I read that a psycho-educational assessment can cost upwards of $2000 (in Canada at least). If so, doesn't this mean a private practice based solely on psycho-educational assessment/testing be a very lucrative practice?
Can a private practice based solely on psycho-educational assessment/testing be very lucrative?
- Thread starter kalrod795
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Of course...you just need to find a place that has enough ppl to pay out of pocket and then compete enough to get those sought after referrals.
I know someone who got in with a private school and they are flush.....but they had a solid pedigree and knew/learned how to deal with the commonly demanding parents. They would have be competitive in basically any assessment setting.
I know someone who got in with a private school and they are flush.....but they had a solid pedigree and knew/learned how to deal with the commonly demanding parents. They would have be competitive in basically any assessment setting.
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It can be lucrative, if you have the clientele base. IMO, it'd be one of the most dreadfully boring and mind numbing things I could think of doing. Also, I would charge more than 2k.
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Yeah, that seems low for a full assessment battery even for low cost of living areas and/or sliding scales.
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I mean, for private pay, you should be charging at least $250 an hour for assessment, and that's lower than the going rate where I am. You need to do an interview, gather collateral information, administer a full IQ battery, probably want to get some memory, you need at least one memory measure, need to administer a an achievement battery, score all of that, write it up, provide feedback.
One caveat, in our grad clinic, we had a psychoed clinic. Pretty much just the grad program clinic where people could get live, supervised, testing experience in a low pressure environment before going on external clinical practica. I think students only had to pay something like $600 to get one done and then the university subsidized a good deal more to our clinic.
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Depends on many factors including:
1) are you in an area where the population of school aged children multiplied by the prevalence of learning disorders exceeds the number of providers?
2) Does your area have enough wealth to support a regular flow of patients wanting to pay cash for these services? Insurance won't pay for this. Hopefully there's no competition from outside providers or the school district.
3) the one idiot in my area basically sells diagnoses for parents. I used to make decent money criticizing the report in court until that person left.
1) are you in an area where the population of school aged children multiplied by the prevalence of learning disorders exceeds the number of providers?
2) Does your area have enough wealth to support a regular flow of patients wanting to pay cash for these services? Insurance won't pay for this. Hopefully there's no competition from outside providers or the school district.
3) the one idiot in my area basically sells diagnoses for parents. I used to make decent money criticizing the report in court until that person left.
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It's like college kids in classes. "I paid for the class, it means I deserve an A, right? What do you mean I need to actually do homework and not fail exams?"
One of the more enjoyable things in the university clinic was when someone would malinger on testing for accommodations, but do a horrible job at it. So, our feedback was that if their results were to be believed, it wasn't that they had an LD, it was that they were intellectually disabled, and that was probably why they are having trouble in college coursework. Then we'd get a flood of excuses. "I didn't sleep well, I had a hard time paying attention, I forgot to eat breakfast, etc." A few people, rarely, actually admitted to the malingering.
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When I interviewed at one program, a current student told me that the university had significant problems with pre-med and pre-law students malingering to get undeserved accommodations on the MCAT and LSAT. They started requiring full psychoed or neuropsych evals for accommodations and not just primary care physicians giving out first-time ADHD diagnoses for adults.
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Oh yeah, we got a fair number of pre-med students in our ADHD/LD clinic, and they tended to have fairly high rates of PVT/SVT failure.
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Yup...I saw the same thing. I only took cases w. a documented history of relevant Dx or injury, typically head injury; that got rid of 95% of them.
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That's actually a bit surprising. Not the folks feigning deficits, which I would expect, but that a PCP diagnosis was enough for accommodations. Generally, in my experiences with ETS, they had some fairly stringent and specific requirements (e.g., tests that must be given, what must be documented in the report, what accommodations were recommended and why). Those typically ended up being 10-15 page reports as a result. And this was years ago.
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I've done my share of neurodevelopmental evals... you have to make parents unhappy sometimes. I remember a parent saying, "My kid is twice exceptional" (2E- gifted with another learning need, like an SLD, ASD, ADHD) and having to tell them... "Nope, he's actually zero exceptional." He was a sweet kid, high average IQ, but parents' expectations were the problem. He didn't need a diagnosis nor accommodations.
The favorite one I've gotten was... "I'm not used to doing this kind of thing in a room like this (a bare office), I'm usually like... at school or at home."
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Yes, it can be a lucrative route, but you have to have a steady stream of referrals to make any money and pay off the tests you must purchase (and consultation fees), which can easily be in the $5-10k range for a battery and a few additional tests to start out.
A colleague of mine does testing in her practice, but she has a bunch of referrals from a mentor who funnels clients to her when he is full, and she also does forensic/court-related assessments as well.
The going rate is around $250/hr, and she caps her practice at 2 assessments per week. She gets enough referrals that she has chosen not to see clients for therapy at all.
The real question becomes is there a need in your community for testing and how to market yourself if you don't have a mentor? In the US, school psychologists do educational/psychological testing for their districts, which cuts down the demand quite a bit, depending on type of testing needed, so you'd have to do research in your community to find out what the demand/need is.
A colleague of mine does testing in her practice, but she has a bunch of referrals from a mentor who funnels clients to her when he is full, and she also does forensic/court-related assessments as well.
The going rate is around $250/hr, and she caps her practice at 2 assessments per week. She gets enough referrals that she has chosen not to see clients for therapy at all.
The real question becomes is there a need in your community for testing and how to market yourself if you don't have a mentor? In the US, school psychologists do educational/psychological testing for their districts, which cuts down the demand quite a bit, depending on type of testing needed, so you'd have to do research in your community to find out what the demand/need is.
