Insurance
Does our practice take Medicare?
We accept Medicare for psychiatric evaluation, medication management, and therapy, including the geriatric mental health work this practice has done for decades. Call and our billing team will confirm your specific plan before your first appointment.
Adult & Child Counseling & Psychiatric Center accepts Medicare at our Melbourne office, for psychiatric evaluation, medication management, and therapy. Part B is the part of Medicare that covers outpatient mental health care, which is what an appointment here is. We have treated older adults since 1992 and run a geriatric mental health service, so later life is not a corner of this practice.
Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage behave differently
There are two ways to hold Medicare, and they do not behave the same way at a front desk. Original Medicare is Part A and Part B, run by the federal program itself. A Medicare Advantage plan is Part C: you are still in Medicare, but a private insurer runs the plan, and it brings its own network, its own referral rules, and its own authorization process.
So the answer for you turns on which of the two you hold, and, if it is Advantage, on which insurer runs it. A supplement policy puts a third card in the wallet. Our billing team would rather work through all of that on the phone than have you read it off the back of a card in the waiting room.
Later life is its own clinical picture
This part of Florida has a notably older population, and the Viera and Suntree corridor more so than the rest of the county. That changes what we see. Depression in later life is regularly read as ordinary aging, or as the shadow of a medical condition, and it often arrives as poor sleep, aches, low appetite and memory complaints rather than as sadness.
Telling apart a mood condition, a medical cause and early cognitive change is careful work, and getting it wrong in either direction has consequences. Our psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners evaluate for all three rather than assuming. Where a medical cause is in play, and with your permission, we will coordinate with your primary care provider so that two people are not adjusting the same picture without speaking to each other.
One building, one set of records
Most people on Medicare are managing more than one thing at once, and care spread across several offices quietly asks the patient to carry messages between them. Here the prescriber and the therapist are along the same corridor. When both are involved, they speak to each other directly instead of through you, and there is one record rather than two that have to be reconciled later.
That matters more with age, not less. An adult child arranging care for a parent is often the person who calls, and one practice is easier to explain to a family than three.
Common questions
- Do you take Medicare Advantage as well as Original Medicare?
- Advantage plans are run by private insurers, and each brings its own network and its own rules, so this is answered plan by plan rather than across the board. Call our office with the plan name printed on your card and our billing team will look it up before you book.
- Do I need a referral to be seen with Medicare?
- Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage handle referrals differently, and Advantage plans differ among themselves. Our billing team will tell you what yours asks for, and what to request from your primary care provider if a referral is part of it.
- I am arranging care for a parent. What should I have ready?
- The Medicare card, any Advantage or supplement card, and the name of their primary care provider. If you will be involved in the appointment itself, say so on the call: permission to include a family member is simpler to arrange before a first visit than during one.
Not every provider takes every plan listed here, and plans change. Call our office first. We will check your plan for the provider you want to see.
Also see Medicaid, TRICARE, Florida Blue, Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, or the full list of plans we accept.
Call to verify your coverage
Our billing team checks your benefits before your first appointment, not after.