How much should I expect to pay for a speech therapy assessment?

[Anonymous]

DD has some issues with articulation. They are bad enough that ppl still ask me what she said. She went through infants and toddlers and they "graduated" her. I know I need to have her see someone privately. I'm wondering the ballpark amount I should expect to pay for an assessment by a speech therapist in MOCO? FWIW, the school says she is understandable and won't give any services, so we are not going the county route.

[Anonymous]

We are in the same boat - although my DS never qualified for early interventioned (he barely just passed). We are having him evaluated for articulation issues, nothing serious. They are charging $150. We are in NOVA.

[Anonymous]

This is OP. When my DS was assessed privately last year we paid $900. I'm not using the same group for DD b/c I thought that was outrageous. I am really looking to see if it's the average in MOCO or if it's high and what is the average I should expect to pay.

[Anonymous]

This spring, I had a conversation with a speech pathologist about my son and getting an articulation assessment for him. I think his rate was $90 / hour and said an assessment is usually about an hour, maybe more.

It took us a while to get scheduled (due to a lot of bad timing, including a death in the family) but between the initial conversation and actual appointment, my child had actually begun self correcting for the one area of concern. The day of the exam the pathologist interviewed me on my child's language development and history and also did a brief exam, in which my child got every sound correctly, including the problem sound.

The pathologist then told me that (a) my child was at the upper age range of saying that sound correctly and (b) that he WAS now saying it correctly, so he didn't think therapy was needed, but gentle reminders would work fine. (And, indeed, the reminders worked great. We don't even need them now.)

The time he took with the eval was so minimal he didn't feel it was appropriate to charge me.

This is all a very long winded response that "Yes, I think $120-$150 is probably the range for you." I wish I could remember better what was happening in the spring, but with everything going on, I'm happy to remember my own name.

The pathologist showed me a speech sound development chart, as each sound is clarified at different ages. It was helpful for me to see.

http://jwucommunicationasd.wikispaces.com/Wk1+sound+dev

http://www.talkingtails.net/SpeechSoundDevelopmentChart.php

[Anonymous]

OP, 21:34 here. I should note that I am in MOCO and used a pathologist who is with the Infants & Toddler's program. He has personal clients in late afternoons & evenings. He came referred to a friend, who had also used him with her child.

[Anonymous]

21:36. Thank you. This is OP. I looked at the charts. My DD doesn't have any double consonant sounds yet except TH and DR. She also has a tongue thrusting issue that I need to take care of prior to the need for braces (BTDT with my DS--although his ST is much much more extensive).

[Anonymous]

I think most insurance companies cover the initiaal evaluation if you can find a company that accepts insurance.

[Anonymous]

Are you private paying for speech therapy or what exactly is your goal? You may not need an assessment if you are private paying. We had a terrible time finding someone to take our insurance so we went to someone private pay (it was about $67 but range has been $50-80 per 1/2 hour) so we didn't need a full "assessment" as it was clear our child needed the help.

We finally got an evaluation out of our insurance and found someone to accept our insurance so we just have a small co-pay.

[Anonymous]

If you want it to be done properly and thoroughly, do it right the first time, to save you and your child wasted time and critical years.
It will cost $900 or more for ALL the appropriate assessments. Anything lower means they will do only the bare minimum.

[Anonymous]

Can't they use the assessment you did last year? Then if they start working on some of the things your dd scored low on, they can redo those tests to see if she still needs to work on that issue (or sound if she only has articulation issues). If she hasn't mastered the sound yet, then a new test isn't going to make a difference. For comparisons, I paid about $450-500 for an evaluation from National Speech about 3 years ago. Insurance covered at out of network rate (like many places, you pay and then submit on your own).

[Anonymous]

OP here. Last years assessment was for my DS. I'm not crazy about the group we go to for him, but it's a good fit for him. I was curious as to whether they were high or not. My DD will need a full assessment and we will have to go private as the county says it's not necessary (so no county svs for DD). Also, our insurance only covers speech for issues such as stroke recovery (catastrophic therapy type of events). So, it's all out of pocket for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you want it to be done properly and thoroughly, do it right the first time, to save you and your child wasted time and critical years.
It will cost $900 or more for ALL the appropriate assessments. Anything lower means they will do only the bare minimum.

Not OP. Just someone seeking clarification from this PP.

Are you saying that $900 is the cost of the total treatment? Or just the initial evaluation/assessment? If the initial eval/assessment, then exactly how long is that? For $900, it seems like it should be hours & hours of time.

[Anonymous]

We had both of our elementary aged kids, get full, thorough Speech language evaluations with speech pathologists at The Lab school. Each cost $1,100.

[Anonymous]

Pp. Our daughter's testing was 6 hours over 2 days. Our son's test was 4.5 hours, same cost. His test was shorter in time because he has more problems and was unable to complete do some parts of the tests.
We received 30 page, detailed reports on both kids. Invaluable.

[Anonymous]

I think it depends what kind of assessment you want. If you are only concerned about articulation issues, then a smaller fee is probably appropriate. But, if you see other language issues (small vocabulary, age-inapproriate grammar, word construction/morphology, semantic mistakes, word retrieval difficulty), then you might consider a broader language assessment that takes a couple of days with a lengthy report after several weeks. The latter regularly costs in the 800-1100 range. Health insurance might cover some portion of it.