Hi, this is Dave Kats, a therapist consultant, and I have a tip for you.

Every so often, we have a therapist call in and say, "What can I do to produce more revenue other than just seeing patients and doing counseling?" And there's lots of things you can do. One thing that you can do that really help the patients is do assessments on all your patients.

Another thing you could do is provide product. For instance, if I was doing marriage counseling, or if I was a patient going to marriage counseling, or a client going to marriage counseling, and you gave me a set of six CD's to listen to, maybe, three to five times a week for six weeks, it would help me a lot more than just going to the counseling sessions. So, maybe, you should be selling products, then maybe you should be having group sessions. You can make more in group sessions than in individual sessions, by and large.

Then there are instances where you may meet with married couples, six hours in a week, maybe, three hours one...

Hi, This is Dave Kats, at therapist consultant and I have a tip for you.

You know, every so often you're going to have to raise your prices to stay up with inflation and to just make more income as a therapist. How should you raise your prices? Well, we suggest that you raise your prices less frequently but more substantially when you do. The reason we say that is we feel that the only people that really complain about a price change are those people who have been through two or more price changes with you. If they start at $75 and then you went to $85 and now a hundred, now $125, they start to feel the pinch of the growth.

Whereas if you just have a patient and they started at $125 and you raise to $150, that's logical because you have to raise some time. Only those people through two or more raises are the most likely to be concerned or complain about you raising prices. Now, how should you go about raising prices? Well, about two or three weeks ahead of time, you should post...

David Kats:  Hi, this is Dr. David Kats and Dr. Michael Perusich. We have a video tip for you. Most people now are thinking about moving to a cash basis, either to a total cash basis or a partial cash basis. You have to decide what to do in your practice because insurance companies are paying less and less and less every year. Just this year, their deductibles went way up and the-- What they're paying went way down.

Michael Perusich: Yes, the reimbursement trends keep going down. Analyze your practice. We recommend doing an excel spreadsheet, and if you're a member, we already have that spreadsheet built for you, get it on the back office, but we recommend that you analyze your insurance companies and see what your reimbursement is compared to what your fees are. You may be really surprised. You may find that many of the codes that you're submitting to insurance are not getting paid well.

David: Yes, as a result, you'd probably be better either going to cash with that insurance...