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

You know, we're often asked, "How do you go about raising prices?" Well, we suggest that you raise prices more substantially when you do, but less often. The reason for that is because people don't complain about price raises, unless they've been through two or more price raises, then they wonder about you raising your prices. If every year you raise your price $5, it eventually takes a while to get your price up there, but people feel like they keep getting nickeled and dimed to death. Raise your prices less often, but more substantially when you do.
Let me give you an example. If you had 100, you surely want to go 125 or 135 right now. If you're 125, you want to go 150. 150, you want to go 175 or 185, and so you want to make significant jumps when you make those jumps. Here's how you do it. Where a patient was likely to see it like on your front desk, if you have a front desk, just take a three by five card...

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

You know, there are three statistics that you should be keeping in your practice. The first one is easy. The number of new patients you get per month. The average therapist gets seven new patients per month. You can simply count in your appointment book, "How many am I getting?" If you get more than seven, you're above average, you get less than seven, you're below average, but you should get to at least seven because with seven, you can build a full practice with seven new patients a month.
Now the other two statistics that are important are your patient visit average and your dollar visit average. Your patient visit average is the number of times the average patient comes to see you. If you take the number of visits you had this month, let's say, 120 and you divide it by the number of new patients, let's say 10, that means that your PVA was 12. The average person comes in to see you 12 times. Now that's not...

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

Therapists are a unique group when it comes to healthcare professionals because therapists bill predominantly only by time. In other words, if you spend so much time with a patient, you bill out a certain code. Other healthcare professionals can bill by the service. If they do a service, regardless of how long it takes, they can charge for that code.
Now, that means that once you're full, you're full. In other words, you don't have any more time in the day. You can't improve your income if you're doing time services, but maybe that's not true. Let's think about that. What would happen if you started doing several group sessions during the week? Let me give you an example. If you had six couples come and pay you $50 to be in a one-hour group session on marriage counseling, that would be $300 compared to just $150 if you saw just one person.
One of the ways you can multiply yourself, and I think you should think...

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

I noticed that many therapists go through a certain progression. When they first get into practice, they're not on any insurance panels, so they start as a cash practitioner. Sometimes they start at a lower price. After a while, they say, "I'm missing a lot of new patients because I'm not on the insurance panels." They get on some or all of the insurance panels that they can get on and they take insurance for a period of time.
After that, they say, "I'm not getting paid very much by the insurance. I think I should go back to cash." They go back to a cash practice. Sometimes slowly over a period of time and sometimes all at once, but that's the cycle. Cash, insurance, cash. Now, you can get fixated in any area. For instance, you can stay cash and low cost or you can stay insurance through the rest of your life, but most people would like to be on a cash practice where they have plenty of new patients and...

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

We've talked about this one once before, but it's so unusual what I see, that I want to bring it up again. I would suggest, as a therapist, if you have any extra space, rent it out to another therapist. Now it could be that the only extra space you have is on weekends and evenings, and that's okay. I would rent that time out. I have a therapist in the greater Dallas area that does not work on Fridays. She works Monday through Thursday. So she rents out her office on Friday, Saturday and during the evenings. She rents it to two different therapists, so they split the time, and one pays $300/month, and one pays $350/month. Together that's $650 which pays her rent for that facility. So, it's really a great idea to do. Now, the reason I bring it up is because as a consultant, I talk to clients that are just getting in practice, and I talk to clients that have been in practice for a period of time, and they are...