Therapy Partner's Blog

Practice Building Strategies: Multiple Steams of Revenue

therapypartner — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:32:46 +0000

Practice Building Strategies

What the Practice Advisors say about: Multiple Steams of Revenue Do you only earn money providing direct care? Learning to generate multiple streams of income can give you the financial and professional resilience you have been looking for all along. Passive income is an idea we often never contemplate as therapists. In fact, we find that most therapists often have no exit strategy, or an on-going savings or retirement plan. When I ask clinicians what their “exit or retirement” strategy is, they often laugh and remark, “I intend to die in my chair!” Unfortunately, this is the sad truth for too many therapists. Developing multiple streams of income in your practice will help ensure you don’t have to spend your golden years dying in your treatment chair—unless you want to. Here are a few things you can do to begin making money outside of providing direct service to patients. Invest in yourself! Educate the Public! Hire Associates! Promote your Expertise! Give Back to your Colleagues! 1. Invest in yourself! You can carve yourself out from the pack just by being a bit business savvy. As a good rule of thumb, speak to your colleagues and other mental health professionals about your clients, transference issues, diagnostic differentials, treatment planning and other issues arising in treatment. However, when you need advice relating to the business of your practice, speak to business professionals. Far too many therapists engage in bad or even risky business activities without even knowing it, simply because a well-intentioned colleague offered less-than-adequate advice they may not have been qualified to provide in the first place. Clinicians that invest in themselves seek out proper business advise, utilize business plans, and outsource functions of their business like advertising, billing, accounting and legal. And they make more money doing so. They tend to run more professional practices and are viewed as experts by the public and their peers! Making an investment in yourself by following sound business advice will place you in the top 5% of those therapists earning a living in private practice. Your professional and financial success will allow you to experience what your highest and best use truly is: providing quality clinical care to the public! Imagine being paid all day for the work you are trained to provide, and outsourcing work to other experts in their fields, thus reducing the amount of time you spend on distracting tasks. 2. Educate the Public! The public trusts and seeks the opinions of experts! Creating products or making your professional opinions known, creates trust and draws business! Writing, publishing and creating materials and products designed to educate the public about your work is a great way to build credibility in your community and increase your income. Creating relaxation CDs, stress reduction products, authoring books and articles, appearing on television and radio stations, speaking at schools and other educational venues are just a few opportunities you have to educate the public and build multiple streams of income. Clinicians who develop multiple methods for collecting income win twofold: they make more money and spend less time in the treatment chair. This allows therapists to preserve the quality of treatment they provide and protect their own welfare at the same time. Educating the public creates a beautiful vehicle for ongoing referrals and generating income! 3. Hire Associates! Capitalize on those therapists who have no interest in running a business! Many psychologists just want to provide clinical care. These types of clinicians often have no interest in business development and avoid it at all costs. By hiring associates and earning a percentage of their income, you can attract qualified clinical professionals to your practice and make money while someone else is sitting in the treatment chair. Hiring associates provides you with an exciting opportunity to train and help another professionals so they too can reach the public. This process will help you become less isolated and more connected to the evolving field of Psychology and to your colleagues. 4. Promote your Expertise! Most clinicians do specialize but forget to advertise this. There is no shame in self-promotion! The public is desperately looking for professionals with expertise. The community will call their insurance carrier if they need a “general” counselor or advisor. They will talk to friends, their local schools, churches, and professionals if they are looking for an expert. As family members ourselves, we know that we will spare no expense to get our family the specific help they need. We will also pay top dollar for this experience and are quite likely to bypass traditional sources of access, such as insurance, to land a spot on the couch of the “right” doctor. It’s quite likely you are this person, but like many clinicians, your visibility to the public may be poor. We recommend clinicians utilize professional advisors to create meaningful marketing materials to best express the expertise they offer the public. Hiring marketing professionals will also ensure these items are strategically targeted to your ideal audience. If you have been focusing on serving a little bit of everyone, perhaps you may consider honing your expertise in a few certain areas as well. The best referrals don’t come from our colleagues. The best referrals come from past and current clientele, as well as from other businesses our ideal clients visit. 5. Give Back to your Colleagues! Clinicians can help each other. In fact, they are in a prime spot to recognize the current and evolving needs of their own industry. We encourage clinicians to observe the professional and business climate, looking for possible innovations and forums to serve their own colleagues. Whether it’s by providing supervision or consultation to colleagues, writing about stress reduction for clinicians, or creating products and services designed to help clinicians function at higher levels in their business, you too can serve our community of therapists! By turning our attention inward and working to better our selves and the climate in which we conduct business, we are bound to help our profession flourish, all while providing you with the potential for earning additional income! “Opportunities? They are all around us… There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.” Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) American author and founder of Success magazine. Wishing you the best in practice, The Practice Advisors Brought To You By: Therapy Partner To speak directly with an account specialist regarding your practice, please call 877-232-9847 x 2 From: Developing Multiple Streams of Income Independent Practitioner Volume 29 Number 3

Practice Building Strategies: Does A No Show, Cancellation, or Consultation Mean No Pay?

therapypartner — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:01:39 +0000

Practice Building Strategies

What the Practice Advisors say about: Does A No Show, Cancellation, or Consultation Mean No Pay? How do successful clinicians consistently get paid for cancellations and consultations? Developing and maintaining uniform policies and procedures in your business will help you to ensure you are paid what you deserve. Utilizing clear language that is consistent across all patients helps you to enforce fees for both cancellations and consultations. Use this handy script to help explain cancellation fees to your clients. Scripts/Sample Language “At our practice we have a 24–hour cancellation policy. We ask that if you need to cancel your appointment, you call as early as possible. Each day, clients in crisis, and sometimes in emergencies, strive to get into our open slots. We know that one day you may be the patient requesting an additional appointment, so we ask that all patients respect one another and the schedule at the practice.” This simple statement helps clients understand that cancellation charges are not about you, but are about the practice and the patients it serves on the whole. Don’t forget to enter every cancellation or no-show into the system and mark it as charged or not; this will protect you in any disputes in the future. Many practitioners offer a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for one missed appointment. Once clients see that you have waived this fee one time, they are less likely to ask you to do this again. Use this handy script to explain consultative fees. Scripts/Sample Language “Some of the most effective treatment can come from paying our doctors to connect with one another to coordinate and jointly plan our health care. Periodically, in order for you to receive the most comprehensive treatment in our practice, we may request a consultative meeting with your other providers to best coordinate your care. This may be your primary care physician, specialists you see, a school counselor, or psychiatrist. We don’t charge for the first 15 minutes and we will inform you when these meetings are being scheduled. Your form of payment on file will not be charged unless you have been notified of the consultation. As a patient in our practice you don’t need to worry about whether you will be provided with the most comprehensive care possible, this is an integral part of your treatment and you should expect this from all professionals you see.” Wishing you the best in practice, The Practice Advisors Brought To You By: Therapy Partner To speak directly with an account specialist regarding your practice, please call 877-232-9847 x 2

Practice Building Strategies: Raising Your Rate

therapypartner — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:42:34 +0000

Practice Building Strategies

What the Practice Advisors say about Raising Your Rate Clinicians are often intimidated to raise their rate. Remember not to “rate-fix” but to set your rate based on your experience, expertise, and demand. Historically therapists have been unnecessarily shy about raising rates – remember, the public expects inflation and increased cost of services and goods. If you think it may be time to raise your rate, consider raising it for new patients and for current clients by sending a letter that raises their rate $10 or $15 per clinical hour. There is no need to review your current public pricing, especially if clients have been coming awhile, just increase their fee slightly. Altering your rate and increasing revenue can be simple, but it must be well articulated and consistent across clients. Use this simple language to raise your rate by mail or by a letter handed out to patients. Scripts/Sample Language “We are writing to announce some changes impacting the private practice this spring. Your questions, thoughts or concerns about these items are welcome in your upcoming sessions. Beginning Month, Date, Year, the therapeutic rate for all clinical services (Individual, Family, Couples, and Consultation) will increase by $10.00 per clinical hour. If you are currently receiving a rate reduction through our practice scholarship fund, please note that this fee increase may be discussed in your upcoming therapeutic session. As always, we are deeply committed to the therapeutic climate and the quality clinical care we provide. We deeply value our clients’ commitment to the practice and look forward to our continued work together.” * There is no need to discuss your full rate in your rate-change letter. Selecting an amount to increase your fee by is more palatable and helps to ensure that not all clients are faced with a major rate hike. In this model each patient slides up slightly, and ultimately creates room for additional patients to receive help. If you need help on developing a scholarship fund for your practice vs. a sliding scale arrangement please call Therapy Partner to set up a brief consultation. Scholarship funds stop the process of patient’s negotiating their rate, and allow you to control how much service you donate, and earn more all while ensuring those most in need receive discounts. “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly” Henri Bergson (1859-1941) French philosopher. Wishing you the best in practice, The Practice Advisors Brought To You By: Therapy Partner To speak directly with an account specialist regarding your practice, please call 877-232-9847 x 2**

Starting a Private Practice: Therapist Billing Software Company Helps Increase Therapist Income

therapypartner — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:53:55 +0000

Therapy billing software company expands their services to include business education for therapists to help increase their income.

DENVER, CO, December 31, 2009—Therapy Partner, an online therapist billing software payment company, has made an official expansion of its Business Coaching Division for therapists. This service provides therapists with industry-specific business education that will help them with private practice marketing including the development of new income streams.

To demonstrate how their services can help increase income for private practitioners, Therapy Partner is now offering a free one-hour business consultation (a $200 value). During the free consultation, Therapy Partner will reveal that the key to financial success is through business education. Unlike other therapy billing software companies, Therapy Partner provides therapists with the education and tools they need for financial success.

To sign up for your free one-hour business consultation or to learn more, visit www.therapypartner.com or call 877.232.9847.

Along with business education, Therapy Partner specializes in chiropractic billing software, physical therapy billing software, mental health software and other forms of therapy billing software to help therapists process credit cards, track income and streamline their paperwork. Therapy Partner has seen their customer’s income increase by 40% when using their online therapy billing software. This percentage improves even further when therapists receive business consultation from Therapy Partner’s Business Coaching Division.

This staggering statistic prompted Therapy Partner to expand its Business Coaching Division as a way to help therapists enhance their overall business model and help them with private practice marketing. This exclusive service from Therapy Partner is just one of many ways in how they separate themselves from other online therapy billing software companies. Find out what other therapist are saying about Therapy Partner and how they have helped them with their private practice marketing and increase their income.

About Therapy Partner

Therapy Partner’s online therapy billing software allows private practitioners to accept major credit cards from their clients, process payments online, automate insurance-ready statements to their clients and track their income.

Therapy Partner’s secured online system allows therapist to store their client’s credit card information making payment processing easy for both the therapist and client. This feature allows therapists to process payment outside of their session time with a client and preventing them from having awkward discussions about money each time they see a client. To learn more Contact Therapy Partner today!