Referrals & Fees

Apex Psychology Header

Therapy and counselling

If you are referred to us by your family doctor under a GP Mental Health Care Plan or by your psychiatrist, or your child is referred by your family doctor or their paediatrician, you can obtain a rebate for our services from Medicare. Rebates are automatically credited via Medicare once we raise an invoice and you pay for your appointment. We offer reduced fees to people who are out of work or in difficult financial circumstances. If this applies to you, please let us know at the time of making your appointment. We offer some bulk-billed appointments with our registrars.

Alternatively, most private health funds offer rebates for psychological services and if you come as a private client no referral is needed.

The usual appointment length is 55 minutes. The fees vary from $200 – $500 depending on whom you see.

Please note that if you are being seen for any family law related matters or family therapy you will be charged $350 per consultation regardless of your circumstances.

Please note that we have a cancellations policy which requires you to pay a late cancellation fee for appointments cancelled with less than 48 hours’ notice (or 2 business days if your appointment is on a Monday). We exercise some discretion with this because we know life can be full of unexpected challenges. However, we ask that you recognise the value of our psychologists’ time and let us know in good time if you can’t attend your appointment.

Workers compensation and insurance claims

After we receive your referral, we need to confirm with your insurance company that they are willing to pay for you to attend the appointment with us. After the initial assessment, if the psychologist you see is of the opinion that they can help you, they will apply to your insurance company for a further eight appointments. Once these are approved, the insurance company will pay in full for you to come to appointments with us.

 

Assessments

The fees for these depend on the complexity of what is required. Assessments learning range in cost from $1000 for ADHD testing to $1700 for basic cognitive testing to $2500 for comprehensive ASD diagnostic testing (ADOS-2, ADI-R, and adaptive functioning). You can also do a combination of these. We are usually able to give you a more accurate quote once we know more about why the assessment is needed. Medicare does not provide rebates for assessments unless they are an integral part of the therapy process. Most private health funds provide some rebates for psychological assessments. Please check with your fund.

NDIS

We are registered to provide services through the NDIS. You can use NDIS funding to pay for appointments provided this is part of your plan. You will need to give us copies of all your paperwork before the initial appointment so we can organise this. There are three ways to use your funding:

  • If you are self-managed, then the psychologist will charge their standard fee and issue you with a receipt to claim back from the NDIA.
  • If you are NDIA-managed or plan-managed, we charge using the following category and fees:
    Capacity Building (CB) Improved Daily Living 15_054_0128_1_3 Assessment Recommendation Therapy or Training – Psychologist at $222.99 per hour.

We also offer some support from the intern psychologists whose time is charged at $85 per hour under the same funding category.

Reduced Fees Interns and Provisional Psychologists

The practice regularly has interns who are completing post graduate qualifications (Masters or Doctorates) in Clinical Psychology at WSU, ACAP, UTS, or ACU. We also have provisional psychologists who are working towards their registration. All the work they conduct is supervised by one of our clinical psychologists. The interns and provisional psychologists offer some assessments and therapy at a reduced fee. You do not need a referral to access these services. They are not covered by Medicare but are covered by the NDIS.