Practice policies

Cancel or reschedule at least 24 hours before your appointment and there is no charge. Cancelling inside 24 hours, or not attending, is billed at $100. Insurance does not cover this fee, so it is billed to you directly whether or not you are insured.

The reason for the policy is simple: an appointment that is cancelled the night before cannot be given to somebody else, and other patients are waiting. We would rather see you than charge you.

Genuine emergencies, sudden illness and situations outside your control are waived — tell us what happened and we will handle it sensibly. Repeated late cancellations may mean we ask to move to appointments booked closer to the date.

Arriving more than 15 minutes late usually means the visit cannot be completed properly and may need rescheduling, which counts as a late cancellation.

A telehealth visit is a medical appointment and is treated as one. A few practical requirements exist for clinical and legal reasons rather than formality:

• You must be physically located in Texas at the time of the visit — Texas licensure covers care delivered to patients in Texas, wherever the clinician is.
• Be somewhere private where you can speak freely. A conversation you have to whisper is not a conversation worth having.
• Do not attend from a moving vehicle, and never while driving.
• Have your camera on. Appearance, movement and affect are genuine clinical information, particularly when assessing medication effects.
• Confirm your current physical address at the start of the visit, so that emergency services can be directed to you if that is ever needed.
• Have your pharmacy details and current medication list to hand.
• If the connection fails, we will call you. The visit continues by phone rather than being lost.

Routine refill requests are processed within 48 hours during clinic hours. Request when you have roughly a week of medication left rather than on your last dose.

Controlled substances require an active prescribing relationship with a visit at least monthly, and prescriptions are written for a limited supply with no automatic refills. If your last visit has lapsed, you will be asked to schedule before a prescription is sent.

Prescriptions are not issued to people who are not established patients of the practice, and are not continued indefinitely without review.

The client portal is the secure channel for anything clinical. Email and text are not secure and are used only for scheduling and general questions — never for health information.

Portal messages are read during clinic hours and answered within one to two business days. Messages are for brief practical questions; anything that needs clinical judgement needs an appointment, because answering it properly requires the conversation.

Your information is protected under HIPAA and is not shared outside the practice without a signed release, except where the law requires it. Those exceptions are set out in the Notice of Privacy Practices.

Benefits are verified before your first appointment and you are told your expected cost in advance. Most insured patients pay $0–$30 per visit. Copays are collected at the time of the visit; self-pay visits are paid at the visit.

A card is kept on file to settle copays, balances after insurance, and late-cancellation fees. Tell us before you book if paying is going to be difficult — a limited number of reduced-rate slots exists, but it is agreed in advance rather than applied afterwards.

Clinic hours are Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM CT. Closed weekends and major holidays. Telehealth appointments outside these hours are offered case by case — ask the front desk.

Lyte is an outpatient practice. There is no after-hours on-call service and portal messages are not monitored overnight or at weekends.

If you are in crisis, call or text 988 — the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day. In an emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. Do not wait for a reply from the clinic.

Being clear about this up front saves people time and money. Lyte does not provide inpatient care, crisis or after-hours coverage, medically supervised withdrawal or detox, intensive outpatient or partial hospitalisation programmes, ADHD evaluation or treatment, ketamine or TMS, formal neuropsychological testing, or court-ordered and forensic evaluations.

Where one of those is what you need, we will say so and help you find it rather than schedule a visit that cannot help.