A discount we will not offer you
Why we do not sell blocks of visits
Twelve sessions for the price of ten is the most common offer in this trade. It is also the offer that quietly makes it hard for anybody to tell you that you are better.
We do not sell blocks of visits in advance. We do not sell blocks of visits in advance. A prepaid package of twelve sessions gives the clinic a reason to use all twelve and gives you a reason to attend appointments you no longer need, and it converts the single most useful sentence in this trade — you are better, stop coming — into a refund conversation. You pay per visit, and the visit you do not need is the one we cancel.
The package deal is everywhere in physical therapy, and it looks like a straightforward kindness: pay for ten, get twelve, save some money, commit to your recovery. Patients like it. Clinics like it more, and it is worth being precise about why.
A prepaid block converts your treatment into a balance. From that moment the clinic has been paid for twelve appointments and has an interest in twelve appointments happening, and you have an interest in attending twelve appointments whether or not you still need them, because you have already paid. Both incentives point the same way, and it is not towards a short course.
What it does to the most useful sentence in this job
“You are better. Stop coming.” That sentence is the point of the whole exercise, and in a well-run course of physical therapy it arrives sooner than the patient expects.
Under a package it becomes a refund conversation. The clinician saying it is now proposing to hand money back, and every commercial instinct in the building pushes against them. It does not require anybody to be corrupt for that to bend behaviour — it only requires them to be human, and to find it slightly easier to say “let us keep going and see” than to open the till.
We would rather not have the pressure at all. You pay for the visit you attend, so the appointment you no longer need is simply an appointment we cancel, and it costs us nothing awkward to suggest it.
The second problem: it prices the wrong thing
A package prices the number of visits, which is exactly the number we are trying to keep down. A clinic selling twelve has told you what it thinks your course will be before it has examined you, and it has made that number the product.
There is a version of this that is even less defensible: the package sold at the first appointment, before any reassessment has happened, on the strength of a plan nobody has yet tested. If a course is genuinely going to take twelve visits, you will have plenty of time to attend twelve of them while paying for each.
What we do instead
Publish the range. Every condition page on this site says how many visits that problem usually takes, before you contact anybody. That is the same information a package pretends to give you, without the money attached to it.
Give you an estimate specific to you at the first appointment, in writing. Reassess at visit four against the measurements taken at visit one, and change the plan or stop if the numbers have not moved. Discharge deliberately, with the programme that keeps you where you got to.
And no maintenance appointments for people who do not need treatment. If what you want is somebody to supervise your training, that is a good thing to want and a gym is the right place to buy it.
The one thing we do charge for that looks similar
A missed appointment without notice is $60, waived the first time. That is not a package and it is not a penalty for being ill — twenty-four hours' notice cancels anything for any reason, including no reason at all.
It exists because an hour held for you is an hour nobody else could book, and this practice runs on sixty-minute one-to-one appointments with no overlap. Being straightforward about that is better than pretending the hour was free and recovering it somewhere less visible.
In order
How this works in practice
You pay for the visit you attend
$190 for the evaluation, $140 for a treatment visit if you are paying yourself. Nothing up front.
The likely course length is published beforehand
On every condition page, before you contact anybody.
You get an estimate specific to you in writing
At the first appointment, along with what would make us change it.
We reassess at visit four
Against the same measurements. If nothing has moved, the plan changes or stops.
We discharge on purpose
With the programme that keeps you where you got to, and no maintenance appointments you do not need.
Questions we are actually asked
Why we do not sell blocks of visits — frequently asked
Can I get a discount for booking several sessions?
No, and the reason is structural rather than mean. A prepaid block gives us a reason to use every visit in it and gives you a reason to attend appointments you no longer need. It turns “you are better, stop coming” into a refund conversation, and that sentence has to stay free to say.
Isn't a package cheaper for me?
Only if you were going to attend every session anyway, which is the assumption the arithmetic quietly makes. If your course turns out to be seven visits and you bought twelve, you have paid more for less. We publish the typical range for every condition so you can judge the length yourself before spending anything.
What if I know I need a long course, like after an ACL reconstruction?
Then you will attend thirty to fifty visits over nine to twelve months and pay for each one as you go. Nothing about paying per visit makes a long course harder to run; it just means each appointment has to justify itself, which over twelve months is the right pressure to have.
Do you charge for missed appointments?
$60 without twenty-four hours' notice, waived the first time. With notice there is no charge, for any reason. An hour held for you is an hour nobody else could book, and we would rather name that than recover it somewhere less visible.
Will you keep seeing me if I want to come after I'm better?
Not as treatment, because it would not be treatment. If what you want is supervised training, that is a good thing to want and a gym or a coach is the right place for it — we will happily write the programme and tell them what to avoid.
Read next
Related reading
Sixty minutes, one to one, with the therapist you chose
Book an appointment
The booking page shows each therapist's own diary rather than a generic grid, so a slot you can see is a slot that is genuinely free. Most people do not need a doctor's referral to start — New York's direct access law runs to ten visits or thirty days — though Workers' Compensation, No-Fault and Medicare each need one from the first visit. If you are not sure which of those you are, telephone and we will work it out before you book.