Telehealth and Where We Practice

Wele Clinic provides in-person care in New Yorkonly. Telehealth is available to patients who are physically located, at the time of the visit, in a state where Dr. Omidvari holds a current medical licence — New York in every case. Tell us where you will be when you book, and we will confirm before the appointment that we are licensed to treat you there.

A physician may only treat a patient in a state where that physician holds a licence, and the state that counts is the one the patientis in — not the one the clinic is in. That is why we ask where you are at the start of every remote appointment.

In-person care

All in-person care is provided at one location: 1123 Broadway, Suite 1117, New York, NY 10010. We have no second office and no other treatment site. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 8:00 pm Eastern Time. You can see the building, the floor and how to reach it on our location page.

Spravato and IV ketamine

Spravato (esketamine) and IV ketamine are provided in our office only, in New York. They are never delivered by telehealth, in any state, for any patient. A telehealth appointment can be used to talk about whether one of these treatments might suit you, but the treatment itself always happens in the office, with a physician in the room.

Telehealth psychotherapy and medication management

Two of our services can be delivered remotely by secure video or, where video is not workable, by telephone: psychotherapy and medication management. Both require you to be physically located, at the moment the appointment starts, in a state covered by a current licence.

Where we are not licensed, we cannot treat you — not by video, not by telephone, and not in writing. That holds even if you normally live in a state we serve and are only travelling.

So if you will be away when an appointment falls due, tell us before the visit rather than during it. We will reschedule you for a date when you are back, at no cost, and we can help you find care where you are if something cannot wait.

The licence behind each state we serve

Care at Wele Clinic is provided by Mohammadmehdi Omidvari, M.D.. You can check the licence below yourself at the New York State Office of the Professions verification search, and see his full credential record on our Licensing & Credentials page.

Physician

Mohammadmehdi Omidvari, M.D.

New York medical licence

No. 292862, issued March 5, 2018, registered through November 30, 2027

In-person care available in

New York

States covered by a current licence

New York

Booking and joining

You can book a telehealth appointment the same way you book any other: call us on (646) 874-9340, request a call back from our contact page, or book online at our booking site. Tell us at booking that you would like the appointment by video, and tell us the state you will be in.

Before the appointment you receive a confirmation with the date and time, any forms to complete beforehand, and a private link to the video room. The link is for you alone. Open it a few minutes early so there is time to sort out a microphone or a camera permission before the clinical time starts.

What you need

• A phone, tablet or computer with a working camera and microphone.
• An internet connection stable enough for video. A wired or home Wi-Fi connection is more reliable than mobile data in a moving vehicle.
• A private, quiet place where you can speak freely and will not be overheard or interrupted. A parked car is acceptable; a moving one is not.
• A government-issued photo ID within reach for your first visit.
• A phone number we can call if the video connection drops.

How we confirm who you are

At the start of your first telehealth visit we ask you to hold a government-issued photo ID up to the camera and to confirm your full name and date of birth. At every visit after that, your clinician confirms your name and date of birth on camera before any clinical discussion begins, and confirms the state and street address where you are sitting.

Your clinician also identifies himself to you, by name and role, at the start of each visit. If anyone else is in the room at either end — a family member, an interpreter, a trainee — that is said out loud and noted in your record, and you can ask that they leave.

The platform, and what is not recorded

Telehealth visits run on a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform with encryption in transit. We do not use consumer chat or social video apps for clinical appointments.

We do not record telehealth visits. No video and no audio of your appointment is captured or kept. We ask that you do not record either, unless you have discussed it with your clinician first and it is agreed and noted in your chart.

This section is a plain-language summary of the telehealth informed consent. It is published so you can read it calmly, before an appointment, rather than meeting it for the first time on a screen. The consent you actually give is recorded and stored in your medical record, and we obtain it before your first telehealth visit.

What you understand

You understand that a telehealth appointment is a clinical visit conducted by live video — or, if video fails, by telephone — rather than in the same room as your clinician, and that it is subject to the same professional standards, the same documentation and the same confidentiality as an in-person visit.

Benefits

• Access to a board-certified psychiatrist without travel, parking or time away from work.
• Continuity of care when illness, caring responsibilities, mobility or weather would otherwise mean a cancelled appointment.
• Easier scheduling, which for psychiatric care often matters more than convenience alone: regular, uninterrupted follow-up is part of the treatment.
• The option to be seen in your own surroundings, which some people find easier for talking therapy.

Limitations

• Your clinician cannot physically examine you. There is no blood-pressure cuff, no pulse, no neurological examination and no in-person observation of side effects such as tremor or gait change.
• Some assessments genuinely cannot be done well remotely. Where that is the case, your clinician will tell you and ask you to come in, or to have a specific test or examination done locally.
• Video flattens some of the information a clinician uses — posture, smell, restlessness, how someone occupies a room. Occasionally that matters.
• No laboratory work, injection, infusion, Spravato dose or in-office monitoring can happen during a remote visit.
• Technology can fail, and a failure can cut a visit short.

Risks

• The connection can be interrupted or lost, which can delay a visit or, rarely, mean it has to be finished another day.
• Poor audio or video quality can lead to something being misheard or missed.
• Despite the safeguards we and our vendors put in place, no electronic transmission can be guaranteed absolutely secure. There is a small residual risk of an unauthorised person gaining access to information sent electronically.
• The privacy of the space you join from is not something we can control — see Records and privacy below.
• If you are in crisis, a clinician on a screen cannot physically intervene. Emergency help has to come from where you are.

What we ask of you

• Tell us the state and the street address where you are physically located at the start of every telehealth visit. This is how we confirm we are licensed to treat you, and it is the address emergency services would be sent to.
• Give us a phone number that reaches you during the visit.
• Give us the name and phone number of an emergency contact, and keep it current.
• Tell us the name and location of a nearby emergency room or urgent-care facility if we ask for one.
• Join from a private space, and use headphones if anyone else is nearby.

You can change your mind

You may withdraw your consent to telehealth at any time and ask to be seen in person instead. You do not have to give a reason, there is no penalty, and it will not affect your care, your standing with the practice or your access to any treatment.

The one practical limit is geography: an in-person appointment can only be provided at our office in New York, at 1123 Broadway, Suite 1117, New York, NY 10010.

Your clinician may decide an in-person visit is necessary

Consent runs both ways. Your clinician may conclude that telehealth is not appropriate for you — at the outset, or later on — and ask you to be seen in person. That may be because a physical examination or in-office monitoring is needed, because a medication under consideration requires it, because your symptoms have changed, or simply because remote assessment is not giving him enough to work with. If that happens he will explain why and we will arrange the in-person appointment.

Whether a medication can be prescribed during a telehealth visit depends on the medication and on federal and state law, which change from time to time. Some medications, including controlled substances, may require an in-person evaluation first. Your clinician will tell you what applies to your situation before you rely on it.

Ketamine and Spravato are never prescribed for use at home. They are administered only in our office, under direct physician monitoring, and are never dispensed, mailed or provided for use outside the clinic.

No appointment, in person or remote, comes with a promise of a prescription. Whether any medication is prescribed, and which one, is a clinical decision your psychiatrist makes with you after evaluating your history, your current symptoms, your other medications and the risks involved. If a medication is not appropriate for you, we will say so and discuss what else can be done.

Nothing on this website is a prescription or medical advice, and no patient-physician relationship is created by browsing the site, submitting a form or using the chat box. That relationship begins when you are evaluated by the clinician at a booked appointment. See our Medical Disclaimer.

Appointments, forms, voicemail and the chat box are not monitored around the clock, and none of them is a route to urgent help. Between appointments, in a crisis, use 911, 988 or your nearest emergency room — those are staffed at every hour and we are not.

Connections drop. It is worth knowing in advance what happens next, so that a technical problem does not turn into a lost appointment.

1. 1.Stay where you are and try to rejoin using the same link. Most interruptions clear within a minute or two.
2. 2.If you cannot rejoin, your clinician will call you on the phone number you gave us at the start of the visit. Please keep that line free.
3. 3.If audio is workable but video is not, the visit can continue by telephone, provided your clinician judges that a telephone visit is clinically appropriate for what you are seeing him about. If it is not, you will be rescheduled instead.
4. 4.If we cannot reach you at all, your clinician will leave a voicemail or a message and our team will contact you to rearrange.

A visit that cannot go ahead because of a technical failure is not treated as a late cancellation or a no-show, and no cancellation or no-show fee applies to it. Where a visit ends early for technical reasons and the clinical work is not finished, we will complete it at a rescheduled appointment without an additional charge.

If you are in distress and lose contact with your clinician, do not wait for a call back — call (646) 874-9340, or use 911 or 988 if you are unsafe.

Telehealth visits are charged at the same rates as the equivalent in-person visits. There is no premium for being seen remotely and no separate technology fee.

Initial consultation

US$490, by video or in person

Follow-up session

US$275, by video or in person

The same cancellation and no-show terms apply to a telehealth appointment as to an in-person one, and how a visit is billed — self-pay, superbill or direct billing — follows the rules for that service rather than for the format it is delivered in.

Full details, including what you are charged, when payment is due, the cancellation window and how refunds work, are in our Fees, Payment & Cancellation Policy. If you are uninsured or not using insurance for a visit, you are also entitled to a written Good Faith Estimate of the expected cost before you are seen.

A telehealth visit is documented in exactly the same medical record as an in-person one. There is no separate or lesser chart for remote care: the same notes, the same prescriptions, the same retention period and the same rights of access, amendment and copying apply.

Our Notice of Privacy Practices applies in full to everything discussed or recorded during a telehealth visit, and sets out how your health information may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to it. Any vendor that handles your health information on our behalf, including the video platform, is engaged under a written Business Associate Agreement.

We cannot control the privacy of the room you are sitting in. Please join from a space where you will not be overheard, use headphones if anyone else is in the building, and avoid shared or public computers and open public Wi-Fi for clinical appointments.

Tell your clinician if someone else can hear you. If a visit cannot be held privately at your end, it is usually better to stop and rearrange than to have a conversation you have to edit.

If anything here is unclear, or you want to know whether telehealth is suitable for what you are dealing with, call us and ask. We would rather answer the question before you book than have you find out mid-appointment.

Practice

Wele Clinic is the registered assumed name of Omidvari Psychiatry P.C., a New York domestic professional service corporation.

Address

1123 Broadway, Suite 1117, New York, NY 10010, United States

Phone

(646) 874-9340

Office hours

Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 8:00 pm Eastern Time

Related policies

Licensing & Credentials, Fees, Payment & Cancellation Policy, Notice of Privacy Practices

Please do not send clinical details, symptoms or medication questions by web form or chat — those channels are not monitored continuously and are not the right place for protected health information. Call (646) 874-9340 instead, or raise it at your next appointment.