Central Iowa Psychological Services

Nursing Homes

The staff at Central Iowa Psychological Services provides a wide variety of services to older adults residing in nursing homes, residential care facilities and assisted living. These services can be conducted at the facility or in the office.

Some of the issues that we work with include: Aging, depression, grief and loss, death and dying, caregiving, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, coping with change such as retirement or moving from one's home, and normal memory loss.

We will bill all services to the individual’s insurance, coordinate with the care facility, and will communicate and coordinate with the patient’s primary care doctor. In order to do this, all paperwork needs to be filled out and signed before Dr. Ahrens is able to come to see a new patient. Paperwork must be signed by a legally competent older adult, their guardian or Power of Attorney.

To give consent under the HIPAA laws (Privacy Notice (1 page pdf) ) for our therapists to treat the patient and to allow the service to be billed to their insurance carrier/Medicare the following documents need to be completed and signed.

HIPAA Consent and Agreement Form (4 page pdf)
Intake Form (5 page pdf)

To allow necessary communication and appropriate documentation with the primary care doctor and the care facility releases of information must be signed. In most instances a resident will need a release of information to their primary care doctor and a second release of information to the facility in which they live. You may also feel it necessary or desirable for a therapist to communicate with others regarding this individual, at which time you are asked to fill out additional necessary releases of information. Each release needs to be filled out completely and not just signed.

Release of Information **NOTE - please print as many copies as your resident requires.

Once all of the necessary paperwork has been completed, maintain the paperwork in the resident’s chart at their home facility and call our office at 515-222-1999 to arrange a time for one of our therapists to come to see the resident. We look forward to working with you and your residents to improve the quality of their lives, to aide their families, and to ease the tasks for facility staff providing day to day care giving. Should you have any questions during the process of referring a new client please do not hesitate to contact either Dr. Ahrens or our office staff directly.

Send us an email or give us a call at (515) 222-1999 (for West Des Moines) or (515) 233-1122 (for Ames).

For more information or to arrange an appointment, please contact us:
Central Iowa Psychological Services