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

Have you ever thought about doing intensives? You know what intensives are? Intensives are sessions that you do that are longer than just your 50 minute sessions. It could be that you do a three hours intensive. It could be that you do a 6 hour, 8 hour, 12 hour, even 18 hour intensive. I have two therapists that work with this and do intensives very well. They specialized in marriage therapy. If a married couple is having a problem, they always give them the opportunity to go through an intensive rather than to get their care 50 minutes at a time spread over 18 weeks. This couple can come in and they can get a lot of their needs and lot of their work behind them just by doing this intensive. If there is a situation where there’s been unfaithfulness in a relationship, or if one partner is trying to decide whether to stay or to leave, probably 50 minutes once a week for a while isn’t enough. The...

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.

There are so many people who are starting to do something unique in therapy. They are starting to do either 90-minute sessions, or double sessions, or in fact intensives. Now, the most common thing I see is therapists starting to do double sessions with their clients. This is mostly for the cash patients but it can be used with insurance if they want to pay cash for their second part of their visit. For the cash practitioner, a lot of times, especially if you have a married couple, a lot of therapists are of the opinion that 50 minutes, once a week, doesn't cut it. They give the patients or the clients the opportunity to have a double session if they are interested. And you'll be surprised, this is not a sales job, you just say to the patients, "When I have a marriage counseling situation like this, I usually ask the people if they want to do one session or two sessions each time they come in. One session...

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...

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

You know, one of the most frequent questions we get in our consultancy is, “I’m thinking about hiring an associate," or, "I’m thinking about becoming an associate, what kind of split, what kind of percentage split is logical for a group practice?” No matter what I say there will be people that disagree with these percentages.

But I will tell you that it is very difficult to have a group practice and to provide a receptionist and to file insurance and do the other things you need to do for the office and make a profit if you don’t get at least 40% of the money that the therapist brings in. A normal split would be 60-40, where the therapist that does the counseling gets 60% and the office gets 40%. I will tell you that a lot of places even go 50-50.

I will also tell you that if you go 25-75 that you're not going to make any money and you will probably lose money at a group practice,...

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, with Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

You know I believe you I have a way that will make your new patients that schedule with you show up with great regularity. That is by asking them for 50% down to hold the appointment. Now that might sound like a bold thing but the first time I taught it, I had an audience of about 50 people and I said, “Is there is anybody in here that asks for 50% down?” Two middle aged ladies that were therapists raised their hand and they said, “We practice together,” and I said, “Do you ask for 50% down?” They said, “No, we just ask for it all down in advance.” So if you think 50% is a lot try all. When we schedule patients, after we schedule them for the time and the day then we say, “In order to hold that appointment, I ask you to put 50% down which will be $75. Which credit card would you like to put that on?”

Let me go over the script, it goes like this,...

All of us should be setting goals each month for the whole year.

In fact we encourage every client to set new patient goals, patient visit goals and collection goals by month for the whole year.

How do you set goals so they are logical? There are four or five things you have to consider. You can’t just pull a number out of the hat and say, “This is how many new patients I’m going to get” or “This is how many patient visits I’m going to see”. You have to have some reasoning behind it so that you can believe it and reach your goal. There is an old saying that says, “What the mind can conceive and the heart can believe you can achieve”. If you really believe that you’re going to hit your goals you’re going to probably hit them. The reason you’re going to believe that you’re going to hit your goals is, because there’s reasoning behind it.

Here’s the reasoning you have to use. When you set a goal,...

I’ve noticed that some new therapists have a very low Patient Visit Average (PVA).

In other words, for the number of new patients they see, they don’t see those patients very much. I see some new therapists with a patient visit average of two, two and a half, three, maybe as high as five or six. But, I want to explain something. That’s probably not because you’re getting the patients better. It’s probably because they’re discontinuing care or you’re having them discontinue care prematurely. Now, what do I base it on? You say, “Maybe they are getting better. Maybe I’m getting better.” It could be, but that’s not what’s typical of the profession.

I will tell you that typically the average therapist sees the average patient 15 times over their lifetime, so your PVA should be 15. If you take the number of people that came in this month and divide it by the number of new patients that came in this month, you will...