Appointments, fees & rebates

Psychology sessions are typically of one hour duration - fifty minutes face-to-face with your psychologist (who uses the remaining ten minutes for administration such as casenotes and filing). 

The standard fee for a fifty-minute session is $240. The Medicare rebate (if you have a referral from a GP) is $96.65, leaving an out-of-pocket gap fee of $143.35. In cases of unemployment or significant financial hardship, a reduced gap fee may be considered - please discuss with your psychologist. 

We occasionally also employ experienced intern psychologists who usually have five or six years of training, are provisionally registered with the regulatory body AHPRA, and are in their final stages of training.  A mental health care plan or doctor's referral is not required to see our interns, and the cost is marginally lower than the gap fee for our more senior psychologists.  The current fee per session for our intern psychologists is $130. 

Fees for NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) are currently $222.99 per session, and this fee is reviewed nationally and periodically. 

Longer sessions are often preferred by some clients and are billed pro-rata at $240 per hour.  A session that is pre-booked as an hour and a half for example (seventy-five minutes face-to-face) would be billed as $360.  Please discuss this preference with your psychologist and please note that Medicare will rebate only one session payment of $96.65 per session per day, regardless of gap fee paid. 

Most private health insurance funds provide rebates as well for psychological services, depending on your level of cover. Please check with your fund.

Please note that the Australian Association of Psychologists (peak body for practising psychologists) recommends a fee of $315 per hour, indexed annually. However, Ripple Psychology holds a fundamental belief in equity and accessibility, and is committed to keeping its fees reasonable and substantially more affordable than the national standard fee recommended by the AAPi.  We review and index our fees annually, with any CPI increases taking effect over the New Year break. The standard fee at Ripple Psychology ($240) is substantially less than the recommended fee of $315.  Please note that in some cases the recommended fee of $315 will be charged.  These exceptions include report writing, family or criminal court work, and MHCP sessions where the client has reached the Medicare Safety Net (in which case Medicare will cover 80% of the gap, leaving an out-of-pocket expense of less than $40 for most clients). 

Please note that although we do implement the recommended fee of $315 once clients have reached the Medicare Safety Net, we do not charge any surcharge for evening or weekend sessions at any time through the year. 

Medicare indexes its rebates for psychology from time to time, and usually makes those increases from July 1st.  Ripple Psychology indexes its fees annually from January 1st.