TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR??

[Guest guest]

Does she move in with you for a week? Perhaps someone could verify

that this is her fee, but it CERTAINLY seems exorbitant - particularly

for folks who are likely staring down years of weekly therapy. I know

Dr. Agin was you co-author, , but I have NEVER heard of a doc

asking that kind of standard fee. Lots of folks here love Dr. Agin,

but she is CERTAINLY not the only path - and no one should feel like

they're doing their child a disservice if they take a different route -

it certainly need not cost that much.

To put it in perspective, my younger son was seen for a comprehensive

evaluation at our local Children's Hospital. We saw a ST, OT/PT,

dietician, and a dev ped 3 times. Each of the individual evals took 2

hours except the dietician which was 3 total (2 visits). The dev ped

saw us 1 time with our child for about 1.5 hours, again without our

child for over an hour and then again with our son as a follow up for

approx. an hour. The entire fee - for all of these evals (which went

over 2 weeks) - paid out by our insurance company was approximately

$1400. Please also note that there are programs available in Ohio -

and I'm sure in other states - that either waive fees or create

payment plans for these types of evals. Basically, the hospital works

with you - if you called and asked what fee would be involved to

evaluate a dev delayed kid or a ST eval - you might get an hourly

rate, but there are so many variables that the answerer would be hard

pressed to give you a flat figure. Both of my children's evals were

right on - and my apraxic son's eval was done by a ST. I'm not sure

why this has to be so complicated. If you're not getting the right

diagnosis, there are always other avenues - some of them might cost,

but likely not thousands. And for those of you in EI, there are

plenty of folks who have been here who have 1 diagnosis from EI and

one from a private doc/ST - and ne'er the twain shall meet.

Just had to throw my (unpopular) 2 cents in - but this is scary enough

without feeling like you HAVE to go borrowing thousands of dollars to

go see 1 particular person in this instance.

Marina