Fees and Insurance

How much does counseling cost?

When you start looking around, you’ll find a wide range of counseling fees in the area. We try to keep our fees mid-range for average fees for the area (typically around $100-$150 per session for a pre-licensed clinician). Typically, highly specialized and very experienced therapists are going to charge more. Newer clinicians who don’t have as much time under their belt or as extensive advanced training will have lower rates than more seasoned clinicians.

What are Pivotal Counseling’s rates?

Pivotal Counseling is a fee-for-service (“cash-pay” or “self-pay”) clinic. We accept cash, check, or debit/credit cards (including FSA/HSA cards).

Session fees vary from clinician to clinician depending on their level of experience and their credentials.

All of our clinicians offer a free, 20-minute consultation. Consultations are a chance to meet the clinician, ask questions, make sure you feel confident, and ensure that the clinician will be a good fit for you all before having to pay for any services.

Our current rates are as follows:

• Clinical Intern Therapists

  • Joseph Noëlliste, BA

    90 Minute Assessment and Intake: $80
    50 Minute Session: $80

• Therapists with Advanced Credentials

  • Ethan Bratt, MS, LMFT, CST
    90 Minute Assessment and Intake: $280
    50 Minute Session: $200
    Currently has a waitlist

  • Danielle DeSalvo, MA, MFTC, LPCC
    90 Minute Assessment and Intake: $220
    50 Minute Session: $140

A good faith estimate noting these charges will be made available to you upon scheduling a paid service or upon request.

Can I use my insurance?

While we are out-of-network (OON), we are absolutely an insurance-friendly practice! We offer two great options for clients to leverage their insurance benefits with us. We find that 70-90% of our clients are eligible for some level of reimbursement! During our consultation process, we can help you verify if you have out-of-network benefits and how much your copay/coinsurance would be.

Option 1: Superbills

You can request we issue you a superbill which will include all of the information you need to directly submit your request for reimbursement to your insurance yourself. Just let your provider know you’d like to receive superbills and we’ll get it all set up for you.

If you would like to take this approach, you can find out if your insurance offers OON benefits by calling them directly. We walk you through what to ask them here: how to ask your insurance about out-of-network coverage.

Option 2: Thrizer

We have partnered with Thrizer to handle the OON process automatically for you. You can do this in one of two ways, depending on what you prefer and how much you want to pay for their service.

Regardless of which option you choose, Thrizer will submit claims towards an unmet OON deductible for free as long as you set this up through us when we start therapy together.

Paying the Full Session Fee: With this option, you would pay the full session fee up front. Thrizer submits your claim on your behalf. When they receive the reimbursement from your insurance, Thrizer deposits it directly into your bank account minus a fee for their services (1% of the session fee).

For example, if the fee for your session is $140 and your OON benefits are 50%, you would initially pay the full $140 for the session. Thrizer would submit the claim to your insurance. When they receive the $70 reimbursement (50% of $140), they would deposit $68.60 to your bank account, the $70 reimbursement minus a $1.40 fee (1% of the $140) to Thrizer for their service.

Paying Only Your Co-Insurance: With this option, you will only have to pay the copay/coinsurance for our OON sessions and a small Thrizer service fee instead of paying the full session fee and then having to wati for reimbursements. Thrizer would then submit the claim on your behalf and your insurance would reimburse Thrizer.

So, for example, if your session fee is $140 and your OON benefits are 50%, you would only have to pay $70 towards the session and Thrizer would float the other $70 until your insurance reimburses Thrizer. If you opt for this, Thrizer charges 5% of the session fee. So you would pay $73, $70 towards the session and then a $3.50 fee (5% of $140) to Thrizer for their service.

Why are we out-of-network?

Of all the questions we get asked about fees and insurance, this is the most common. And for good reason!

There are a number of reasons. They range from the requirement to place a diagnosis on your permanent medical record to privacy of records to insurance companies deciding whether you can receive treatment or not or how much treatment. For more information on this, read through our page on Why Pivotal Counseling Isn’t “In-Network”.

Frequently Asked Questions about
Fees and Insurance