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

We are always concerned that patients keep their appointments and we track the statistics a lot of times. How many people did not keep their appointment? How many no-shows did we have for this week? Which there's a statistic that's just as important as that and that is how many rescheduled for the following week or for the following visit? For instance, if I said to you, "You have eight people scheduled today," and at the end of the day, I said, "They all showed up." You'd say, "Great." Well, what if I said, "But none of them scheduled for a future visit." Then you'd say, "That's terrible." Now, we track how many people show up, but we rarely track how many people make future appointments. I would suggest to you that from now on, every day, you track how many people kept their appointment and how many people made future appointments or at least have a future appointment scheduled. I think that you'll find...

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

We hear so much about optimizing your website. What does optimizing your website actually mean? There's a lot of things you can do to optimize your website, but I'm going to concentrate on just one today, and that is, make sure that your titles and your subtitles have substantive information. In other words, tell the search engines in your titles and subtitles who you are, what you do and where you're at. I used to put together websites for my clients and I started out early in the early days and I'd write something that sounded nice for a therapist. I'd say something like this, "Welcome to our website. I think you're going to like what you see." That sounds nice and warm and inviting, but it was absolutely worthless as far as the search engines were concerned. They didn't get any information from that. Let's say that instead, I would have said, "Providing marriage counseling to Denton, Texas for over 12...

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

Every once in awhile we talk about keeping you HIPAA compliant. I want to start out today with the basics of basics, and talk about just three things you need -- really three forms you need to be HIPAA compliant. The first one is the Acknowledgement Receipt of Privacy Practices Policy, which is the one page form that you have the patient sign when they come into your our office the first day. If you’re not doing that you’re absolutely are not HIPAA compliant and you need to start doing it right away. You need to start doing it immediately. It’s a one page form. Now remember, the patient has to sign that form. But sometimes with mental health patients are little concerned and little apprehensive, and sometimes they won’t want to sign a form like that. Well, that’s okay. They don’t have to sign the form. You just sign the form at the bottom that says I offered them my privacy...

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

Have you ever thought about being a supervisor? A lot of therapists become supervisors and it can be profitable and helpful to your profession in lots of different ways. Let me give you an example. I have one therapist who has five interns that she supervises. They all work in her office, they all get their own patients, and she pays them just $25 per session. She collects anywhere from $75 to $100 a session. I talked to her the other day and we did some calculations and she makes $3500 profit on those therapists, those interns that she’s supervising, every single month. I’m not saying that you have to do that; you can just do one at a time, but I want to explain to you how successful it is to have a person that you supervise. It varies state by state. In most states, a supervisor will supervise someone for approximately three years until they get their hours and they’ll have a meeting with...

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

You know I've noticed that good therapists all use an informed consent form. So I hope you are using an informed consent form. Now if you're not using an informed consent form you should start doing it right away and just go through everything in your practice and tell the patient how it functions so there is no surprises for them. You can find a lot of good informed consent forms on the internet and if you are a client of ours you can find it on our website. We have a very good informed consent form. So that is the first thing you should do. If you are not doing one you should do it immediately. Most of you are already using an informed consent form and you have the patient sign it on the first visit. That’s the right idea. That’s the thing to do. But maybe you need to update your informed consent form. Does your informed consent form talk about distance coaching? Does it talk about tele-therapy?...

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

I have to tell you that this tip is only for about one out of 20 people or maybe one out of 10 people. If you are already a supervisor, in other words, you’re supervising other people or at least if you have the capacity to supervise other people then there’s another step for you. I always wondered why supervisors don’t become trainers of supervisors. Have you ever noticed that when you went to the supervisor classes, in other words, classes for you to become a supervisor, that it would cost quite a bit, and the classes were pretty full, and it didn’t take much to do? That’s something you could be doing. If you’re a supervisor, think about becoming a supervisor trainer. A lot of times it’s just a matter of doing a few small things, and registering, and automatically you’ll become this supervisor trainer. I’d like you to think about that. Not for...

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

As insurance weakens, some insurance companies pay less and less and less, and there comes a point in time where you have to kick the low payers to the curb. Where you have to look at the insurance companies that you have and see what they’re paying and if they’re not paying enough, I think you have to get off that panel and then charge the patient cash. I think in the Mid-West, in Florida, in Texas, probably most areas in the United States; probably $68 is about the breakpoint. If they’re not paying you at least $68, you probably just need to get off that panel, be an out-of-network provider, and then have the patients pay cash because, here’s what we’ve found out, it actually cost between five to ten dollars to have you file insurance especially if you have some outside company doing your billing. Instead of the insurance company paying you $58, really they’re in essence...

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

Did you know there’s an easy way to figure out how much you should be charging for each individual code that you charge to the insurance company? It’s called the RVU Calculator; it stands for relative value units. If you can tell me about what your primary counseling code is, I call tell you how much you should be charging for all the rest of the codes. Here’s how it works. The American Association of Chiropractic Coders put together a RVU Calculator. A RVU tells you how much you should charge for each code compared to another code. Here’s how you use it. Let’s say you do a 9-9-8-3-4 and you know that you’re going to charge $100 for that 9-9-8-3-4. When you go AAPC space RVU space calculator, if you just type that in your search engine, it’ll take to you to the AAPC RVU Calculator and you can type in your 9-9-8-3-4 and put in one unit, and then you type in a...

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

Have you ever thought about doing intensives? You know what intensives are? Intensives are sessions that you do that are longer than just your 50 minute sessions. It could be that you do a three hours intensive. It could be that you do a 6 hour, 8 hour, 12 hour, even 18 hour intensive. I have two therapists that work with this and do intensives very well. They specialized in marriage therapy. If a married couple is having a problem, they always give them the opportunity to go through an intensive rather than to get their care 50 minutes at a time spread over 18 weeks. This couple can come in and they can get a lot of their needs and lot of their work behind them just by doing this intensive. If there is a situation where there’s been unfaithfulness in a relationship, or if one partner is trying to decide whether to stay or to leave, probably 50 minutes once a week for a while isn’t enough. The...