What if my internet cuts out during a virtual ADHD appointment?

A dropped call pauses the assessment; the plan is to rejoin, then phone

1. Wait a moment, then rejoin from the original appointment link. Most drops are brief and the session is still open on the clinician's side.
2. If video will not reconnect, watch for a call from the clinic. Answer unknown numbers during your appointment window; it is almost certainly your clinician.
3. The clinician decides whether to finish by phone or to book the remaining minutes as a short follow-up.
4. Any remaining time is rescheduled. You pick up where the interview stopped, not from the beginning.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario's Virtual Care policy requires that the technology used be fit for purpose and able to support the standard of care. A phone call satisfies that for most of a diagnostic interview, which is conversation, but the clinician may prefer video for parts of the assessment where seeing you matters. That judgment sits with the clinician, not with the platform, and it is the same standard the licensed nurse practitioners and clinicians working with Finding Focus apply.

Agree on a backup plan before the first minute

The two minutes before an assessment starts are the right time to set the fallback. A clinician who knows your phone number, your location and your second device can recover a lost connection without losing the thread of the conversation.

• Confirm the phone number on your file is the one beside you, and that your ringer is on.
• Have a second device signed in and ready: a phone if you are on a laptop, a laptop if you are on a phone.
• Know how to turn on your phone's hotspot in case home Wi-Fi is the problem.
• Tell the clinician at the start if you are somewhere with weak service, so the two of you can decide whether to begin with phone instead.

An interruption does not weaken the assessment itself

An adult ADHD assessment based on DSM-5-TR criteria is built from a structured clinical interview, standardized rating scales you complete beforehand, and, where possible, collateral information from someone who knew you as a child. The CADDRA guidelines describe the clinical interview combined with rating scales as the mainstay of diagnosis. None of those pieces depends on an unbroken video stream. Your questionnaires are already on file, the clinician records answers as you give them, and the interview can resume at the question where it stopped.

The Finding Focus adult assessment runs up to 75 minutes. If a disruption costs ten of those, the clinician can extend, finish by phone, or book a short follow-up, and results and a treatment plan are still often available within hours of the completed assessment. An assessment can also conclude that you do not have ADHD; a reconnection changes nothing about what the criteria require.

Privacy rules still apply when you switch from video to phone

Ontario's Personal Health Information Protection Act applies to virtual care exactly as it does to in-person care, and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario's guidance on virtual visits expects clinics to plan for technology failures rather than improvise. The CPSO Virtual Care policy adds that a less secure channel, which a standard phone line is, may be used only with your express consent. Expect the clinician to ask before continuing by phone, and to check that you are still somewhere you cannot be overheard.

One thing to avoid: do not move the appointment to a consumer messaging app or a personal video account of your own to save time. Clinics choose platforms for encryption and record-keeping, and switching to an unvetted tool creates exactly the gap the rules are designed to prevent. You can read more about how a telehealth appointment is kept private and secure.

Five minutes of setup prevents most drops

• Sit close to the router, or plug in with a cable if your laptop allows it.
• Pause downloads, cloud backups and anyone else's streaming in the house for the hour.
• Open the appointment link a few minutes early to test camera, microphone and permissions.
• Plug in your device; a dying battery ends more calls than a slow connection.
• Use a current browser or the clinic's app rather than an old version.
• Keep your phone charged and unlocked beside you as the fallback line.

You do not need special equipment. A phone, tablet or laptop with a camera and a stable connection is enough, and a laptop is easier for a 75-minute conversation because it stays put. The technical requirements are spelled out on what technology you need for an online ADHD assessment, and there is a separate answer on doing the assessment from your phone.

If it is the clinician's connection that fails, the same plan runs in reverse

Clinics have outages too. When the clinician's video drops, they will rejoin the same link or call you, and the appointment continues or is rebooked in the same way. You should not have to pay a second assessment fee for time lost to the clinic's own technology; ask at booking how the clinic handles rescheduling so there are no surprises. The identity check done at the start of the visit is normally repeated by voice when a call resumes, so keep your ID nearby until the appointment ends.