How To Structure Your Practice | TPOT 192

One of the questions that I get asked a lot is just around how to structure your practice. So, in this episode, I walk through with you exactly how I have my practice structured. I talk about the process from the time we receive a client intake form to when we discharge a client and all the things that happen along the way. I speak about both the business and clinical side of my practice. Lastly, I make sure to point out all the software we use to keep our practice running as smoothly and as efficiently as possible. 

How We Do Our Intakes

In addition to the other clinicians working with me, we also have a part-time intake coordinator. The vast majority of people that come to us usually is through our website www.kingsportcounseling.com. In addition, we do get a fair number of direct referrals from doctors' offices and insurances. We are an insurance-based practice, and we get many referrals from people who find us in the insurance company directories.

People will contact us predominantly through phone calls. At our practice, we use https://www.phone.com/. It is a modern, work-from-anywhere solution for today's agile, mobile, and always-on growing businesses. Our intake coordinator can use her app at home to answer phone calls. Usually, one of the first things you want to outsource is somebody to answer the phone. Keep in mind that it is great to have a system that is accessible from anywhere in the country.

Setting Up Appointments In TherapyNotes

The one thing about TherapyNotes that I love is that it's also linked to a clearinghouse. Since we're insurance-based, all of the insurance claims are filed through TherapyNotes. We set up the patient's biographical information, and we do our documentation; all of those sorts of things are completed through TherapyNotes. In other words, the whole clinical side of our practice is managed through TherapyNotes. However, there are some forms that we have in Google Workspace. When we have a new client, we send them to the TherapyNotes portal. They fill out all their intake paperwork, and we do all the billing through TherapyNotes. 

Filing Individual Insurance Claims 

Now, as far as filing individual insurance claims, I've got that outsourced as well through Practice Solutions. Practice Solutions make sure all the claims are ready to be sent in. Plus, they follow up if there are problems with a claim or if the insurance company rejects it. Both of these things can be very time-consuming; that's why I decided to outsource those tasks. If you have time to do those things, you can do all of that in conjunction with TherapyNotes. For my size practice, it's more cost-efficient to outsource those items.  

What You Need For Online Therapy

Each therapist within our practice sets their own schedule. They also are made aware of when clients owe money, or when we need to collect the copay. We follow up individually with each client about what they owe us, and if they owe a copay or not. TherapyNotes is a wonderful platform to handle all of this. Plus, TherapyNotes has a telehealth portal that can be used to do sessions with people. During Covid, we were using doxy.me. They make telemedicine simple and easy to use for both therapists and patients. The downside of the free version of doxy.me is that you could only see one client at a time. Another platform we used during Covid was Google Meet. 

Valuable Tools That Make My Practice Efficient  

For faxes, we use a service called Sfax. If we need to fax providers or fax things to people, we use that service. Sfaxenables you to send, receive, annotate, digitally sign and manage faxes without printing a single physical document.

I use QuickBooks as my main accounting software. However, in QuickBooks, you have to be careful about not using client names. 

I have a course out there called Money Matters In Private Practice. It goes into the whole accounting side of running a private practice. 

Gusto is the payroll service that I use. I enter payroll twice a month to pay my clinicians. Plus, we can get our health insurance through Gusto. Everything syncs automatically — time tracking, new hires, benefits plans, and more.

Being transparent… Some of the resources below use affiliate links which simply means we receive a commission if you purchase using the links, at no extra cost to you. Thanks for using the links!

 

Resources

Use the promo code "GORDON" to get 2 months of Therapy Notes free.

Enneagram Course

Killin’It Camp

Google Workspace As A Practice Management Platform

Gusto

Phone.com

Practice Solutions

TherapyNotes

Doxy.me

QuickBooks

Sfax

Google Meet

Money Matters In Private Practice

Purchase The Full Focus Planner™

Join the Google Workspace for Therapists Users Group

Follow @PracticeofTherapy on Instagram

Meet Gordon Brewer, MEd, LMFT

Gordon is the person behind The Practice of Therapy Podcast & Blog. He is also President and Founder of Kingsport Counseling Associates, PLLC. He is a therapist, consultant, business mentor, trainer, and writer. PLEASE Subscribe to The Practice of Therapy Podcast wherever you listen to it. Follow us on Twitter @therapistlearn, and Pinterest, “Like” us on Facebook.