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

Now, this tip is more appropriate for those people who take insurance than those people who have a cash practice but it's important for both of you, and that is every month you should be running an aging of accounts. Now what is an aging of accounts? An aging of accounts is a report that tells you what patients owe you money and how much they owe you and when they owed you for how long they've owed you. It'll have the patient's name- the report will have the patient's name. It'll say they owe you so much money, 0 to 30 days, 30 to 60 days, 60 to 90 days, 90 to 120, and over 120.

Now, if you're an insurance practice and somebody owes you money from 0 to 30 days, I wouldn't get too excited about it yet because probably insurance just hasn't paid yet. When it gets over 30 days, you have to look at each account that's over 30 days and say, "Why has this bill not been paid?" Then you have some choices, you're either...

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

This is mostly for people doing marriage counseling but it's also for people that treat anxiety and depression and things like that. That is a new trend that I see with therapists is to go to double sessions. In other words, if you have a marriage that's in crisis or even near crisis and you only see them once a week for 45 minutes, it may not be enough. Most therapists now or many therapists at least when they do marriage counseling or other important sessions are going to double sessions.

Now if you charge 150, you may do a double session for only 250. In other words, you may give a discount. Here's what I think you should do. This isn't a sales job you're just asking the patient what they prefer. When you give them their report on the second day you say, now we can handle this two ways. We can do one session, which is 45 minutes long. We can do one session a week. It'll take us a little longer, or we can...

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

You know they say record keepers are record breakers, so I have to ask you a question. What records do you keep? Well, there are certain statistics that I think every therapist needs to keep to know where they stand. First of all, you should track how many new patients you get each month. Second, how many patient visits you've had each month, and third, how many services you've rendered.

In other words, how many dollars worth of services you've rendered, and number four, how much you've collected. Now, what good do those do? Well, after you have amassed a group of about six or eight months, you can see whether your practice is going up or down or staying the same. You can also see what areas you're weak in and what areas you're strong in. Let me give you an example. The average therapist gets seven new patients a month.

If you average 10 or 12, you're above average. If you average four or five, you're below...

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

I find that many therapists run over in the therapy sessions. They schedule patients on the hour, but they'll run up to about 55, 60 minutes before they actually cut off the session, and then they either tight or they run behind. I suggest that you move to 45-minute sessions. This allows you to put in your notes and go home on time. Think about this with all your new patients, when you start to schedule them, say, "Here's how we work, our fee is $150, and we have 45-minute sessions, and I have sessions available on Thursday or on Friday, which day do you prefer?"

See, when they say Friday or Thursday, or even if they say, "Do you have anything on Saturday?" and you say yes, they've already agreed to $150 and they've already agreed to have 45-minute session. I think that if you move to 45-minute sessions, you'll feel much more rested, you'll do a better job, you'll get your notes done on time, and...

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

You know right now the best way to get new patients is by having a good Internet presence. Now, what does it mean to have a good Internet presence? Well, most therapists don't have a real good idea or have a real good handle on this, and so I say to them, "Do you have a good Internet presence?" They say, "Well, I have a website, and I think I might be on Google," but here's what you really have to do to have a good Internet presence.

First of all, you have to be listed on the professional referral directories. I'm sure almost everybody has done this, but if you aren't listed on Psychology Today, you're really missing out on a big load of new patients. The second thing you have to do is you have to be listed on every search engine, so you have to be listed on Google, Bing, Yelp, and Yahoo.

Now, when I say listed on them, you have to go there. Just type in Google for business, and it'll say, "Can we advertise...

This is Dave Kats and I have a tip for you, 

I know of a very important statistic that I bet you may not even keep, and that is your percentage of people who no-show you each month. You see, if it gets too high, your practice is going to plateau. Let me give you an example; if you have 13% or more people who no-show you over the month, no matter how many new patients you get or no matter how big your practice is, your practice is going to start to plateau. Here is how we count no-shows. There are two different types of no-shows, but they both count as a no-show. The first one is somebody that cancels to a later date, so somebody is scheduled with you on Wednesday and they say, “I can’t make it this Wednesday, you just keep me on the schedule for next Wednesday or put me on the schedule for next Wednesday.” That’s a no-show, even though they re-scheduled, is still considered a no-show. And then, there’s the other kind of no-show that just no-shows...

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

 You know I believe every therapist should have a professional will. Now a professional will is not a legal document, it's just some paper you make up that talk about how to handle your practice in the event of your death. And I should tell you that the person that is the custodian of this will or executes this will should be another professional, not your family. You don't want to lean on your family in this time when they have lost you. So you want to have another professional be the executor of your will. Now there are several things you should have in the professional will. If you're a client, you should go to our forms page on our client website and download the professional will template, and then just fill that template out and you'll be done. If you're not a client, you'll have to create a professional will from scratch. But these are the things you should have in either case. So let's look at them. The first thing you...

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

If you take insurance and even if you are a cash practitioner, you should run an aging of accounts every month. What I mean by an aging of accounts is just a report that tells you who owes you money and how long they've owed you that money. And you have to decide based on that report what you need to do for collections. I have here a hypothetical aging of accounts that I'd like to go over with you and show you what we would do if we found these on our aging of accounts. Let's look at the aging of accounts. You can see the first person there is Bill Jones. Now he doesn't owe anything for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, but from 90 days to 120 days he owes $100 and for over 120 days he owes $400. So he owes a total of $500. Now it appears to me that he has stopped coming in some time ago, about three months ago, and we have not collected from the times previous. Something went wrong, we sent it to the wrong...

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

One of the things I see some therapists do that are well-established that other therapists really never get around to doing is workshops or seminars. That’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to do workshops and seminars. If you say to your patients, “I’m going to hold a workshop and I’d like you come on Wednesday night at 7 o’clock to this workshop,” chances are you won’t have many people in attendance, but there’s an old saying, “If Rome won’t come to you then you go to Rome.” Here’s the idea. If the patients won’t come to you then you go to the places where the patients are at. One of the places I find this is the case is churches. A lot of times churches will have a young married group or a married with children group or even a senior citizen group and any of those lend themselves well for you going in and doing a...

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

You know at some point in time almost everybody that takes insurance thinks about going to cash or being a cash practitioner where patients pay their own bill. Well, there are certain times when it’s good to be a cash practitioner and certain times or certain conditions when it’s not good to be a cash practitioner. Let me give you an example. If you are in practice that’s overfull right now, if you’re turning away new patients away, then chances are you should move to a cash practice because even if a few don’t stay with you, you have all those new patients coming in. So that’s one reason why you might want to be a cash practitioner. Another reason you may want to be a cash practitioner, is if your insurance is paying very little. If you have insurance companies that only pay you $60 or even $50 for a visit then I think it’s time maybe to go to become a cash...