from Health Professionals:

You can be referred to our practice by your family physician, psychiatrist or other relevant health professional. Simply ask your referrer to send us a letter, fax or email which includes your contact details and a brief outline of your circumstances.

Upon receipt of referral, client contact will be attempted within 2 weeks.

Wait List:

Depending on the availability of each practitioner, new referrals may need to be placed on a wait list. When collecting the referral information, our office will advise you of the approximate wait time to schedule your first appointment. Although we do try our best to minimize wait time, there is no guarantee that you will be able to get an appointment sooner than the time frame specified. As availability occurs due to cancellations, our office will contact you to see if you are available.

THERAPY SESSIONS:

The initial intake consultation appointment is approximately 90 minutes in length to allow for a proper assessment and discussion of your need. It is also an opportunity for us to mutually determine if the relationship seems to be a good fit.

Individual sessions are for 60 minutes == 50 minutes session time plus 10 minutes allotted for documentation.

It is the responsibility of the client to arrive on time for their appointment. Therefore, it is important to give yourself enough time to arrive. Late arrival sessions will still end at the previously specified time and client will be charge for the full session.

Given the nature of mental health services, there may be times when sessions run over the allotted time. Should the client remain in session past the specified time, or should the client require more time, charges will be assessed for this additional time.

FEES:

The fees are in accordance with guidelines set by the Ontario Psychological Association (OPA). Our consultation fees are as follows:

  • $250 per 1 hour session with clinical psychologist
  • $175 per 1 hour session with social worker/therapist

The Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) does not cover the cost of psychological services provided by registered psychologists and social workers/therapists.

Most extended health insurance plans will cover part or all of your costs for psychological services. It is the responsibility of the client to check with their insurance provider as to the extend and limitations of their coverage. We, at Charette Psychology, are NOT responsible for your insurance claims or reimbursements, and ask that you direct any insurance inquiries to your insurance company.

Payment for services is due at the end of each session, and a receipt suitable for insurance and tax purposes will be issued when payment is received. Additional charges may apply for completion of documents such as letters, forms, additional reports and payment is the responsibility of the client.

Forms of payment accepted: Cash, Cheque, E-transfer, Interac (Debit), Credit Card (Visa, Master Card)

CANCELLATION POLICY:

Regular attendance is important to benefit from psychological services. Goals are not likely to be reach without consistent attendance. Your session is time set aside for you and without enough notice we cannot offer this time to someone else.

If you must cancel or reschedule your appointment, we require 48 business hours notice in order to avoid a cancellation fee. Monday appointments must be cancelled by 12pm the previous Thursday.

Cancellation can be submitted by calling our office and/or leaving a message on our answering machine at (705) 222-4456, or via email at info@charettepsychology.com.

Failure to provide such notice and for missed appointments, a cancellation fee of the full hourly rate will be charged.

When there is a pattern of not attending or cancelling appointments, we will review this with you.

INCLEMENT WEATHER POLICY:

We do not accept bad weather as a legitimate reason to cancel in-person appointments. In this instance, if you are unable to travel or uncomfortable driving due to weather conditions, your therapist will conduct your session either via phone or video conferencing.

EMERGENCIES & CRISIS:

As we are a private practice we do not deal with walk-ins and emergency/crisis situations.

If your situation is urgent and you are not able to wait for your next scheduled appointment, the following services are available for immediate help:

  • Contact your family physician
  • Attend the nearest emergency room
  • Contact Mobile Crisis Team, City of Greater Sudbury at (705) 675-4760 (24 hour hotline)

CONFIDENTIALITY POLICY:

At Charette Psychology, the protections of your privacy is of utmost importance. We abide by the legislation, standards of practice, and ethics of our profession concerning confidentiality.

Information you share with your practitioner is kept strictly confidential and we maintain sensitive files which are kept in securely locked areas. In the course of business, secretarial services may become aware of some elements of your case in the process of file preparation, conducting phone intakes, and in booking appointments.

Should it be necessary to coordinate your care with another party such as your family physician, your written consent must be obtained first.

It is important to note that there are a few situations which may occur where we are required to break confidentiality without need for your consent. These situations are unusual in our practice but can occur:

  • If we suspect that a client is going to harm him/herself or someone else reports potential harm to self or others, then we are legally obligated to contact the appropriate authority (e.g, the police)
  • If a client discloses suspected current abuse/neglect of a child then we are legally obligated to contact the appropriate authority (e.g. Children’s Aid Society or the police)
  • If a client reports sexually inappropriate behaviour by a regulated health professional then we are legally obligated to contact the appropriate authority (e.g. professional’s regulatory body or the police)
  • If we learn of any kind of abuse(physical/mental/emotional/financial) taking place in either a retirement facility of long-term care facility – NOT limited to elders – report goes to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
  • If the courts subpoena our clinical records
  • As of 2018, we are not mandated to report suspected risk of your age 16/17 but we are protected in doing so if we have concerns; this can help a youth gain access to services otherwise unavailable, but is voluntary.

There are certain situations where we are permitted or required to disclose information without either your consent or authorization:

  • If your treatment is being requested and paid for by a third party (for example, WSIB, Insurance) copies of assessment and progress reports are submitted. Some of the information you choose to share with your practitioner may need to be part of the reports.
Confidentiality & Family Work:

In most cases, when working with families, the therapist will meet at least once with each person individually at the start of treatment. In family therapy, confidentiality is more complex given that the family is the client.

The rules for confidentiality in family therapy are as follows:

  • The therapist will maintain the same standards of confidentiality and privacy as in individual therapy when the therapist contacts anyone outside the family.
  • The therapist will keep confidences from other family members as long as they do not conflict with the law, do not place the therapist is a position of being deceitful with a family member, or the therapist do not think they are inappropriate therapeutically. However, it must also be understood that the therapist cannot guarantee the maintenance of confidences between family members and there is always a small but real possibility that a confidence will be accidentally revealed to another family member. There are also occasions when the therapist may advise that a confidence be revealed or may set a time frame in which one member must voluntarily reveal information that was talked about individually.
  • Our therapists will not be involved, in any capacity, in custody or access assessments unless the courts directly subpoena this information.
  • In regards to the Clinical Records involving a couple or family members, it is important to know that anyone who is a client and attended a session(s) jointly may have access to a complete copy of the file. This means that in the therapist chart notes, information about each person involved in the therapy may be available to the other(s) without further consent. If an “outside” third party wishes to access the file, signatures of all family members involved will be required in order to release the requested information. Certain exceptions to these confidentiality and access provisions may be required by law.

PRIVACY POLICY:

At Charette Psychology we respect the privacy of personal information and value its importance.  We are committed to collecting, using and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the services we provide.  We are open and transparent as to how we handle personal information.  This document describes our privacy policies.

What is Personal Information:

Personal information is information about an identifiable individual.  Personal information includes information that relates to:  an individual’s personal characteristics (e.g., gender, age, home address or telephone number, education and training, income, ethnic background, family circumstances); health (e.g., health history, health conditions, health services received); or, activities and views (e.g., occupation/profession, religion, politics, ideas and concerns expressed by an individual).  Personal information is different from business information (e.g., an individual’s business address and telephone number), which is not protected by privacy legislation.

Who We are:

Charette Psychology includes, at the time of writing, two psychologists, a social worker and an office administrator.  Both psychologists are independently licensed with the College of Psychologists of Ontario and the social worker is licensed through her professional association. 

Our Primary Purposes for Collecting Personal Information Are Summarized Below:

At Charette Psychology, we collect, use and disclose personal information only in order to provide psychological services to our clients.  For example, we collect information about a client’s health history, including their family history, physical condition and function and social situation in order to help us assess what their mental health needs are, to advise them of their options and then to provide the psychological services they choose to have.

An additional primary purpose is to obtain information about baseline and ongoing psychological / mental health functioning.  This allows for the monitoring of treatment progress and the identification of changes that occur over time.  With this information clients and their therapist can work together to develop the approaches necessary to address their needs.

In some situations, the primary purpose of collecting personal information would be to conduct an assessment in order to provide a professional opinion about the individual’s psychological functioning.  With the client’s consent, the clinical findings would be reported to the appropriate person or agency.  Examples of this could be an insurance company, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, community practitioner, and family doctor.

How Consent Will Be Obtained:

It would be rare for us to collect or disclose personal information without the client’s expressed consent, but this might occur in an emergency (in this case the client would be notified in writing as soon as possible) or if we believe the client would consent if asked and it is impractical to obtain consent(e.g., a family member passing a message on from our client and we have no reason to believe that the message is not genuine).

About Members of the General Public:

For members of the general public, our primary purposes for collecting personal information (e.g., contact number) are to make them aware of the range of psychological services available in our clinic and to direct them to the appropriate practitioner.

On our website we only collect, with the exception of cookies, the personal information you provide and only use that information for the purpose you gave it to us (e.g., to respond to your email message).  Cookies are only used to help you navigate our website and are not used to monitor you.

Some Additional Reasons Why We Collect Personal Information:
  • To invoice clients for services that were not paid for at the time, to process credit card payments or to collect unpaid accounts.
  • Psychologists in supervised or autonomous practice are regulated by the College of Psychologists of Ontario who may inspect our records and interview our psychologists as a part of their regulatory activities in the public’s best interests. The College of Psychologists of Ontario has its own strict privacy obligations.
  • The cost of some services provided by the organization to clients is paid for by third parties (e.g., private insurance, WSIB, automobile insurance, First Nations & Inuit Health Branch, Veterans Affairs, CUPE). These third-party payers often have your consent or legislative authority to direct us to collect and disclose to them certain information in order to demonstrate client entitlement to this funding.
Protecting Personal Information:

We understand the importance of protecting personal information.  For that reason, we have taken the following steps:

  • Paper information is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area.
  • Electronic Hardware is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area at all times. Encryption software and passwords are used on computers.
  • Paper information is transmitted through sealed, addressed envelopes by reputable couriers or Canada Post.
  • Electronic information is transmitted through a dedicated line only to people and agencies that have a privacy policy.
  • Facsimile transmissions have a cover page which contains warnings and appropriate steps to be taken if the transmission is received in error.
  • All members of Charette Psychology are trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.
Limits to Protection of Private Information:

Limits to the protection of private information include:  legally required disclosure to the Children’s Aid Society, The College of Psychologist of Ontario and Court orders to release information, search warrants for a file in a criminal or a legal case, subpoenas, sexual abuse of a patient to the regulatory body of the regulated health care provider and legally required disclosure to the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority and the Director of long-term care facilities.

Retention and Destruction of Personal Information:

We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure that we can answer any question you might have about the services provided and for our own accountability to external regulatory bodies.

  • Clients or other individuals we deal with may have questions about our services after they have been received. We also provide ongoing services for may of our clients over a period of months or years for which our previous records are helpful.  We retain our client information for a minimum of ten years after the last contact to enable us to respond to those questions and provide these services.  The College of Psychologists of Ontario also requires us to retain our client records.  For clients who are seen before the age of 18, records are retained for ten years following their 18th
  • We destroy electronic information by deleting it and, when the hardware is replaced or discarded, we ensure that the hard drive is physically destroyed.
  • We destroy paper files containing personal information by shredding.
You Can Look At Your Information:

With only a few exceptions, you have the right to see what personal information we hold about you.  We can help you identify what records we may have about you.  We will also try to help you understand any information you do not understand (e.g., abbreviations, technical language, etc.).  We may need to confirm your identity, if we do not know you, before providing you with this access.  We reserve the right to charge a fee for such requests.  We may ask you to put your request in writing.  If we cannot give you access, we will tell you within 30 days if at all possible and tell you the reason, as best we can, as to why we cannot give you access.

If you believe there is a mistake in your personal information, you have the right to ask for it to be corrected.  This applies to factual information and not to any professional opinions we may have formed.  We may ask you to provide documentation that our files are wrong.  Where we agree that we made a mistake, we will make the correction and notify anyone to whom we sent this information.  If we do not agree that we have made a mistake, we will still agree to include in our file a brief statement from you on the point and we will forward that statement to anyone else who received the earlier information.

Do You Have Any Questions?

Our Information Officer is Caroline Charette and she will attempt to answer any questions or concerns you might have.

She can be reached at :

Charette Psychology
469 Bouchard Street, Suite 228
Sudbury  ON  P3E 2K8
(705) 222-4456

If you wish to make a formal complaint about our privacy practices, you may make it in writing to our Information Officer.  She will acknowledge receipt of your complaint, ensure that it is investigated promptly, and that you are provided with a formal written decision with reasons.

If you have a concern about the professionalism or competence of our services or the mental of physical capacity of any of our professional staff, we would ask you to discuss those concerns with us.  However, if we cannot satisfy your concerns, you are entitled to voice your concerns to our regulatory body:

The College of Psychologists of Ontario
110 Eglinton Avenue West, Suite 500
Toronto  ON  M4R 1A3
Phone:  (416) 961-8817  /  Fax:  (416) 961-2635
www.cpo.on.ca          

This policy is made under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

For more general inquiries, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Canada oversees the administration of the privacy legislation in the private sector.  The Commissioner also acts as a kind of ombudsman for privacy disputes.  The Information and Privacy Commissioner can be reached at:

30 Victoria Street
Gatineau  QC  K1A 1H3
Phone:  (819) 994-5444 or 1-800-282-1376  /  Fax:  (819) 994-5424  /  TTY (819) 994-6591
www.priv.gc.ca