Many of y’all know that I have been using TherapyNotes as our practice EHR for over 10 years now. I’ve looked at others, and I just keep coming back to TherapyNotes because they do it all. If you’re interested in an EHR for your practice, you can get two free months of TherapyNotes by going to thetestingpsychologist.com/therapynotes and enter the code “testing.”
This podcast is brought to you in part by PAR.
The NEO Inventories Normative Update is now available with a new normative sample that is more representative of the current U.S. population. Visit parinc.com/neo.
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Testing [00:01:00] Psychologist. Today we’re talking about one of my favorite topics, which is systems and automation.
I think this is one of the most crucial topics for practice owners, especially as we move into the next few years. Everything is AI-driven. Technology is everywhere. Everything’s on the internet. Clients expect everything to be easy.
So we’re going to talk about how to use automation and software systems to keep you from drowning in admin work, or constantly being behind on notes, or struggling to keep up with scheduling and billing. This is the episode for you.
So a big part of this is the burnout factor. It is real. Studies are showing that clinicians are spending more and more time on administrative tasks. And when you are doing administrative stuff, you are not making the money that you should be. You’re also using valuable [00:02:00] brainpower that you could be using on other tasks and translating into good client work.
So if you’re ready to get some of your time back, build your efficiency and free up a little brainpower, this is for you. Let’s get to it.
Okay, folks. Let’s get right into it. Just like usual, talking about technology, automation, and systems, we’ve talked about these things independently on podcast before. I just want to say it bears repeating that every time I think that we have crossed the threshold into using an EHR or using some software to help automate your practice processes, I’ll bump into someone who does [00:03:00] not have an EHR and is taking care of everything on paper and pencil, using Excel sheets, Word documents or whatever it may be in these disparate systems. And so, I’m always happy to revisit this idea of systems and automation in practice.
So I’m going to start with what I would consider to be the backbone of any practice, which is your Electronic Health Record system or EHR. So, a good EHR can streamline everything in your practice. It can help with documentation, it can help with HIPAA compliance and record storage, and some of them are even integrating AI-powered features to make notes and writing a little faster. On the flip side, if you have a bad EHR, then it’s going to be super frustrating and cost you more time than it’s probably worth.
Statistically speaking, there was a recent study that was [00:04:00] published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that over 40% of clinicians report feeling burned out due to excessive administrative tasks. If you find yourself in that 40% group, just know that there is hope, and it can be easier.
So like I said in the introduction, it’s not just inconvenient, it is costing brain power and can be a health risk for us as providers, and it’s not doing our clients any favors. So how do we fix this?
Well, let’s look for an EHR that fits for you. I did a lengthy EHR review series. It’s up to about seven or eight EHR systems on my YouTube channel. You can go check that out. I’ll put it in the show notes.
There’s a playlist just for EHR reviews for testing folks. I tried to dive in and do some of the work for you so that you don’t have to [00:05:00] do your own trials. I think there are a few out there that are pretty good for testing folks and some that are not so good.
You all know TherapyNotes is a sponsor for the podcast. I’m obviously a big fan of TherapyNotes. There are others that might meet your needs a little bit better, so I’d encourage you to go watch those reviews and decide on which one you might need.
There’s also some great resources at Rob Reinhardt’s website. The name is escaping me right now. I’ll look it up, and I’ll put it in the show notes. I also did a podcast with Rob way back when, and he does pretty extensive reviews of EHRs as well, and seems to be on the cutting edge in terms of new EHRs and ones that have most recently come out.
So, choosing an EHR that works for you. You want to look for a system with as many features as you need and none of them that you don’t. I would say the basics right now are [00:06:00] calendar, accounting/billing, and to-do list notes.
If you submit insurance claims, you’ll definitely want something that integrates billing, insurance claims, reconciling payments, and things like that. You’ll also want to look for one with a robust client portal, as we’ll talk about here in just a bit, where you can send messages back and forth and do scheduling, but it’s up to you. It’s worth sitting down and making a nice list of your personal requirements for an EHR and your personal pain points in the administrative process.
So first is to do some reviewing, do some demoing, and choose the EHR that works best for you. And you may not need any AI-driven tools. At this point, there are no EHRs that have AI tools that are actually helpful for testing folks. There are some that are integrating AI note-writing tools. So if you do therapy, you could certainly look for that.
[00:07:00] You also want to look for an EHR that will let you maybe create almost like a text expander, like phrases or dot phrases, for those of you who’ve used Epic. There are some EHRs out there that’ll let you program in snippets or repetitive phrases, things like that, so that you can insert them easily into your notes and documentation.Like I said earlier, many EHRs will also let you set up automated intake forms, appointment reminders, secure messaging, all of that kind of stuff, just to save you all the time that you might spend with back and forth emails, sending paperwork and trying to track it down, oh, does this person know how to download and fill in a PDF? Do they have to print it? That kind of thing.
Like I said, lots to dive into with EHRs. I don’t know that anyone is perfect. I have not found the perfect EHR for testing folks at this point, but it’s a matter of listing your most important criteria and then going to [00:08:00] find the EHR with those features.
Alright, what is the next system? So, the first system is EHR. That’s the backbone. The second system or software you want to have is some kind of automated scheduling and client communication tool. Many EHRs will cover this for you, but this another major time suck for clinicians, scheduling.
So if you are still manually booking, rescheduling, confirming appointments, that is something that we need to fix immediately. There are plenty of automated scheduling tools. Like I said, many EHRs will handle this themselves, but if you don’t have it in your EHR somehow, you can look at tools like Calendly or Acuity. I know Acuity has a HIPAA compliant version. I think Calendly does as well.
So these are [00:09:00] software options that can let clients book directly through your website so you don’t have to do phone tag. You can either let them book into consult calls, like we’ve talked about, or screening calls. If you’re brave and have other systems in place, you can let them book directly in the intake appointments, but the idea here is that we want to cut down on phone tag.
And then once people are actually booked, you get to use those automated text and email reminders because they have been shown to reduce no-shows by up to 40%. And you might be saying, oh my gosh, this is overkill. I don’t need all of this. I never have no-shows anyway. Maybe that’s true. If that’s happening for you, then congratulations. You’re super fortunate.
If you think of it just in terms of ROI, return on investment, if you get one no-show a year, most of us, that’s going to cost us $2,000 to $3,000, maybe $4,000, $5,000, 6,000, $7,000 depending how much you charge for an evaluation, and that is absolutely [00:10:00] going to pay for the software to manage no-shows many times over.
Of course, your cancellation policy is going to come into play there too, but a lot of the EHRs will let you build in your cancellation policy, and if the person doesn’t cancel within a certain timeframe, then they get automatically charged.
Let’s take a break to hear from a featured partner.
Y’all know that I love TherapyNotes, but I am not the only one. They have a 4.9 out of 5-star rating on trustpilot.com and Google, which makes them the number one-rated Electronic Health Record system available for mental health folks today. They make billing, scheduling, note-taking, and telehealth all incredibly easy. They also offer custom forms that you can send through the portal. For all the prescribers out there, TherapyNotes is proudly offering ePrescribe as well. And maybe the most important thing for me is that they have live telephone support seven days a week so [00:11:00] you can actually talk to a real person in a timely manner.
If you’re trying to switch from another EHR, the transition is incredibly easy. They’ll import your demographic data free of charge so you can get going right away. So if you’re curious or you want to switch or you need a new EHR, try TherapyNotes for two months absolutely free. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/therapynotes and enter the code “testing”. Again, totally free. No strings attached. Check it out and see why everyone is switching to TherapyNotes.
Our friends at PAR have released the NEO Inventories Normative Update. The NEO Inventories measure the five major dimensions of personality and the most important facets that define each. Now with an updated normative sample that’s more representative of the current U.S. population and fewer components for easier purchasing. Visit parinc.com/neo.
Let’s get back to the podcast.
[00:12:00] So a lot of you, I’m guessing, are thinking, my clients like the personal touch of scheduling with me, and that is totally fair, but here’s the thing. By automating the scheduling, you free up the time to provide a high-touch experience where it matters most, which is when you’re in front of the client, in person with the client.I did not dig into the research on this. I probably should, but I think there is, anecdotally, a lot of evidence to suggest that the upcoming generations, let’s see, that would be, I’m a late Gen X and then Millennial, and Gen Z, Gen Alpha, we are not going less offline.
People like convenience. Thank you Amazon and Prime Shipping. People like convenience. People like to know what they are getting [00:13:00] ASAP. They like to book very quickly. They like to be able to do everything online. They don’t like talking to people on the phone. So everything you can do to automate the scheduling and reminder process is going to be really helpful.
Third system is with billing and financial automation. This can also happen through your EHR. That’s why I said in the beginning, EHR is really the backbone, but you want to make sure that you have some kind of billing processes in place.
I think for a lot of us, billing is probably the least favorite part of running a practice, but it doesn’t have to be a total nightmare. If you automate your billing, that can be a complete game changer. So here’s what that looks like.
Essentially, many EHRs and many systems let you set up your system to auto-generate invoices, auto-generate superbills, et cetera, payments. And as long as you have a credit card on file for folks, you can automatically [00:14:00] charge the cards on file.
I know there’s some nuanced payment models out there where you’re doing a deposit at this point in time, and then half of the balance at this point in time, and the other half at a different point. With a lot of the EHRs, you can absolutely automate that. You just have to put in the work on the backend, make sure your billing codes are dialed in, your settings are correct and so forth.
There’s a lot of capability to automate the invoicing and payment system. A lot of EHRs will even send the invoices or email the invoices automatically if you don’t want to invest in an admin person to handle that. At the very least, having a system that will process credit card payments, store credit cards, allow you to go in at the end of each day and click a simple button to charge the card and generate a receipt, if you need to do that.
[00:15:00] If you’re on the insurance side, there are EHRs out there that can largely automate the insurance claim submission process. You may still have to manually go in and click a few boxes to submit those claims, but it should be relatively easy.On the insurance side, I should definitely mention the fact that many EHRs out there will also scrub the claims for you and make sure that you have the correct information on the claims to increase the likelihood that you’re going to get paid. I see a lot of discussion in the Facebook group about claims getting denied, billing being a nightmare and so forth.
If you want to go the extra mile and dial in your finances, you can get some kind of software to track income, expenses, profitability, so kind of a financial dashboard. There are many EHRs that offer reporting [00:16:00] options where they will show you your monthly income or per-session income, things like that, per CPT code. So you could do that route.
You could use something like PracticeVital, which also has financial dashboard capabilities, lots of tools out there. That’s a next level step. If you can automate your billing and payments, that’s a great baseline step.
Just to put some data behind this, there was a study from healthit.gov that found the practices that used automated billing had 35% fewer billing errors and reduced their claim rejections by up to 25%. That’s a lot, especially if you’re an insurance-based practice. It also goes hand in hand for private practice where I think the more you delay with billing, if you forget to charge or don’t have good processes in place, it increases the likelihood that you’re going to lose that money.
Before we wrap up, I can address two concerns that typically come up [00:17:00] when I talk about this stuff with people. One, people say automation is too expensive or software is too expensive. This is just one of those things; the time savings is going to far outweigh the cost in the vast majority of cases. So unless you’re going way in over your head and paying for software that is exceptionally expensive, which we really don’t need, most of the automation tools are going to pay for themselves, if not within the week, then definitely within the month.
So most of these tools are going to be $30, $40, $50 a piece for a monthly subscription. Maybe a little bit more, $75, maybe $90. But think about it, most of us, that is less than an hour of our time.
The research would say that healthcare practitioners are spending way more than an hour a day, even on administrative tasks. So if this is something that could save you, let’s just call it 10 [00:18:00] to 20 hours a month, that’s at least $1,000 to $2,000 a month that it’s going to save you on the time cost.
Another big objection that people have is, Hey, I don’t have time to set this up. I get that. Of all the concerns, I feel like this is very valid. A lot of folks are busy. If you’re using paper and pencil and a non-automated system, you’re probably extra busy because you’re spending extra time on these administrative tasks.
But my counter to that is that you don’t have time not to. What this means is take 3 hours on a weekend, take 2 hours on a Sunday, take 1.5 hours on a Monday, and start with one system, and build from there. So if you get an EHR set up, you can easily do that in probably an hour, maybe two, and then you’re off to the races.
This is a perfect thing, [00:19:00] honestly, that I like to work with people on a strategy session. We’ll jump on a call. We can walk through an EHR together, get it set up, and have some time carved out to implement one of these systems, troubleshoot a little bit, and make sure that you’re good to go.
The other concern that people ask about a lot is data security. Two thoughts there. One, especially if you’re using paper and pencil, I would argue that your paper and pencil files are a lot less secure in a file cabinet, if they’re even in a locked file cabinet in a locked office and so forth, than one of these cloud-based HIPAA-compliant platforms.
They’re all going to be HIPAA compliant, if it’s an EHR for mental health, and most of them are going to require what’s called two-factor authentication, which means that you can’t log in to the software without the password and an extra measure of security, like sending you a text or sending you an email to confirm your identity.
So [00:20:00] of all the concern, data security is probably the least concern at this point. There is the chance that somebody’s going to hack into TherapyNotes and steal the client data. I think it’s really low, though.
A quick recap. Three essential systems that you need to help with your automation. One, get an EHR. This is the umbrella system that will likely encompass the other two, which are scheduling and communication and billing and financial management.
If you have a good EHR, it’s going to go a long way toward helping you with the communication piece, letting your clients book online, do their rescheduling online, and get automated reminders. All those things are going to be super helpful to reduce no-shows and remove friction from the process, as I put it in an episode two weeks ago. And then on the billing side, automating the invoicing and the charging, it’s a no-brainer. It’s going to save you a ton of money if you have that process set up.
[00:21:00] You’ll notice I didn’t talk at all about AI. There’s a whole separate episode that will be coming about AI and report writing and how to leverage AI in your practice to get more efficient. So stay tuned for that.In the meantime, if you don’t have these systems in place, just pick one. Commit to yourself that you’re going to watch some EHR review videos and demos. One EHR this week. That’s all you got to do. Just pick a small step, start there, and see how it works for you.
And then, if it doesn’t work, you can iterate. You can try another one and ask for some feedback in The Testing Psychologist Facebook community, or, like I said, book a strategy session. We’ll talk about EHRs. We can demo some and see what fits best for you.
All right, y’all. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Always grateful to have you here. I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life. Any [00:22:00] resources that we mentioned during the episode will be listed in the show notes so make sure to check those out.
If you like what you hear on the podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
And if you’re a practice owner or an aspiring practice owner, I’d invite you to check out The Testing Psychologist mastermind groups. I have mastermind groups at every stage of practice development: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. We have homework, we have accountability, we have support, and we have resources. These groups are amazing. We do a lot of work and a lot of connecting. If that sounds interesting to you, you can check out the details at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting. You can sign up for a pre-group phone call, and we will chat and figure out if a group could be a good fit for you. Thanks so much.
[00:23:00] The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here, and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need [00:24:00] supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.