| How We Help | |
Getting Started Patient Satisfaction Educational Support Our Process |
| How We Help
Getting Started 1. Intake Phone Call A 15-20 minute phone call with an Affinity Center therapist is typically the first step of the process for a new patient. This phone call is free of charge and is intended to review the individual's questions and to determine if a consultation appointment may be helpful. 2. Clinical Consultation A 75 minute session with an Affinity Center therapist is the beginning of the diagnostic and/or treatment process. This appointment focuses on getting to know the individual and determining the most helpful next step. For example, is a comprehensive evaluation indicated? Would treatment likely benefit the individual? 3. Comprehensive Team Evaluation If an evaluation is recommended after the initial consultation appointment, an evaluation plan is developed with the Affinity Center therapist to individualize the evaluation. Components of the evaluation may include: psychological and/or cognitive and educational testing, a speech/language assessment, a comprehensive health review, and a session with one of the Affinity Center physicians. Following the assessment, the Affinity team collaborates to review the diagnostic information, impressions, and treatment recommendations. This information is then shared with the patient in a treatment planning session. 4. An Individualized treatment approach may include the following:
Patient Satisfaction You can call The Affinity Center to discuss whether or not we are best suited to meet your needs. Referrals to The Affinity Center may also come from a primary care physician or another professional healthcare provider. We would like to hear from you and want to spend time with every individual on the phone, prior to any evaluation or treatment begins. We are very open and specific about our services, including the cost. Patients will receive all information that they may need to make an informed decision about visiting or being treated by The Affinity Center. We know cost is always an important concern. Insurance may reimburse our patients for some of what we do, but we planned the Center with the self-paying consumer in mind. Our services are designed to be cost-effective. The Affinity Center encourages ongoing care with primary care physicians and other complimentary therapeutic modalities. We are a speciality clinic and, as such, we expect to work closely with referring professionals and other important individuals in the patient's life.
Educational Support This can mean a lot of things, depending on your point of view. For a parent, it can mean finding effective tutors, discovering how to motivate a child that feels defeated when it comes to their academic life, managing a child's schedule, implementing new study strategies, or beginning the college search. At The Affinity Center, you'll find that whatever educational support means to you, we'll find a way to provide it. For a student, it can mean making academic struggles easier, helping manage test anxiety, and negotiating what constitutes a "neat" workspace. It could also mean assisting a student with the overwhelming task of starting a college search--especially when deadlines, finances, and special needs enter the picture. For a teacher, it can mean helping to develop study strategies for a student, as well as being a useful liaison with an overwhelmed family. --Educational Consulting At The Affinity Center, you have a team of people working to approach your or your student's educational needs in a holistic manner. Our team is dedicated to helping to meet the educational concerns of every student, no matter what their age or ability level. At Affinity, we often work as a liaison between students (and their families) and the teachers and schools to meet the student's individual learning needs. We can observe students in the classroom, if there is a need, to help determine strategies the student may use to perform better with that particular teacher/class. We can also work with the teachers to help them better understand a student's particular struggles within their classroom and suggest ways for everyone to work as a team, with the ultimate goal of improving academic performance and helping the student feel competent and successful. As part of consulting around education, the clinical staff at Affinity might visit in the student's home, to gain a better understanding of the student's workspace and study style. We focus on helping all students, children, adolescents, or adults, examine their organizational and time management skills, to foster success and self-sufficiency in their lives.
--Educational Coaching Do you or your student list any of these particular challenges as roadblocks to your success?
Our team often "coaches" or partners with students and/or their families, helping them to clarify what they want to accomplish and the problems they experience along the way. We want to help students from feeling alone, helping each one to discover his or her strengths and providing the resources, strategies, and support he or she may need--all while demonstrating how to become accountable so that the student can experience new and better results. Like a good teacher or sports coach, Affinity helps students develop their self-advocacy skills by building their self-awareness. We help them explore different learning styles, study routines, writing methods, and other skills that will help to overcome the roadblocks listed above. And, like a good motivator, we work with students to develop action plans that focus on follow-through and completion. This requires hard work and patience, as the "team" works together to overcome distractions, stressors, unproductive habits, and disabling attitudes. Coaching works with students because it is a collaborative process that works from their strengths. A coach is each student's complete ally, bringing out one's best and opening doors for all the possibilities in one's life.
Our Process Privacy Policy THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL AND MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU OR YOUR CHILD MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. We have a legal duty to safeguard and maintain the privacy of our clients' personal health information (called "protected health information" [PHI]) and to provide you with this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices, with respect to PHI. I. Uses and Disclosures of your Protected Health Information Uses and disclosure for treatment. We will use and disclose your PHI as necessary for your treatment. For instance, a) our treatment team may discuss you to plan your treatment, and b) we will send updates to your primary care physician following your appointments with any of our physicians. Uses and disclosure for payment. We may communicate with your health insurer if prior authorization for services or medication is required. Uses and disclosures for health care operations. We may use your PHI as necessary for purposes of improving clinical treatment and care of our clients.
II. Uses and Disclosures Requiring Authorization In instances when we are asked to provide information for purposes outside of those listed above, we will obtain an authorization (written permission) from you before releasing this information. We must also obtain a special authorization from you before releasing psychotherapy notes (which are those notes we may make about conversations during sessions which we keep distinct from the rest of your medical record). Those notes are given a greater degree of protection than PHI. You have the right to revoke an authorization in writing unless we have taken any action in reliance on that authorization.
III. Uses and Disclosures with Neither Consent nor Authorization We may use or disclose PHI without your consent or authorization in the following circumstances: Child Abuse: If, in our professional capacity, we know or suspect that a child under age 18 or a mentally retarded, developmentally disabled, or physically impaired child under age 21 has suffered or faces a threat of suffering any physical or mental wound, injury, disability, or condition of a nature that reasonably indicates abuse or neglect, we are required by law to immediately report that knowledge or suspicion to the county Department of Job and Family Services. Adult and Domestic Abuse: If we have reasonable cause to believe that an adult is being abused, neglected, or exploited, or is in a condition that is the result of abuse, neglect, or exploitation, we are required by law to immediately report such belief to the county Department of Job and Family Services. Judicial or Administrative Proceedings: If you are involved in a court proceeding and a request is made for information about your evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment and the records thereof, such information is privileged under state law and we will not release it without written authorization from you or your personal or legally-appointed representative, or court-order. The privilege does not apply when you are being evaluated for a third-party or wehre the evaluation is court-ordered. You will be informed in advance if this is the case. Serious Threat to Health or Safety: If we believe that you pose a clear and substantial risk of imminent serious harm to yourself or another person, we may disclose your relevant confidential information to public authorities, the potential victim, other professionals, and/or your family in order to protect against such harm. If you communicate to us an explicit threat of inflicting imminent and serious physical harm or causing the death of one or more clearly identifiable victims, and we believe you have the intent or ability to carry out the threat, then we are required by law to take one or more of the following actions in a timely manner: 1) take steps to hospitalize you on an emergency basis, 2) establish and undertake a treatment plan calculated to eliminate the possibility that you will carry out the threat, and initiate arrangements for a second opinion risk assessment with another mental health professional, 3) communicate to a law enforcement agency and, if feasible, to the potential victim(s), or victim's parent or guardian if a minor, all of the following information: a) the nature of the threat, b) your identity, and c) the identity of any potential victim.
IV. Your Rights Regarding PHI and Treatment Provider Duties On your request, we will discuss with you the details of any of these rights. Access to your PHI. You have the right to receive a copy and/or inspect your treatment record unless excluded by law. We may deny your access to PHI under certain circumstances, but in some cases, you may have this decision reviewed. Amendments to your PHI. You have the right to request in writing that the PHI we maintain about you be amended. We may deny your request. Accounting for disclosures of your PHI. You have the right to receive an accounting of disclosures of PHI for which you have neither provided consent nor authorization. Requesting restrictions. You have the right to request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of your PHI. However, we are not required to agree to a restriction you request. Receiving confidential communications. You have the right to request and receive confidential communications of PHI by alternative means and at alternative locations. (For example, you may not want a family memter to know that you are seeing us, and, upon your request, we will send correspondence to another address.) Paper copy. You have the right to obtain a paper copy of this Notice from us upon request, even if you have agreed to receive the Notice electronically.
Treatment Provider Duties: We reserve the right to change this Notice and to make the new Notice effective for all PHI that we maintain. We will provide you with a revised Notice at your next scheduled appointment in the case changes are made. If we revise our policies and procedures, you may receive a copy of the new Notice at our office, by requesting that a copy be mailed to you, or viewing it on our website.
V. Complaints If you are concerned that we have violated your privacy rights, or you disagree with a decision we made about access to your records, you may contact Dr. Chris Mayhall at (513) 984-1000. You may also send a written complaint to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Chris Mayhall can provide you with the appropriate address upon request. |
