Hi this is Dave Kats, with Therapist Consultant and I have a tip for you.

Oftentimes we're asked, how do I stay HIPAA compliant? That's a weekend class and longer. In fact, if there's something that you need to hear every year. There are some basic things that you need to do just the basic basics to make sure that you at least have some of your bases covered. There are four forms that I'd like to talk to you about right now.
The first form is acknowledgment of receipt of privacy practices. Now I think that everybody uses, but you'd be surprised about one out of every 20 therapists is still not having patients fill out that form when you walk in the office. When the patient walks in the office the first thing they should be filling out is the acknowledgment of receipt of privacy practices policy. Which means you have offered them a copy of your privacy policy.
Now they sign that sheet, they sign about two-thirds of the way down. By the way, if they don't want to sign...

Hi, this is David Kats for Therapist Consultants, and I have a tip for you.

During this coronavirus time, one of the things you can do is do group calls just to keep people involved. Now, I'm not saying this is therapy. I'm saying just group call where you can talk, and you can give advice about how to be cautious during this time, but how not to be afraid or unduly afraid or paranoid during this time. You can use zoom.us, Z-O-O-M.US. It's a free format. You just follow certain guidelines. It's absolutely free.

You can download it right now, or you can be using it in 10 minutes, and you can send email out to your patients and say, "Hey, I've got some information that's going to help you with your mental health during this coronavirus time," and see how many people get on. I think that it will stimulate your practice, and it will stimulate your referrals, and you can do it as often as you want on this free format. Think about doing that.

This is David Kats. Thanks for listening.

This is Dave Kats for therapist consultants and I have a tip for you.

During this coronavirus time, one of the things you can do to stay in touch with your patients and to give them good information and to stimulate referrals is to do Facebook Live. Go to your Facebook, your business Facebook account, and you'll see there where it says "Go Live." Just look on the screen and you'll see if you scroll down a little bit, or a lot of times it's right on the top, where it says "Go Live" and you hit "Go Live" and it will count down and well, you'll do just like I'm doing now.
Do a video that tells your patients that you're still available, that you're available by telemental health and that how they can do it, that they can call today for an appointment and new patients are accepted. There's no better time to do Live Facebook than right now because people are at home. They're wondering what to do. They're surfing the internet, they'll find you, they'll take advantage of the situation, so,...

Hi, this is David Kats for Therapists Consultants, and I have a tip for you. You know last week Cheri Egts and I talked about having a platform where you can do video therapy. I think it's very important that you do that. Most therapists or many therapists have put all their patients on a video therapy format and I think that's good for now and even in the future if you want to continue it after the coronavirus pandemic is come to an end, but today I want to talk to you about when that pandemic does come to an end, you have to be prepared to build your practice, and you can do it right now.

You can literally build your practice right now if you use Telemental health, there's no problem with spreading the virus that way. If you'll do ads on Google, we have therapists who are now doing ads on Google and they are getting lots of new patients just from those ads and they're doing business as usual and even seeing business growth doing the Telemental health. I would suggest that you,...

David: Hi, this is David Kats and Cheri Egts with Therapist Consultants.

We have a tip for you. During this coronavirus time, one of the things you probably and certainly want to start doing is start doing some distance teletherapy. Now, I should tell you that you can do therapy by telephone now. It's accepted, and it's HIPAA-compliant, but by far the most pleasant way to do therapy via telephone or video is by doing video therapy. There are several software companies that are now giving you the opportunity to do your therapy by video. Cheri is the expert on this. What are some of the video companies that are allowing you to do therapy by video?

Cheri: Well, one of them is Zoom, and zoom.us actually offers a free sign up. If you sign up right now, you could get an account for free.

David: That is Z-O-O-M.us.

Cheri: Yes.

David: Okay.

Cheri: Now, they do have one that's HIPAA-compliant that you can pay for, but right now, we're just suggesting to get started, get on Zoom, get...

Hi, this is Dave Kats, with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

You know, there's one way to add new revenue to your practice and sometimes an easy way, but sometimes not so easy, and that is to hire an associate. The easy ways are these. The first thing you can do is simply rent out your room or your office at times when you're not using it. I have a therapist in the Greater Dallas area who works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. She rents out her office during those evenings and on Friday and Saturday to two different therapists. She charges one $300 and the other $350, so she gets $650 a month in rent. That's the exact amount she pays for the whole office. She gets her office for free by renting them.
There are other ways to also have associates work for you. Number one is you're going to rent out your room simply on an hourly basis. Perhaps you have an extra room or your room when you're not using your room and you can rent it out. The typical rent fee is about...

Hi, this is David Kats for Therapist Consultants, and I have a tip for you.

Now is a good time of the year to update your social media. Why do I say now is a good time of the year? Here's the answer. Because any time of the year is a good time of the year to update your social media, you have to do it continually. Here's what your assignment should be for this week. Go to Google Plus, go to Facebook for Business, go to Instagram, go to Twitter, and go to LinkedIn, and make sure you're represented on all those social media sites. If you're not, get listed on them. Then if you are already listed, beef up your information on those sites, because that's where people see you, and that's where they're drawn into your website, and that's where they make an appointment.
This week, your assignment is to look at all your social media sites, make sure you're listed, and if you are, then boost yourself a little bit by adding some more information. I think it will really help you in your social...

This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a Tip for you!

People a lot of times ask us, ‘what are the most prevalent and best software out for billing insurance?’. The first thing I would say is this, every therapist should be using their own software. Sometimes I see a therapist that accepts insurance and they will go to Blue Cross to file, Aetna to file, UHC to file. It is better having your own software. If you would like to have something free, I suggest that you use Practice Mate which is by Office Ally. Just look up Office Ally and Practice Mate. It has a great billing system and is absolutely free. If you are a cash practitioner, I would use this type of software to keep your practice organized and your notes organized. If you can afford to pay for software, there are two that have become the king of the hill in the last few years. These are Therapy Appointment and Therapy Notes. We use Therapy Appointment in our office, and we are fans of Therapy...

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

One of the things you can do to stay active on the Internet is to write articles and put them on your website. What's the difference between somebody that six months ago was in practice, and went out of business and their Internet is still up there, the website's still up, and you, who six months ago were in business, are still in business but you haven't done anything with your website? How does the search engine even know that you're still in business? One of the ways you do it is by having articles posted on your website. I'd say about every two weeks. If you can put an article on your website about every two weeks, that's enough. The good news is the articles can be very short. I'm telling you that an article can be one paragraph. It is nice to be two or three paragraphs, but if it's just one paragraph, that's good. It doesn't necessarily have to be about your specialty. It can be about anything...

Hi, I'm Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

Therapists are a unique group when it comes to healthcare professionals because therapists bill predominantly only by time. In other words, if you spend so much time with a patient, you bill out a certain code. Other healthcare professionals can bill by the service. If they do a service, regardless of how long it takes, they can charge for that code.
Now, that means that once you're full, you're full. In other words, you don't have any more time in the day. You can't improve your income if you're doing time services, but maybe that's not true. Let's think about that. What would happen if you started doing several group sessions during the week? Let me give you an example. If you had six couples come and pay you $50 to be in a one-hour group session on marriage counseling, that would be $300 compared to just $150 if you saw just one person.
One of the ways you can multiply yourself, and I think you should think...