So does anyone know where I can get pediatric speech, occupational, physical therapy in an outpatient setting in BCS? Both private pay and Medicare/Medicaid insurances.

TIA

We are using Brazos Valley Rehab for our autistic son.

Thanks for the reply, I've been doing some research and may be looking to move to the BCS area with my wife who both have been working with kids for the last 10+ years. There's a small outside chance we may want to open up a clinic in the area but want to see if the area is saturated or not.

Would you happen to know any other names of rehabs (not home health companies) that provide these services?

I am curious about peoples' experiences with pediatric therapy as well. I had to start looking this week for pediatric feeding therapy and sensory processing help. I believe they also offer it through St. Joseph Rehab center, but I'm not sure our insurance will cover them under our co-pay system. They had quite a few individuals listed under our covered providers through Scott & White. Has anyone had experience with them?

For children under three there is Early Childhood Intervention (ECI). We have used them for the past year or so.

AtascaAg, my wife is an SLP specializing in peds and has an independent practice that serves the greater Houston area as well as B/CS. I would say there's an opportunity in most communities if you're credentialed with the right providers. BC/BS is big here for private insurance due to Texas A&M.

Are you SLP, PT, OT? HHA or CORF / ORF? If you do any Medicaid book of business, I'm sure you're well aware of the potential rate cuts the state has proposed. I was in Austin on Monday for the rate hearing. Fun times!

Gigemags03, I can say that pediatric therapy definitely works! I'm amazed at the work my wife and other SLPs do for these kiddos. She works with a lot of medically fragile kids and those communication skills can be life saving.

Feel free to ping me at my username at @aggienetwork.com if you have any speech or insurance questions. I can pass them along to my wife, whom I'd say is an expert in navigating the insurance world.

Thank you so much for your kind offer. I'll try tonight to sit down when the kids are in bed and put a few questions that I have together. I'm having a hard time knowing exactly where to start since insurance does not seem to cover where we originally were planning to go. There are a few individuals listed that are covered but I have no idea about their experience/reviews.

St Joseph Outpatient Rehab is good. My son's speech therapist is awesome, and everyone I've met there has been nice. We initially tried a speech eval with someone private, and that particular person was not good with my son. St Joseph definitely takes BCBS and I think they take Medicare/Medicaid. It will be listed and charged under the place (St Joseph Outpatient Rehab, or might say St Joseph Rehab Services) and will say Speech or whatever type of therapy, but it won't specify the specific therapists, so if you are checking to see if it's in network, insurance won't know a specific therapist. St Joseph should be able to tell you if they take your insurance. Because of how they bill, you have to meet your deductible first (there or elsewhere) and then you pay your percentage (probably 10 to 20 percent, but those are percentages of big amounts so an eval is something like $300 or $400, and therapy is $200 something (maybe $225) for speech and around double that for OT, not sure about PT. If your max out of pocket isnt too bad, they may wind up costing less than some of thr private ones
where you pay a specialist $60 copay every time and no max. I think they charge a facility fee to Medicare but not to private ins.

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately St. Joseph Rehab is not listed on our insurance (Humana), which I think is odd because our primary care doctor is with them and they are in network. However, we are working with them to see what other options we might have for alternative billing other than co-pays. I will definitely explore these options when we get our referral info finalized next week. Thanks!

03, I wonder if that will change for you since Aetna bought Humana. They both are a PITA to get preauthorizations done and getting coverage for services.

I am not familiar with your insurance, but if your doctor is with St Jo and your doctor highly recommends them, they might be able to ake an exception. I wasn't initially sure if they were covered but our doctor really wanted us to go there (and was also sure it should be in network) so I called our insurance and when they werent sure it was covered (because they didnt have the specific therapist on their list of in-network speech therapists), they started filling out an out of network override or something like that (to cover an out of network provider at in-network amounts so insurance would pay a bigger share), but we didnt wind up needing the override because they were actually in network. You might double check. i think how they bill confuses insurance a little when you try to ask about which therapists are covered because a lot of other places bill differently.

We do pt and speech through st joes and love it. We found them after going through ECI and the cs med.

Can't recommend st joes highly enough.

Thanks everyone for your comments. They have been helpful. Hopefully I can try and find a way to get us to St. Joes when I start digging a little more into this next week.