Policies

Sunflower Speech Therapy Company Policies

The following policies apply to all clients receiving individual or group services from Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC, whether in-person or virtual. Acknowledgment of your understanding and acceptance of these policies is required before any client may begin working with us, and annually thereafter. Acceptance of these policies by one parent is considered acceptance by all caregivers involved in the child’s care. You will be presented with a complete form to read and sign to submit for your agreement to our policies to ensure that all parties involved in the care of the client understand these expectations. The following is a partial list of policies.

Intake 

Before the first session, you will be asked to complete an intake questionnaire to provide medical information, developmental milestones, social behaviors observations, special interest, areas of strengths and concerns regarding your child. Clients are also asked to share relevant reports with the therapist to review in preparation for working with your child. If a speech/language evaluation was administered within the past year, and includes communication specific goals, we will accept that treatment plan and begin there. 

The first treatment session(s) are designed to include both the child and caregiver, when possible or deemed necessary. This meeting allows the SLP to gather important background information and explain proposed treatment objectives and strategies. You and your therapist will work together on establishing appropriate treatment targets to enhance communication at home, school or community. It is possible that this information can be exchanged over the phone.

The cost of the first session includes an intake fee to cover the therapist’s time for case preparation. If your Sunflower Speech therapist conducts their own evaluation prior to beginning therapy, the intake fee is waived.

Communication

After the intake and/or evaluation is completed, your therapist will confirm the start date with you via phone and/or email. 

Cancellation Policy

Our cancellation policies apply to both in-person and virtual therapy.

Sunflower Speech Therapy has designed our policies to be flexible and accommodating to families’ needs. We know how difficult it is to predict whether a child is going to be sick the next day! We elected an 8:30 AM cut-off to allow our therapists sufficient time to adjust their planning and their schedule before they head out to work for the day. By this time most parents are already awake, preparing their child for the school day and/or preparing themselves for the work day.

1. Cancellation by text message to your therapist prior to 8:30 AM the day of a session will be accepted without penalty. This session will be made up within the billing cycle.
2. Cancellation by text after 8:30 AM the day-of the session, No-shows or no notice will be charged the full session fee. A no-show is defined as the therapist arriving as scheduled and the student is not there with no prior contact. This session will not be made up.
3. If the therapist is not able to attend a session, you will be notified and the session will be made up.

Please contact the therapist to plan accordingly for longer term absences, extenuating circumstances or planned events:

• Extended child or family illness
• Vehicular Accident
• Child has accident at school/day care
• Family bereavement 
• Travel (less than 3 weeks in duration)

For any communication that needs to be seen urgently, please text or call your therapist rather than using email. 

Clients who cancel more than 20% of the time are subject to termination of services. That is, we require consistent attendance to therapy sessions at least 80% of the time. If extenuating circumstances have caused you to miss a planned session, please contact your therapist to discuss the situation.

Note on HIPAA Compliance: Sunflower Speech therapists primarily communicates with clients/families via text, email, and voice messages. While we acknowledge that text/voice messages are not a HIPAA-compliant method of communication, we take precautions to safeguard your information. Therapists limit personal health details in messages, confirm recipient identity before sharing sensitive information, avoid public or shared networks when discussing client care, and ensure that their devices are secured with passcodes. Any sensitive personal information will be on a hard copy and stored in a locked location.

Leaves of Absence

Sunflower Speech Therapy may not be able to hold a therapy time slot for families who travel abroad or take a leave of absence of more than 3 weeks. Families may request in advance to cancel sessions for planned travel for up to three weeks. In cases of an unforeseen family emergency, please contact your therapist as soon as possible. Per a case-by-case basis, Sunflower Speech Therapy may hold your therapy spot for up to 3 weeks of canceled sessions. For example, if a family travels to Europe or Australia for a month, we have the right to fill the vacancy with another client. This policy applies to both individual and group sessions. Clients who forfeit their spot may request to return to the waitlist for future availability.

Termination of Services

Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC requires a written 2-week notification of termination of speech therapy sessions. This allows time for your SLP to gather any concluding data/observations, and it allows for closure of the relationship that you and/or your child have formed with the therapist. After discussing your decision to discontinue services with your therapist, please email our administrative email Darla.Oringderff@SunflowerSpeechTherapy.com.

At times, a clinical recommendation to discontinue services may be made by your SLP. We ask our therapists to discuss a two-week plan with you to ensure that pausing or stopping therapy is the right thing for the client. Your therapist may propose ending or pausing services for any of the following reasons:

• Achievement of communication goals
• Need to re-evaluate the client’s current functioning levels in order to restructure therapy sessions
• Lack of progress, or a plateau in progress
• Decreased motivation of the client, or resistance to therapy
• Physical maturation and changes to the client’s anatomical structures, which may indicate a pause in services to allow for the development of these structures.
• Limitations of the therapist’s expertise or specific skills needed to address the client’s evolving needs. In this case, we may refer outside of Sunflower Speech Therapy.
• Interference with academic coursework

Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC reserves the right to withdraw services, without two-week notification, from any client who:

• Repeatedly cancels sessions (more than 20% of the time)
• Repeatedly fails to make timely payment
• Treats their therapist or any members of our team disrespectfully
• Withholds information that is relevant to the proper treatment of their child (i.e. a pertinent medical diagnosis)
• Behaves in a manner that repeatedly challenges or contradicts the therapist, even after working closely to establish and explain therapy goals, treatment approaches, and reasonable expectations for outcomes
• If the child consistently poses a serious and imminent threat to another person. 

Payment

Sunflower Speech Therapy accepts payment monthly or by semester (number of sessions will be calculated to exclude holidays). The most common payment method is by Zelle, Venmo or Apple Cash. We also accept payments by personal check if made at least one month in advance of scheduled sessions. All clients are responsible for payment of services in full, regardless of insurance reimbursement status. We reserve the right to pause or terminate services if payment is overdue.

Reimbursement from Medical Insurance

You can request a statement to submit to your insurance for reimbursement according to your medical plan coverage. Each month, Sunflower Speech Therapy will generate a customized monthly superbill, which serves as a receipt/paid invoice. This will be sent to you via email the following month. The superbill contains the necessary billing and diagnostic codes required by insurance companies to reimburse out-of-network providers. Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC does not work with insurance companies directly, but we are happy to complete insurance forms you provide if they must be completed by the provider.

Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC does not handle refiling of claims or appeals with any insurance company. Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC does not call any insurance companies on your behalf. 

If your insurance company sends us a notice of required documentation in order to continue coverage of speech/language services, we will provide you with a short progress update and review of goals at no cost to you. It is your responsibility as the insurance subscriber to submit the documentation, along with the claim filing, to your insurance.

Evaluations and Reports

Initial evaluations are done with the student present and caretaker present when appropriate. The caretaker interview can be handled by phone prior to the assessment. The goal of an evaluation is to evaluate current levels, identify specific strengths and deficit areas, and formulate a customized treatment plan. After the evaluation, we provide a brief summary of the results, with recommendations and goals. Note that formal comprehensive written reports are not included in the fee for assessments.

The evaluation may include a parent interview, which is designed to gather relevant background information including medical history and developmental milestones. The parent interview may be conducted by phone or video call prior to the meeting date. This can be especially helpful when the evaluation is for a young child or very active child. In some cases, a parent interview is not necessary if enough details were shared during the intake process.

The evaluation fee covers preparation time, travel, any questionnaires and/or interviews, direct time with your child, administration of testing, interpretation of results, and debriefing. Your therapist will provide a brief summary page with scores, recommendations, and goals. The cost of our evaluations does not include a formal, comprehensive written report. Should you require a formal write-up of the evaluation containing background information, behavioral observations, testing procedures, scores, response analysis, recommendations and goals, please let your SLP know ahead of the scheduled evaluation. The SLP will provide an estimate of the cost for the written report based on the complexity of the evaluation and the amount of information to be included.

Yearly Reassessments 

It is best practice to reevaluate clients annually to measure progress, refine treatment goals, adjust the direction of therapy, or determine if the client is ready to “graduate” from services. Some insurance companies require regular evaluations and progress updates in order to authorize continued therapy sessions.

Reevaluations are particularly valuable in the treatment of articulation, phonology, receptive and expressive language, and fluency. There are normative, standardized tools to derive scores and percentiles in all of these areas of communication. When working on social skills, our clinicians have access to a standardized assessment tool that begins at age 6 years. Social skills for both younger and older children are often measured using checklists and parent/teacher questionnaires focusing on the quality of the child’s social interactions with others. Of course, while quantitative data guides our decision making, it is only one part of the evaluation process.

Sunflower Speech Therapy encourages our clinicians to conduct yearly reassessments. While annual evaluations can be valuable, not all treatment plans require this frequency of reassessment. Your SLP will advise on the most appropriate timing based on your child’s unique progress, and you are welcome to request an evaluation if you feel it is needed. You will be billed for the assessment on the day it begins, and we will use the appropriate procedural code and description on your superbill. Some assessments are conducted over two days. The second visit incurs no charge as it is part of the evaluation. Any remaining subtests after the second reassessment visit can be conducted during the course of therapy. Following the assessment, your therapist will review the results with you and discuss the direction of therapy. This can occur in a fifteen minute phone call or as part of a therapy session. As a reminder, your therapist will provide a brief summary of scores and recommendations, but the cost of a (re)evaluation does not include a formal comprehensive report unless requested and priced in advance.

Our style at Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC is very open and conducive to meeting the needs of the child and family. Members of our team are experienced in classroom observations, consulting with psychologists and teachers, and co-treating with behaviorists, occupational and physical therapists. Parents can arrange to use the session time as a consultation with their therapist to discuss specific questions they have. In-person and virtual meetings of over 15 minutes are charged per hour, prorated to the duration of the meeting.

Resolution of Disputes

We ask that you first discuss any concerns you have directly with your therapist in a constructive manner. If you have ideas or expectations that are not being met, please arrange to speak with your SLP, over the phone at a later time, or over email if feasible. Our goal is to provide top quality services that factor in the client’s lifestyle, culture, home language(s) and daily routines. We will work with you in whatever way possible to achieve the best outcome for all parties.

Assumption of Risk

Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC is committed to providing therapy sessions in the safest manner possible and prioritizes the well-being of all students. However, it is important to recognize that inherent risks may be involved when participating in therapy sessions. Sunflower Speech Therapy takes necessary precautions to minimize risks and requires all clients to follow safety guidelines and instructions designed to protect their well-being. By engaging in therapy services with Sunflower Speech Therapy, LLC clients and their families acknowledge and accept full responsibility for any injuries, damages, or losses—regardless of severity—that may occur as a result of participation.

Furthermore, clients and their families release and discharge Sunflower Speech Therapy LLC, its therapists, and employees from any and all claims related to injury, damage to property, or loss sustained during therapy sessions. Clients also agree to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend Sunflower Speech Therapy LLC, its therapists, and employees against any claims arising from injuries, damages, or losses connected to participation in therapy.

We appreciate the time you spent reading our policies. Thank you very much for the opportunity to work together!

Company policies were last updated on 7/11/2025