Policies and Procedures

When you schedule an appointment with our clinic, you are *reserving* the therapist’s time. In order to ensure your child gets the most out of his/her therapy program and that our therapist’s available time is maximized, we must adhere to the following strict cancellation policy:

24-hour cancellation is preferred whenever possible; however, you must leave an email or voicemail for your child’s therapist by 8:00am** on the day of your appointment to avoid incurring a full session fee. **If your child’s session is before 9am, please be sure to contact your child’s therapist by 7am or earlier.

All no-show appointments will be charged the full therapy fee.

Should you fail to cancel an appointment and/or not show up at your scheduled appointment three times during the course of your child’s treatment, therapy will be terminated. The same will hold true for frequent cancellations (missing more than 6 weekly sessions per school year) without rescheduling. You will be billed for any outstanding balance.

If you arrive late to an appointment, you are still responsible for the full session fee.

Skill Builders will close on Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day.

Scheduling makeup appointments is strongly encouraged to ensure consistency in your child’s treatment program.

GROUP – This cancellation policy also applies to group therapy sessions, however, make-up appointments are not generally available. Frequent cancellations will result in a loss of your group treatment spot as one child’s absence affects the entire group dynamic and progress.

Offsite Therapy Policies and Procedures (updated January 2021)

We are happy to accommodate your family’s scheduling needs by seeing your child at home, school or daycare. In order to see your child offsite, therapists must take extra time to plan, prepare materials, and travel. Please note the following policies that are specific to offsite visits:

Prior to the first therapy session, please confirm with your child’s classroom teacher that the scheduled therapy time will be suitable. On therapy days, it is helpful to remind your child’s teacher at drop-off that we are coming that day.  Additionally, it is your responsibility to coordinate an appropriate treatment area with the school staff, as space can often be limited during the school day.

If there are any changes to your child’s regular schedule, you are responsible for letting your therapist know by 8am on the day of scheduled therapy. This includes instances such as illness, field trips, school closings or inclement weather. As we do not contract our services with specific schools, we do not receive communication from them regarding scheduled or unscheduled closings. Our relationship is with you, the client; thus failure to provide adequate notice will result in a full-session charge for that day’s session.

Should you fail to cancel an appointment and/or not show up at your scheduled appointment 3 times during your child’s treatment, therapy may be terminated. The same will hold true for frequent cancellations (missing more than 6 weekly sessions per school year without rescheduling.) You will be billed for any outstanding balance.

All of our therapists make a concerted effort to collaborate with your child’s teacher and will try to speak with them regularly regarding treatment, progress and carryover in the school environment. Following each session, you will receive a clinical note regarding that day’s treatment activities as well as recommendations for home. This note will be the primary method of communication between you and your child’s therapist. If you have questions or wish to discuss that day’s session further, please email or call your therapist directly.

Often schools request that teachers and other administrative staff have access to our schedules and treatment plans for liability and logistical purposes. Your child’s therapist will collaborate with his/her teacher for continuity of care, and allowing the teacher to have a copy of the treatment goals best ensures carryover of skills in their school environment. If you do not wish for us to share a copy of your child’s treatment plan, please note this on the release of information form given to you in the initial packet.

It is necessary for us to have your credit card on file in our secure system for offsite visits. Your card will be charged weekly for sessions completed and you will receive an invoice marked “paid” via email. You will be billed for any charges accrued for parking.

In order to ensure the health of your child, the health of other children that we serve, and the health of our therapists, we request that parents/caregivers cancel therapy sessions for the following communicable illnesses as soon as symptoms appear:

• Fever of 100 degrees or over, within 24 hours of a visit
• Runny or stuffy nose with green mucus
• Influenza (flu)
•  COVID 19
• Strep Throat, unless child has been on antibiotics for four days
• Child or anyone in household with conjunctivitis (pink eye)
• Child or anyone in household with RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus)
• Vomiting or diarrhea within 24 hours of a visit
• Rotavirus
• Head lice
• Hand, foot, and mouth virus
• Ring worm
• Contagious rashes
• Any other contagious conditions
• Any illness preventing you or your child from participating in normal daily activities
• Any illness preventing your child from attending daycare or school

This policy applies to siblings in the waiting area of our clinic.  If you are unsure if your child’s condition is contagious, please consult your doctor before his/her session.

It is important to cancel for any of the above conditions to protect the health of your child and the numerous other children we serve each day. Although some illnesses seem less severe than others, they can be detrimental to a medically fragile child.

When in doubt, please err on the side of caution. If your child comes for therapy with any symptoms that make the therapist feel uncomfortable, we reserve the right to send your child home and will need to charge for the session. We will offer in-office makeups whenever possible and are always happy to shift to teletherapy as appropriate as well. Please do contact us by 8 am the day of your appointment, however, to avoid late cancellation charges.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to your child’s therapist or our clinic owner, Cari Syron, at 703 941 7757 x101 or by email at cari@skillbuildersllc.com with any questions.

Please help us to protect all of the children at Skill Builders by respecting the Sickness Policy.

We may not be as dependable as the postal service, but we are still great therapists! On the days when ol’ man winter blows snow our way, we will follow the procedures written below.

Virginia Clients:

In the event of an Alexandria City or Fairfax County snow day, you will receive an automated email from Constant Contact updating you on our operating status. If you are not signed up for Constant Contact, please check our Facebook page or email your child’s therapist. We will occasionally close the office on snow days, but more often than not, the decision will be made by you and your child’s therapist as to whether both of you feel comfortable making the trip to the office.

We do NOT follow late opening or early closing procedures of Alexandria City or Fairfax County.  If Fairfax County or Alexandria City schools are open late or close early, the office remains open for appointments as usual for the day.  Your child’s therapist will contact you about keeping or re-scheduling that day’s appointment relative to the weather conditions. 

We are all looking forward to a fun and successful summer speech, occupational therapy, and tutoring season with your kids. In order to ensure that your children progress at their maximum rate this summer, we must require consistent attendance just as is required during the school year.

As patient vacations, camps and therapist vacations make it more difficult to achieve the 80% show rate required per our cancellation policy, we will be asking all families to arrange for makeups of missed appointments this summer, during the weeks they are in town. If you plan to miss more than 2 weeks this summer, makeups will be required to have a summer spot held for your child. If you plan to miss more than 3 weeks, we will not be able to hold a summer spot for your child, but will do our best to work him/her in to the schedule the weeks you are in town.

If your therapist is not available to provide an extra session in his/her schedule for that week, he/she will arrange for your child to see another therapist who will be provided with a treatment plan, by your child’s regular therapist, for that session. Performing makeups with another therapist is not only an excellent way to ensure consistency in therapy attendance but also allows your child’s regular therapist to benefit from the substitute therapist’s new ideas related to treatment activities, goals, methods, etc. This also allows your child to know another therapist so that makeups may be scheduled with that therapist, as needed, during the school year.

Below is a brief review of our cancellation policy. A complete copy of the policy is available on request and was included in the original packet you received prior to the initiation of therapy.

• A full cancellation fee will be charged for any session cancelled after 8:00am the morning of your appointment. 24 hour notice is preferred whenever possible.
• Full session fee is charged for any appointment in which your child is not present without prior notice. Be sure to let your therapists know about scheduled vacations in advance.
• If more than 2 cancellations are made without attempts at makeups (summer months) your child’s therapy will be terminated.

Good Faith Estimate Information

You have the right to receive a “Good Faith Estimate” explaining how much your health care will cost

Under the law, health care providers need to give patients who don’t have certain types of health care coverage or who are not using certain types of health care coverage an estimate of their bill for health care items and services before those items or services are provided.

You have the right to receive a Good Faith Estimate for the total expected cost of any health care items or services upon request or when scheduling such items or services. This includes related costs like medical tests, prescription drugs, equipment, and hospital fees.

If you schedule a health care item or service at least 3 business days in advance, make sure your health care provider or facility gives you a Good Faith Estimate in writing within 1 business day after scheduling. If you schedule a health care item or service at least 10 business days in advance, make sure your health care provider or facility gives you a Good Faith Estimate in writing within 3 business days after scheduling. You can also ask any health care provider or facility for a Good Faith Estimate before you schedule an item or service. If you do, make sure the health care provider or facility gives you a Good Faith Estimate in writing within 3 business days after you ask.

If you receive a bill that is at least $400 more for any provider or facility than your Good Faith Estimate from that provider or facility, you can dispute the bill.

Make sure to save a copy or picture of your Good Faith Estimate and the bill.

For questions or more information about your right to a Good Faith Estimate, visit www.cms.gov/nosurprises/consumers, email FederalPPDRQuestions@cms.hhs.gov or call 1- 800-985-3059.