before your initial appointment. . .

• Please take some time to fill out the intake form, and sign off on the confidentiality and consent to treatment forms.

• Carefully review policies and procedures.

• Feel free to come with any prepared questions or concerns you may have about this process.

regulations

• These social work and psychotherapy services are regulated by the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW) in accordance with the Social Work and Social Service Work Act, 1998.

• Registered Social Workers of the OCSWSSW are permitted to perform the controlled act of psychotherapy as of December 31, 2019, as outlined under the Regulated Health Professionals Act, 1991.

privacy

• perdicou psychotherapy will never share your information with a third party without your prior knowledge or consent. We will never contact you in any manner other than those agreed upon in the initiation of services.

• Any health information collected, used, or disclosed to or by perdicou psychotherapy or it’s representatives is regulated provincially under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA).

• The personal information that is collected from you is used in order to (1) treatment plan, (2) provide appropriate referrals, (3) internal record keep in accordance with legislation, (4) collect aggregate, non-identifiable data for research purposes to improve services, (5) be able to defend against possible claims brought to the OCSWSSW by a client.

• All personal health information is collected and stored in compliance with PHIPA, and we have reasonable security measures in place to ensure the prevention of loss, misuse, or changes to any of that information.

• We use Jane as a virtual practice management platform. Through your own personal Jane account we will process booking appointments, scheduling, invoicing, payments, etc.

confidentiality

• Your electronic medical record (EMR) is stored in Jane servers, which are PHIPA compliant. Nobody besides your clinician can access your EMR, and everything you talk about in sessions and everything that is placed in the EMR is strictly confidential except for under a few specific circumstances:

  • You provide your express consent to disclose your personal health information to another party.

  • We become aware of risk of harm to a child (below the age of 18 years) and have to make a mandatory report to the Children’s Aid Society.

  • We received a subpoena from the Court to either appear or provide the courts with your charts/EMR.

  • We become aware of risk of suicide or homicide and you are unable to safety plan/guarantee safety and we have to inform the appropriate authorities or the person who may be at risk of homicide.

If any of these exceptions become relevant and we are in the position of having to breach confidentiality in order to disclose your personal health information to another party, we will always try to discuss this with you as the client first.

However, in cases where this is not possible or where there exists significant risk for harm/safety concerns we will contact the appropriate parties to make the report, which will be documented in your EMR, and we will discuss any report with you after the fact.

policies

• We require that payment for sessions be made in full immediately following each session’s completion. If you have concerns about this, please speak directly to your clinician.

• We reserve the right to offer sliding scale services at a mutually agreed upon rate when available. Sliding scale services are not always available, and are based on client need/availability of the clinician to offer.

• We require a minimum of 48 hours notice for any cancelled, or rescheduled sessions. If you need to cancel or reschedule a session within this window please contact your clinician directly via email - please note that you will be charged at 50% session rate for sessions cancelled or rescheduled within the 48 hour window.

• If you need to cancel or reschedule a session within 24 hours of the scheduled session time please contact your clinician directly via email - please note that you will be charged the full session rate for sessions cancelled or rescheduled within the 24 hour window, as well as for sessions that you book and do not show up for (“no-show”).

• If you are not online at the scheduled session time we will attempt to call you via telephone 5 minutes after the start of the session. If we are unsuccessful in reaching you your clinician will contact you via email, and stay online/available for an additional 10 minutes before marking your session “no-show” and applying the full session charge to your account.