Group Sessions

Therapist Consultants - Group Sessions from David Kats on Vimeo.

This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

One of the things I’ve found that most advanced therapist do is they have group sessions. Of course, they meet with their clients or their patients individually, but they usually have one or two groups going during the week.

I think that’s a great way to handle people who may not need one-on-one care. There are a lot of patients that come to you and they may come to you for 15 or 18 visits and then they pretty much completed their care and they don’t have an imminent problem right now, but you want to keep them in the fold, so to speak, so nothing develops.

One of the good ways to do that is have them join a group. I think the main reason therapists don’t start groups is because number one, they don’t know if they can fill a group, and number two, they don’t know exactly what they’ll say during the group.

Well, that’s just a matter of sitting down. Knowing what to say is just a matter of sitting down and laying out lesson plans for, let’s say, six weeks in a row. That’s the first thing you can do. As far as not having enough people in the group, if you can get just two or three, it’s a group. You’ll usually find that more people will follow especially if you advertise it and send it out in your newsletter and things like that.

Here’s one other little idea I have for you. If you think that you can’t fill a group, why don’t you work with another therapist and you two or even three therapists get together and put their people in, maybe they’re married couples in, and do a marriage group.

I think it would be a great way to improve your care for patients and also improve your income because when you think about it, if you have a group session and you have six people there or six couples there and they each pay $50 that’s $300 a hour or $300 for a hour and a half as opposed to just doing it one at a time for $100 or $125 for a hour.

It’s a great way to boost your income and help patients at the same time so think about starting a group. Decide what group you would like to start, what group you think you can fill the easiest, and just give it a try. Worse case scenario, you only have one or two show up, you have a small group. If one shows up, you got a consultation. That’s a consultation; that’s about the size of it.

Go ahead. Don’t hold back because you’ve never done it before. Part of being successful in therapy is just being able to push yourself a little bit outside that comfort zone and do things until they become comfortable. I think group sessions is just one of those things where you can push yourself a little bit and soon you’ll find yourself comfortable in doing group sessions.

This is Dave Kats. Thanks for listening.