FAQ

Nutrition therapy is much more than simply educating you about good nutrition and exercise. Nutrition therapy is a collaboration between you and your dietitian to help you to:

• Change relationship with food, so that a supportive eating style becomes second nature to you.

• Re-learn how to use internal signals of hunger, fullness and satisfaction to successfully manage food and weight.

• Challenge beliefs that keep you stuck in old patterns and develop new beliefs that will support healthful eating patterns and weight.

• Develop a lifestyle that includes pleasurable eating and joyful movement that supports health and well being.

• Establish an attitude of acceptance and gratitude regarding your natural body.

• Trust in your ability to maintain a healthy weight range and have a peaceful relationship with food, eating and your body.

If eating issues and weight concerns are interfering with a full and functional life, and you are ready for a serious change, nutrition therapy can help. Changing disordered eating patterns requires a commitment and a willingness to make difficult changes to restore health. We will assist you through the process until you are free of eating issues.

Nutrition therapy focuses on food, weight, body image, physical activity and thought patterns that are keeping you from living a healthful, balanced life. It’s about finding alternatives to the diet mindset and behaviors that are non-supportive while developing an awareness of personal needs and learning how to use internal cues to manage your food and weight.

Psychotherapy focuses on the underlying issues fueling the eating problems, dealing with past and present relationships, feelings, trauma history, etc.

How long you may be in nutrition therapy depends on your goals and how entrenched the disordered eating is. We have seen clients just one time, only to have them contact us later saying they had been able to heal their eating issues. But, this is rare.

With disordered eating and eating disorders, it can take anywhere from three months to five years, depending on many factors. We will have a sense of how long it will take during a free consultation call, but can give you a better idea after your initial nutrition assessment.

The Nutrition Therapist on your team will collaborate with your therapist and other members of your eating disorder treatment team to walk you through unraveling patterns that have taken years to establish.

Yes! We have worked with many clients who months, and years later, write to tell us of their continued success.

Your first session will be a nutrition assessment, and lasts approximately 50 to 60 minutes. In a supportive and nurturing environment, we will explore, as you feel comfortable, your eating habits, weight history, symptoms and concerns, and activity level, as well as your goals. We will then discuss what needs to happen to help you meet your goals and develop a plan to get you started.

Yes, the paperwork will take you about 20 minutes to complete. Once your nutrition assessment is scheduled, you will receive a separate email with a link. All paperwork can be easily completed online.

Nutrition therapy is highly individualized. After meeting, your dietitian will be able to suggest how much follow-up is needed to make sure you reach your goals. Follow-up sessions are 50 or 25 minutes, again depending on your needs.

We offer in-person (depending on the current status of public health) as well as telehealth sessions. Your safety, and ours, is foremost in our minds. When you click the Book Now button in the upper left of this website, you can see if there are any in office appointments available.

The CDC and World Health Organization have developed guidelines for minimizing the spread of the coronavirus. Based on their guidance, Nutrition Therapy Associates take the following precautions:

• All of our dietitian/nutritionists, and interns, are fully vaccinated.

• We require meeting via telehealth if there is any suspicion of a fever or exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

• The waiting room will be closed, or, if it is open, the seating is arranged to encourage physical distancing.

• If feasible, we open windows or take other steps to increase ventilation.

• Practitioners in the building wear masks and we ask clients to do the same when in any part of the building except for individual offices. The doors of individual offices remain closed unless someone is going in or out.

• Practitioners in the building schedule appointments at intervals to minimize people running in to each other in the halls.

• We provide hand sanitizers that contain at least 60% alcohol in the office, the waiting room, and restrooms.

• We ask that clients and practitioners in the building to stay home if they have a fever, shortness of breath or a cough, or have been exposed to someone who shows signs of COVID-19.

• We avoid hugging or handshaking.

• You can pay online so you do not have to use a credit card at the office.

Our priority, first and foremost, is to keep you and our practitioners safe and healthy. Regarding vaccinations:

• All of our dietitian/nutritionists, and interns are fully vaccinated.

• We require meeting via telehealth if there is any suspicion of a fever or exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. We want to keep you, your nutritionist and anyone else in the office as safe as possible, and appreciate your help with this.

• We prefer any clients who are seen in-person to be fully vaccinated. We do take vaccination status into consideration with other health risk factors when considering in-person sessions. We understand vaccines are not 100% effective and may lead to a false sense of security. We also understand you may have valid reasons for not being vaccinated (e.g. medical issues prohibiting you from being vaccinated, etc.). We also acknowledge that vaccination status does not negate our / your responsibility to take other precautions (for example, masks, distancing, and sanitizing common surfaces). Because of this, we treat vaccination status as one of the many screening factors we use when deciding how to proceed.

Regardless, you can always receive our services even in not in-person via telehealth. We have been gratified, and a bit surprised, that clients have done so well since moving to telehealth at the beginning of the pandemic.

Weighing is a highly personal decision, and we respect your right to weigh or not weigh (although with very low weight clients, we may have to weigh). When we weigh a client, we do so with respect and full awareness of the impact on that client. We take time before and after to process the impact and to help reduce fears and heal belief systems.

Many of our clients choose not to know their weight for therapeutic reasons, in which case we do "blind" weights in our office. At times, we offer “blind weight appointments,” where one of us, or an intern, will be at the office to do 5 minute weight checks (with mask on). These are always blind weights and the information will be given to your nutrition therapist.

We encourage some clients to not weigh any place else (for multiple reasons, please ask us if you are curious), including their doctors office. If you decline to weigh at another office, we can update your physician (or whomever) with your weight. Caveat: they will need to weigh you if you are undergoing anesthesia, or with specific medications (which is rare).

A last minute cancellation or no show delays your work, and may prevent another client from being seen, so we keep a strict cancellation policy.

At least one weeks’ notice is requested if you must cancel an appointment.

If you are unable to provide at least 48 hours notice (not including Saturday or Sunday), you will be charged for the time that was reserved for that appointment unless we can reschedule you that same week or are able to fill it with another client. (We typically need at least 3 to 4 days notice to fill a cancelled session, so the sooner you let us know, the better.)

This fee is waived in the event of an unexpected serious or contagious illness or serious personal emergency. We are able to provide telehealth (phone or video sessions) if you can’t get to the office or if you have a contagious illness but still want to be seen.

We know it is not always easy to keep track of life and very much appreciate your consideration and willingness to give me early notice if you must cancel.

We also affirm your need to take care of yourself. If you prefer to finish a project, study or get a massage rather than see us, we encourage you to do so. We do not consider these emergencies and are not able to waive fees for these types of things; however, we will always support you prioritizing self care and choosing what is in your best interest.

We value and respect your time just as we request that you value and respect ours. You are entitled to expect the same from us that we expect from you. If we forget an appointment or double book, you can expect to receive financial “credit” for that mistake or last minute inconvenience.

Payment is due at the time of service by cash, check or credit card (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express). You will receive a payment form with your initial paperwork for your convenience.

Arrangements must be made in advance for billing, all amounts not paid within 30 days of the billing date will be assessed monthly late fees. The fee for any returned checks is $20.

Our fee schedules vary.

Dr Hannah Allen, RDN, LDN has specialized in working with those with disordered eating and eating disorders since 2017. Her fee is $130/session.

Terri Michael, MS, RDN, CEDRD, LDN has specialized since 2005. Her fee is $130/session.

Dr Karin Kratina, RDN, LDN, SEP has specialized since 1983. Her fee is $180/session.

Reduced rates are occassionally available depending on current case load and client need.

Good Faith Estimate

Effective January 1, 2022 you have the right to receive a “Good Faith Estimate” (GFE) explaining how much your medical care will cost. Nutrition Therapy Associates has always provided transparency in our billing practices by displaying our fee schedule online, as a part of our onboarding process for new clients, and each time you make an appointment online (where are fees are displayed again). Please know that the Good Faith Estimate does not change any agreements you have already made with us with regard to self pay. Under the law, health care providers need to give clients who don’t have insurance or who are not using their insurance an estimate of the bill for medical services.

You have the right to receive a GFE for the total expected cost of any non-emergency items or services.

If you receive a bill that is at least $400 more than your GFE, then you can dispute the bill.

Make sure to save a copy or picture of your GFE (a copy will be in your client portal for you to review)

For questions or more information about the GFE, go to www.cms.gov/nosurprise. or call 1-800-985-3059.

Insurance itself is a full time job and in order to use our full effort towards client care, our practice is not contracted with any insurance companies at this time. However, if you would like to use your insurance, we can provide you with a Superbill (receipt with insurance codes) so that you can receive reimbursement directly from the insurance company. Our dietitians would be considered an out-of-network provider.

Many of our clients receive a majority of their out of pocket cost from insurance. All reimbursement is dependent on your specific plan. If you are unsure of your specific plan, please contact your insurance provider, on the back of your card, to see if our services (codes: 97802, 97803, 97804) would be reimbursed.

Ask if they cover “Medical Nutrition Therapy.” Remember to note if you have a deductible and/or a co-pay, as well as the level of coverage (100%, 90% etc.).

We do not participate in Medicare or Medicaid programs.

We will talk with family member and health care providers only if you give us written permission to do so by completing the Informed Consent (unless you are under age 18, in which case parents give this permission).

We do not charge for weekly updates with the treatment team (emails, with permission, or phone calls). We also do not charge for every other week, 15 minute consult with family. When more time is required, we charge our hourly rate in 15 minute increments. This includes phone conversations, email and text correspondence.

We charge our hourly rate for treatment team meetings (although can waive these fees). If the meeting is in person, we also charge 1/2 our hourly rate for any travel to and from the meeting.

We make every effort to ensure your personal health information is kept confidential. However, please keep in mind that communications via email and text are not secure.

Although it is unlikely, there is a possibility that information you include in an email can be intercepted and read by other parties besides the person to whom it is addressed. Please do not include personal identifying information such as your birth date, or personal medical information in any emails you send to us. As a client, you can join our Messaging Portal for secure confidential communications.

Your partner, parents, or friend can attend your nutrition therapy sessions whenever that will benefit your work. Make sure to discuss this with your dietitian before inviting them.

We do not sell nutritional supplements.

As dietitians, we are not able to do lab tests or other medical procedures. If needed, we recommend you receive a thorough physical exam from your primary physician including lab tests, blood pressure, etc. Please bring pertinent results to your session to be reviewed by your dietitian.

Nutrition Therapy Associates staff, agents, employees and consultants must protect the client’s individually identifiable health information consistent with the requirements in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or the federal regulations implementing the Act (collectively referred to as HIPAA). You can download this here.