Patient resources
Your first psychiatry visit, start to finish.
Most first-time patients ask the same practical questions: how booking works, what the intake hour covers, what it costs, and what happens afterward. This guide walks the whole sequence at this practice in the order you will actually meet each step, from the IntakeQ form to your first follow-up. It is a guide to the logistics, not medical advice, and it reads the same at both doors of the practice.
One practice, two ways in: therapy and medication care at psych.us is the full practice, and medication management only at PsychMed Care is the dedicated prescribing door. Locations, insurance, fees and booking for both live on this site.
Booking and forms
Three things happen before the intake.
You book on IntakeQ
Booking runs through IntakeQ, never through a form on this website, because scheduling and intake paperwork carry health information. You pick a time inside practice hours, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 7:00 to 19:00 Central, or Saturday, 7:00 to 13:00 Central, and complete the intake forms ahead of the visit. The forms are where your history starts: current medications, past treatment, and what you want care to change.
Your coverage is checked
Send a photo of your insurance card with the forms, and the practice verifies your plan before the appointment rather than after it. You hear your exact copay in advance. Most in-network patients here pay between $0 and $40 a visit. Paying directly instead is equally plain: $350 for the intake and $250 for each follow-up, the published rates at both doors.
Records, if you have them
If another clinician has treated you, recent records help the intake go deeper faster: prior medication lists, hospital summaries, and lab results from the past year. Records move by fax at (541) 508-4525, or through the patient portal once you are established. None of it is required to book. Plenty of first visits start from a clean slate, and the conversation itself builds the record.
Before the hour
A short list to have at hand.
Five things make the intake sharper. Your current medication list, with doses and how long you have taken each one. A brief timeline of past treatment, including anything you stopped and why. The name and location of your pharmacy. Any recent lab results you can reach. And one or two sentences, in your own words, about what you most want to be different.
None of this is homework with a grade attached. Patients who arrive with none of it still get a full intake; the list only moves the conversation to its useful parts sooner. If gathering records would delay you by weeks, book first and let the records follow behind.
The intake hour
Sixty minutes, built as a conversation.
The first appointment runs a full hour, and its shape is a conversation rather than an interrogation. Your clinician works through what brought you in, how long it has been building, and how it touches your sleep, your work, and the people around you. Your medication history gets the same care: what you have taken, at what doses, what helped, what did not, and what you stopped because of side effects.
Medical background counts here too. Problems like thyroid trouble, low vitamin B12, or chronically poor sleep can change how a psychiatric picture is read, so expect questions about your general health and any testing you have already had. When a lab result would change a decision, your clinician will say so and explain what is being checked and why, rather than ordering panels by routine.
You can also expect plain talk about what one visit cannot do. An hour builds a working picture, not a final verdict, and some questions stay open until follow-up visits, and lab results where they help, fill them in. Leaving with a considered plan and a few open questions is a normal outcome of a careful intake.
Decisions
You leave with a plan you helped make.
By the end of the hour there is a direction, and it is one you shape. Your clinician lays out what the picture looks like, the reasonable options, and the trade-offs inside each one, including watchful waiting where that is the honest choice. If medication starts, you hear what it is meant to do, how long a fair trial runs, and what the early side effects usually feel like.
If you already have a therapist and want prescribing only, say so at the intake and the plan stays medication focused. If you want therapy and medication handled by one clinician, that is the other door of this same practice, and the intake covers both halves from the start. Either way, the follow-up schedule is set before you log off.
Cost sits inside the plan conversation too. If a medication or a test carries a real price, you hear it before anything is ordered, and lower-cost routes are weighed in the open. A surprise bill is a failure of process, and this practice treats it that way.
After the visit
The first follow-up checks the plan against reality.
Follow-ups run 30 minutes, usually every few weeks at the start and further apart as things settle. The first one looks at early response: sleep, side effects, and whether the plan still fits what you described at the intake. Adjustments are made in the visit, with the reasoning said out loud, and the next interval is set by how things are actually going rather than by a template.
Between visits, established patients message through the patient portal or on Spruce, and records, labs, and medication history stay in one chart your clinician reads before every appointment. If your needs change later, moving between the two doors of the practice is a conversation with the clinician who already knows your history, not a second intake with a stranger.
Keep going
Where to go next
book a first visit · therapy with a psychiatric clinician · the medication intake
Begin with the booking page.
New patient intakes run 60 minutes. Follow-ups run 30. Booking happens on IntakeQ, and every plan is verified before the first visit.