A guide for families seeking clarity, collaboration, and the right professional fit.
Families often ask what they should consider before scheduling an evaluation. While cost and convenience are important, the right fit depends on the evaluator’s training, process, and collaboration style. This guide outlines key questions to help you make an informed, confident choice.
- Level of training and specialty: There is wide variability among providers in North Carolina and other states. You’ll want to choose an evaluator whose scope of practice and training best fit your needs and concerns.
- Scope: What domains will be assessed? Are the tests part of a fixed battery, or tailored to your specific concerns and relevant demographic factors?
- Initial meetings: Do you meet the provider before committing time and cost?
- Collaboration: If you are already working with other professionals—tutors, therapists, medical providers, parenting coordinators, attorneys, or a guardian ad litem—will they be consulted or involved, and how? What input will be sought from teachers, and from which ones?
- Second opinions or additional testing: If there has been recent testing, will the new provider start from scratch, or can prior results be incorporated to reduce cost and duplication?
- History: Who will be interviewed for background information, and who participates in intake interviews or related processes? If forms or questionnaires are completed, who fills them out?
- Training: If the evaluation is described as neuropsychological, did the provider complete a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in neuropsychology (the national standard)? If the evaluation will be used in a legal context, what is the evaluator’s knowledge, training, or experience in that area?
- Feedback: Who will attend the feedback session(s)? Will there be a separate meeting with the child? How will results and recommendations be shared with schools or other professionals?
- Technology: Will AI be used to summarize or draft portions of the report or history? If so, what information is used and how is it stored?
- Reporting style: Will the report include test-by-test interpretation, or emphasize integrated findings? Will it highlight strengths as well as challenges?
- Follow-through: Are individualized referrals or provider recommendations included, or billed separately?
- Cost: Does the provider accept insurance, HSA funds, or other payment options (such as ClassWallet or ESA+)?
- If the provider accepts insurance, ask about the number of service hours typically covered, how they conduct a comprehensive evaluation within those limits, and what your out-of-pocket costs will be.
- If the provider is self-pay, is the fee hourly or set? Do they provide superbills for possible out-of-network reimbursement?
Our answers to these questions appear throughout our website, including in our Frequently Asked Questions and related Blog posts. If you can’t find the information you need, please reach out by email or phone—we’re glad to help.
If we’re not the best fit for your needs, we’ll do our best to connect you with someone who is. We wouldn’t want any less for our own families.
Related Reading: Beyond the Numbers — Why Comprehensive Evaluations Take Time, Care, and Cost What They Do
Curious why evaluations can vary so much in cost and scope? In this companion post, Dr. Shapiro explains what a comprehensive evaluation truly involves, why insurance often can’t cover the full process, and how thoughtful, individualized assessment leads to clearer answers and better next steps.
