Montrella Cowan, LCSW

I attempted to make an appointment with this person. She was very methodical and curt. She also didn’t send me forms to fill out until after 10pm. My appointment was not kept due to my not filling out these late forms on time. Then to add injury to an insult, she sends an apology email then deactivates my account. Just like with some nurses, clearly there are too many people in the wrong occupation. SMH

The very short story is that I was told by Ms Cowan that my insurance company (who has her listed as an in-network provider) was rejecting her claims. As a matter of good faith, I began paying the FULL cash price until I got it sorted out. Weeks went by...Ms Cowan maintained insurance was rejecting the claims, insurance said that they never received any. One day I happened to look at my online insurance portal and every single claim that she claimed had been refused had all been submitted, processed, and paid out on the same day. So Ms. Cowan got paid by both the insurance company and me. I gave the benefit of the doubt and reached out to Ms. Cowan to see if she could apply my cash payments to future copays. No response. I called, emailed, and got ignored. I called the insurance company to ask what I needed to do to get a refund, explained the situation, and they immediately transferred me to their fraud investigation department. They investigated and I FINALLY got my refund.

When I first sought out therapy, I was looking for a black therapist with experience in PTSD, depression and anxiety. I asked Montrella if those were fields she had experience with, she said yes. I went to her about 3/4 times until I realized she didn’t know what she was doing but she always made sure to collect her 40$ co-pay at the beginning of each session. Come to find out, my co-pay was only $30. When I told her I wanted my $40 refunded, she said she would just apply it to another session. I told her I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t have any intentions of seeing her for treatment. She ignored my emails and phone calls. I think she’s just ripping people off and pretending to be a therapist.

Be careful with her. She tried to make me pay out of pocket $500 for a class in addition to weekly therapy, and brought it up every session. Also left at the start of our session to get lipstick from Macys.

The previous reviewer had the same issues I did with Ms. Cowan. She was chronically late for our appointments (sometimes up to 30 minutes). She didn't properly submit claims to insurance (although she was supposedly in-network) and tried to get me to pay out-of-pocket. She tried to get me to submit the claims myself. Also, she is very religious and the bias comes across in sessions.

So unprofessional and unresponsive regarding claims and billing. Charged out of pocket rates even though I was in-network, used different tax IDs to submit claims and used wrong codes that were not covered by my plan. All around shady. Still, have not been refunded.