Cancellation policy:

Cancellation must take place no later than 2 business days / 48 hours before the scheduled appointment. Later notice or failure to attend will be charged in full, regardless of the reason for the cancellation.

This means, for example, that the cancellation for an appointment on Monday at 10 must occur no later than Thursday at 10.

If possible, I will try to find another time on the same day or conduct the session online or by phone. If this is not possible, the session will be charged in full.

The cancellation deadline is a compromise between the psychologist's need for predictability to plan the week and the patient's need for flexibility.

If you realize that you cannot make a scheduled appointment, please provide notice well in advance.

Information from the Norwegian Psychological Association regarding cancellations:

Cancelled therapy sessions and compensation

The Norwegian Psychological Association occasionally receives questions from individual patients about whether it is correct for them to have to pay the psychologist for regular appointments that the patient has canceled for "necessary reasons."

Psychologists in private practice take in only a limited number of patients/clients to have enough time for them. Psychologists usually set aside one or two fixed hours per week for their patients. These fixed hours, often at a set time, are an agreement, or a contract, between the psychologist and the patient. The psychologist's part of the contract is that he/she does not take in more patients in the practice than can accommodate the regularly scheduled appointments. The psychologist, therefore, commits his/her time to fixed agreements with patients. The psychologist relies on this being mutual, i.e., that patients also commit their time to the scheduled appointments. This type of regular agreement is a clear arrangement in therapy/treatment with a psychologist.

Since the psychologist commits his/her time to specific patients, it is not easy to fill canceled hours. Psychologists do not have a queue of people to fill in for individual hours that become available. To take in new clients, the psychologist, in most cases, must know that he/she has available capacity for a considerable time in the future, not just a randomly available hour.

If the psychologist is informed well in advance that the scheduled hours do not work and, therefore, must be canceled, they can often rearrange with their regular patients and thus use the canceled hour. The cancellation must, therefore, be given well in advance. Most professional groups in private practice have cancellation deadlines. If the deadlines are not met, the hourly rate must be paid. The cancellation deadline varies depending on the type of business. Considering the special nature of psychologists' activities, a cancellation deadline of up to one week is recommended. Filling available hours on one or two days' notice is usually not possible for a psychologist, and these are then too short notice periods for cancellations. However, there is nothing to prevent the psychologist from using a shorter cancellation deadline than one week. Regardless of the cancellation deadline that applies, the deadline and the fee for the unused hour should be clear to the patient before the treatment begins.

The Norwegian Psychological Association recommends that each psychologist informs their patients at the beginning of the treatment, either through an information letter or a treatment contract, about the cancellation deadlines that apply. The information should also specify the cost to the patient for too short notice of cancellation so that the psychologist does not suffer undue loss.

Translated from: https://www.psykologforeningen.no/lonn-og-arbeid/privat-praksis/oppstart-av-privat-praksis