Dr. Doorly is not on any managed care or insurance panels (i.e. Medicare, Medicaid, PPO, HMO). Her decision not to bill insurance has not been made lightly. She has put her patient’s health and well-being ahead of the needs of the insurance industry. The cold hard truth is that once you become an insurance-based practice, the insurance industry dictates what you charge, what treatment protocol is acceptable, how long treatment lasts, etc. In other words, the insurance industry dictates your care and not your doctor. One prime example of this is the use of career counseling services. Dr. Doorly is a highly-trained, doctoral-level specialist in this field and she firmly believes that high quality career counseling is best provided by those who have had the most rigorous training. However, most health insurance will not cover career counseling because they have determined it is not a “necessary medical expense.” Therefore, people must either choose to pay out-of-pocket for high quality career services, or obtain services from a less qualified, overcrowded practice with a long waitlist that may or may not be able to provide them with the immediate care and guidance they need.
Dr. Doorly does understand that having to pay cash can be a hardship on her patients. That is why she offers a discount on her standard fees. Many people are used to going to doctors who accept insurance. However, Dr. Doorly finds that the vast majority of those practitioners are very limited in what they are able to do for their patients due to their training and/or the insurance orientation of their practice. As a result, the patient is the one who suffers from the “rotating door” nature of insurance-based mental health care.
This is unacceptable to Dr. Doorly. She wants you well and living a happy, fulfilling life. In the long run, working with Dr. Doorly to regain wellness, make positive changes, or identify fulfilling, meaningful work is the most economical thing you can do. Statistics show very clearly that the out-of-pocket expense for people with insurance is rapidly rising. This is due, in large part, to the fact that people are really not getting the targeted mental health services and/or career counseling they need. Dr. Doorly’s treatment model is to get to the basic cause(s) of your problem(s) using evidence-based treatments proven to work so you won’t need to continue to address the same issue(s) over and over again.