ABOUT US
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Welcome To Couch & Cardigan
About Sam Shapiro, M.D.
Sam Shapiro, M.D. is a psychiatrist with over 10 years of clinical experience, who is board-certified in both general and forensic psychiatry. He is the founding member of Couch & Cardigan, an independent practice located in Austin and serving patients throughout Texas.
Dr. Shapiro completed his medical degree at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), and he completed both his psychiatry residency and his forensic psychiatry fellowship training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Dr. Shapiro’s clinical expertise includes working with college and university students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, having previously practiced psychiatry full-time at one of the largest universities in the country (UT Austin), and he continues to provide telepsychiatry services to college and university students located throughout Texas, New York, and Florida.
Dr. Shapiro’s expertise also includes treating veterans. He has practiced in three distinct outpatient Veterans Affairs clinic in Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania, with experience in recognizing and treating posttraumatic stress, in addition to co-occurring depression and anxiety.
Dr. Shapiro has clinical experience in emergency room settings, hospital settings, and forensic settings as well. He has supervised medical students and physicians-in-training, and has previously held affiliate faculty positions at Dell Medical School (Austin, TX) and New York Institute of Technology (Old Westbury, NY). He has previously been a medical director for a partial hospital/intensive outpatient therapy program.
Currently, Dr. Shapiro continues to treat college students on a regular basis throughout Texas, New York, and Florida, and continues to treat veterans in Pennsylvania through his work with Veterans Affairs.
Why Choose Couch & CArdigan?
The time and space for wellness.
Dr. Shapiro offers unhurried and comprehensive appointments, with time to talk and feel understood. Dr. Shapiro knows about medicine options, integrative treatment approaches, therapies and the mind-body connection, but he also knows that you are the expert on you. This is why working together on a treatment plan is so important.
Services include therapy-informed medicine management (examples of ‘therapy-informed’ being applying cognitive-behavioral/CBT, psychodynamic, and/or motivational interviewing principles), individual therapy sessions, and health coaching.
Dr. Shapiro can provide forensic consultations, but these services are not offered to current patients of his practice.
If you’d like to know more, please call for a free initial 10 minute phone consultation: (516) 531 – 7660
Our Services
Medication Management
Medicine can help reduce or relieve the symptoms in many mood, anxiety, attention, and behavioral health conditions.
Dr. Shapiro believes in careful and conscientious medicine selection, and that choosing the right medicine is a collaborative process. He thinks that discussion, expressed preferences, and educated choices are all key ingredients to successful medicine treatment.
Online Appointments
Telehealth appointments bring a convenience and privacy that many still prefer to the office.
Couch & Cardigan offers telehealth appointments through a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform. Please to request a consult if you’d like to learn more about online appointments.
Forensic Consultations
Dr. Shapiro has fellowship training and ABPN board-certification in forensic psychiatry. He can bring his expertise as a consultant to forensic cases where expert psychiatric opinion is relevant (not available for current patients of Couch & Cardigan, as this is a consultant role).
Request an APPOINTMENT
Let's Chat.
If you’re located in Austin, Texas or nearby, appointments can be arranged to be at the office or online. Dr. Shapiro also offers online telehealth appointments throughout Texas.
Appointments can also be offered online throughout New York and Florida – note that in these circumstances, Dr. Shapiro does not prescribe any controlled medications (e.g. stimulants like Adderall, benzodiazepines like Xanax)
Office Hours: Fridays, 08:00 am – 06:00 pm
Online appointments can potentially be arranged on early mornings,
evenings, or weekends by request.
FAQ
Generally Asked
Questions.
The first appointment is a consultation where there is a detailed review of your concerns, with further inquiries about parts of your history that would be relevant to making the best treatment recommendation we can. It is longer in duration, lasting around seventy-five minutes. At the end of the appointment, there will be a discussion as to what type of treatment is recommended and whether Couch & Cardigan can meet your needs. Medicine may not be prescribed at the first visit.
Possibly, but not necessarily. This depends on the discussed treatment plan, and whether it’s clear we can meet your treatment needs. It’s not typical, but sometimes a consultation may need to extend to an additional appointment to clarify the issues. In these situations, extended visits will be billed as follow-ups.
These appointments follow after the first appointment, after a treatment plan has been agreed upon. They tend to be shorter in length (20-25 minutes) and therefore cost less than the initial appointment. In these appointments, the treatment plan can be refined and changed to best meet your needs.
Follow-up appointments tend to occur more frequently at the beginning of treatment; one can expect follow-ups every 2-4 weeks in the first two or three months, sometimes more frequently based on the degree of symptoms. In time, the appointments become more spaced out.
At a minimum, follow-ups are recommended once every 3 months to ensure the best ongoing care.
Couch & Cardigan is currently out-of-network with insurances and therefore does not accept insurances, or directly bill insurances for services.
At this time, all appointment fees are collected prior to beginning that day’s appointment.
Patients can receive a document called a superbill, which is a receipt that includes information about the services provided and the associated costs. Patient can submit this superbill to their insurance for partial reimbursement of the services.
Patients will receive a good faith estimate (GFE), which is a list of expected charges for the year.
A psychiatrist is a doctor who completed either medical school (MD) or a school of osteopathy (DO), and then went on to specialize in the field of psychiatry through a program called a residency. Psychiatry residency programs are, for the most part, four years in length. A psychiatrist can then do additional specialty training in fields such as forensics (law), child and adolescent care, elder care, or specialized consultation/liaison services.
In treatment planning, psychiatrists can offer therapy, medication, interventional treatments, holistic-focused treatments, or a combination thereof.
