This is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. Have you ever wondered why you have two therapists, they both get ten new patients a month. One of them has a full practice and the other one is always looking for more patients to fill their schedule. Well, it has to do with the scheduling and I'm not going to tell you how many patients visits you should see on each patient, but I will tell you what the national average is, and you can make a decision from there.

The average therapist sees the average patient 12 to 15 times. Now I realize some of you see only once or twice and some of you may see for two years before you end their care, but the average therapist is seeing the average patient 12 to 15 times. If that's the case, you probably need to be scheduling like the average therapist in the United States, which is probably about 15 to 18 visits for each client that comes in.

When you have a client come in, instead of just scheduling two visits or four...

Hi. This is Dave Kats, a therapist consultant, and I have a tip for you. There's one thing that it's not very easy to get people to do anymore, and that is come to your office for group meetings. However, I have a way that you can still do group meetings and still give speeches and workshops and things like that. Now, I say this, "If the Romans won't come to you, then you come to the Romans." Here's what you do.

Instead of trying to remote your individual workshops and trying to get groups of people out into your office, why don't you go to somewhere that already has a gathering and go meet with them and give your workshop to them. Maybe it's a church or a Sunday school organization or a life group or something like that, maybe it's some support group. I talked a lot of times with the muscular dystrophy support group, the multiple sclerosis support group, the ALS support group, and they love you for coming in.

If you're saying I can't get people to attend my workshops anymore if you...

This is Dave Kats, a therapist consultant, and I have a tip for you. I find out when therapists start in practice, often they're generalists. They will take about anybody that walks in as long as they feel they can help them. Over a period of time, almost everybody by default or on purpose develops a niche. Now, I don't know what your niche is going to be and if you have a niche, it doesn't mean you do only that, it just means that you like that you specialize in that and you do a good job in that.

Maybe your niche is as broad as this family and marriage therapist. Maybe it's a divorce recovery, maybe it's adoption issues, maybe it's anxiety and depression, maybe it's sports, helping people perform better in sports. I don't care what your niche is but try to find your niche. Now, how do you find your niche? Well, if you're naturally interested in something, if you have a lot of people in an area that are of a certain type like military.

If you have a special talent, like maybe...

Sometimes patients just don't want to do what you suggest that they do, and they come up with their own ideas and their own plans. I've found there's three little words that really make a difference as far as getting them to comply. Here are those three little words, "It's our policy." The people may say something like, "Well, I don't know if I have the money to pay today can I just wait until then end of the month to pay?" "Well, it's our policy that people pay at the time the service is rendered. I think we'll need to have it today."

They say, "Well, can I just cancel this appointment and just schedule one for a couple weeks down the road?" "Well, it's our policy that if you cancel within 24 hours, that we charge you for the appointment. I wouldn't cancel today. I would come in today." Anything that you do if they say, "Can I just pay part of my bill?" "Well, it's our policy that--" and you hide behind it's our policy. Even if you're the only person in your office, and a lot of...

Hi. This is Dave Kats, therapist consultant and I have a tip for you. In my hot little hand, I hold a list of softwares that I think are important for therapists to know about. I'm going to read them to you. I'm going to tell you a little bit about them. The first one is called Fiverr, F-I-V-E-R-R. Fiverr. F-I-V-E-R-R. The fiverr.com is a place where you can go and get people to do things for you for 5$ or 10$ or 15$. They will write ads for you, they will write scripts for you, they will write-- if you want to put together a long series of audios for patient education or something like that, they will do about anything you want them to do.

If you want them to do a logo, they will do almost anything. Do yourself a favor and have some fun, go and look at the Fiverr website. The second one I look at is Upwork. Upwork is a business website that if you want somebody to write longer articles for you, or even publish a whole book, or do anything like that, they'll write it for you. If you...

Hi. This is Dave Kats, a therapist consultant, and I have a tip for you. Now is a great time of the year to redo your Google business page. You can update pictures, you can update information, you can change any hours that you've changed, but if you keep your Google business page updated, it will refresh it and it will raise you higher in the organic ranking. Today, go in. Just, go into your Google account up on your computer where it has those nine little squares.

Go in there and you will see where you can go into your page, your business page, and change the pictures, the wording, the titles, anything you want to and by doing that, you're going to raise yourself in the ranking. About every six months, go in and change your picture. Go in and change your titles. Go in and change your reviews. Get more reviews. It's always good to get more reviews and I think you'll see that your practice will grow on the internet as a result of being current with Google. This is Dave Kats. Thanks...

This time of the year is a good time to think about converting to either all cash or more cash in your practice. You see, here's what usually happens. People start out in the profession and then they go into private practice then say, "Well, I'm not on any insurance panel so I got to be cash. They have cash and I usually charge a little price." Then after a while, they say, "Wow, I'm turning a lot of people away because I don't have insurance." So, they join a bunch of insurance panels.

Then after a while, they say, "Well, people that are cash practitioners are making a lot more than I am. I'm getting paid an average of $70 a session. They're getting paid an average of $120 a session. I should go more toward cash." Eventually, you have a lot of people go to all cash or mostly cash. I want to talk to you about how to do that. First of all, I would suggest that you look at your low payers. Any EAPs that are low payers, any insurance companies that are low payers and decide which ones...

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. I found that collections in your office go a lot better if you use certain scripts that people are more likely to pay if they hear a certain set script. I want to go over two scripts with you that I really like. The first one is getting people to pay 50% or more down on the first day when they call to become a new patient. After they call, you say, "Tell me a little bit about your problem." They say, "Well, we've been having marriage problems." They talk for a little bit and then you stop them and say, "That does sound like a problem that would respond well for therapy and it is the type of case that I'd take. Let me tell you how I work, my sessions are 50 minutes long and I charge $150 and I have an opening yet today because I have a cancellation open at 3:30 today, or I have an opening this coming Friday, which do you prefer?"

When you say which do you prefer, if they say, "I prefer Wednesday, I prefer...

Hi, this is Dave Kats with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. Every so often you have to think about raising prices and we hate to do it. We procrastinate. We don't know how much to do. We always feel like people are going to leave us but that's not the case. I find that virtually no one leaves you because you raise prices. In fact, I have people that go from 100 to 125, don't lose one person, 125 to 150, don't lose one person, 150 to 175, don't lose one person. You've got to think about this. If you go up 50%, if you go at $50, I should say, and you are seeing four patients and one of them quit, you're still making just as much money seeing the three patients at $50 more than you were seeing the four patients.

I just tell you that it's important that you raise your prices on a regular basis. Now, here's what we suggest. We suggest that you raise your prices less frequently but more substantially when you do and here's why. The only people that really are concerned...

Hi. This is Dave Kats, a therapist consultant, and I have a tip for you. I go through seasons of what I call slipping and checking. In other words, my office procedure goes along well for a while, and then I slip. I started doing some things not right. Then I realize it and I check myself and I get back to doing them right again. This is our season of slipping and checking. One of the things I found that I had slipped on a little bit was not getting business associate agreements like I should.

Remember, HIPAA has a rule that anybody that comes in to do work for you, a business associate, in other words, that has a chance to see your PHI, your personal health information from the patients, they have to sign a business associate agreement. Now, there's a few people that don't have to do that. The funnels like the post office or the bank doesn't have to do it. The bank is a financial institution. They don't have to do it. The post office is a funnel, they don't have to do it.

If you...