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, 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 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 Appointment. It cost...

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

There’s a right way and a wrong way to schedule patients as far as scripting is concerned. I'd like to go over the right type of script to use when scheduling a patient. Let's assume you're in a counseling session and your phone rings, and somebody leaves a voicemail that says we may need to come in as new patients. As soon as you have the opportunity, you call them back and you'll say, "Hi, this is Judy Lewis, the therapist that you called about getting in for some care. I have just a few minutes before my next patient. Can you tell me briefly what your situation is?" "Well, yes. My wife and I have been married for 26 years, but four years ago we lost our adult son. It’s made our marriage fall apart. We decided that we either have to call it quits or that we have to get some marriage counseling. So we were thinking about possibly getting marriage counseling.

Now, when they pause or if you break...

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

Some people, some therapists have trouble collecting money. They have, what I call, a poverty complex, and I found the best thing to help you with a poverty complex is to have a set of scripts that you use when collecting money from the patient.

For instance, here's one script that we always use in our clinic. When the patient comes to the front-- if you haven't charged them before they go back, and they come up to the front. You say, "That will be $125 for today. Do you prefer to pay by cash, check, or credit card?" And then you just look down and let them decide. But always use that, "Do you want to pay by cash, check, or credit card?" Because then that gives them a choice of yes's. Yes, I'll pay cash, yes, I'll pay by credit card, or yes, I'll pay by check. Always use that one when they come to the front, "Your fee today was $125, do you want to pay that by cash, check, or credit card?"

Of course, once...

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...

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...