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 episode is brought to you in part by PAR.
The Personality Assessment Inventory Bariatric compiles the results of the PAI into a useful report for bariatric surgery candidates, available on PARiConnect, PAR’s online assessment platform. You can visit parinc.com/products/pai-bariatric.
Hey, folks. What’s going on? Welcome back to [00:01:00] The Testing Psychologist. Today’s a business episode, and we are going to continue our discussion of software and technology. So, we are talking about going beyond the basics.
Last time, we talked about the EHR and all the things that it could do, but today I’m going to go a little bit beyond the EHR for those of you who maybe mastered the basics and realized that it may not be enough for your practice.
We’re going to talk about more of a complete tech stack, I would suppose, for your practice, breaking down some of the tools that could be most helpful for you to automate workflows, enhance patient engagement, and maybe optimize your financial management as well. And we’re going to stay HIPAA-compliant and ethical.
So, going to try to tackle those questions: What is worth investing in? What do you really need? How do you implement these tools without completely overwhelming yourself? So if you are [00:02:00] ready to implement some additional tools in your practice beyond your EHR, stay tuned.
All right, let’s do it. We’re going to start off with the hub. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I’m going to reemphasize. You do need some kind of practice management system. You could also call this the EHR. This is your hub of operations. So if you didn’t listen to the previous episode on the EHRs, what they include, and what they can take care of for you, I would suggest going back and doing that.
This should seamlessly integrate with your other systems and handle scheduling, billing, patient records, and all those kinds of things. [00:03:00] So it does matter. Practices that use an EHR spend about 30% less time on administrative tasks and experience way fewer errors in billing and scheduling. So anything you can do to automate is great. So, check out the EHRs.
If you haven’t seen my YouTube channel with the playlist of EHR reviews, I do review probably seven or eight EHRs at this point, specifically through the lens of being a testing psychologist. So go check those out. So you need an EHR. That’s the base.
Next is telehealth. Telehealth is interesting. You need a telehealth platform somehow. So you got two options for this. You actually have a lot of options for telehealth. You can do built-in telehealth through either Teams or Google Workspace. So, if you use either of those file management systems, they will come with HIPAA-compliant telehealth options as long as you have signed up for the plan that gives you a BAA.
[00:04:00] Many of the EHRs will also offer a telehealth option. I know IntakeQ, TherapyNotes, and SimplePractice. They all offer telehealth solutions. So just make sure that you have your telehealth dialed in. People do appreciate telehealth, although we’re getting a lot more calls to try to return in person.That said, you still need a solid telehealth platform. Doxy is an old, classic mental health platform. It’s not integrated with the EHRs natively, but it’s an option. Zoom, same way. I’m getting tired of Zoom. To be honest, I don’t like the functionality. I don’t like the interface as much. I feel like the updates that they made over the past few years or maybe several months are not working for me. So I’ve switched over almost entirely to Google Meet and just use that for telehealth.
Okay, so those are the basics. Let’s get into [00:05:00] options that are a little more fancy.
Let’s talk AI. Everybody loves AI. Everybody’s curious about AI. Some people are scared of AI. There’s a lot to say about AI. I’m sure we’ll do a whole podcast episode on AI, or maybe several at some point in the future, but I’m going to couch the AI discussion here under the umbrella of extra automation and advanced tactics that you can use beyond your EHR.
So, at this point, a lot of EHRs are not incorporating AI. I don’t know of any EHR right now that’s publicly available that incorporates AI specifically for testing folks and also doubles as an EHR. That said, there are some tools that are still helpful for testing folks.
Just to say right off the bat, I don’t think AI is going to replace us at any point. We’re already getting backlash on the therapy side of mental health [00:06:00], chatbots and use of AI, and how it’s harmful to people in some cases. And so I don’t think that’s going to be happening.
And as the co-founder of Reverb, which is an AI platform to help with report writing, I can say that I don’t think AI is anywhere near the place where it can totally replace psychologists with writing reports and integrating testing data and things like that. So not trying to replace us; it’s just about making life easier and trying to automate the things that don’t require clinical expertise or a ton of brain power.
So what are some of those tools? Let’s talk about transcription and data synthesis, not data in the testing sense but information synthesis. So there are tools like Heidi. Heidi is a popular AI option that will help you with note-taking and summarizing interview notes, for example, [00:07:00] listening in on an interview and then transcribing the content and synthesizing the content. Heidi’s a great option.
NoteZap is another option that will listen in and record the session, HIPAA-compliant of course, and then transcribe and even synthesize some of the information. There are a lot of report writing options out there at this point, all the way from do-it-yourself options. For things like that, you can just wing it with ChatGPT, which is not HIPAA-compliant.
You could take a little bit of a step up in terms of privacy at least and sign up for something like Bastion, which is a healthcare-minded ChatGPT wrapper that’s HIPAA compliant. The technology is a little dated at this point. Bastion is not updating to the most recent language models, so it’s not quite as [00:08:00] good as it used to be, but that’s an easy do-it-yourself approach.
You can also look at Liz Angoff’s resources, which I will link in the show notes. She has a lot of resources on using AI in assessments without necessarily investing in a more advanced platform, which works for a lot of folks who are trying to keep costs low and trying to take that do-it-yourself approach.
If you want to go the route of a more full-featured platform, there are certainly some options out there. Like I said, I’m a co-founder of Reverb, which is a report-writing software. It’s a full-featured solution that will take all of your data, integrate it, and essentially write the draft of the report for you. We think at this point, it’s saving people at least 50% of the time it takes to write reports.
There are other options out there, and I would encourage you to explore them and see [00:09:00] which ones fit most for your needs, your price point, and things like that. There’s one called Parchment. There’s one called neuroaide. I think there’s one called Assessment Assist. So, there are some options out there.
PsychAssist, at some point, will be on the market and out of beta. So, there are a lot of options out there. I would encourage you to try all of them and see which one fits your needs the best, but I don’t think AI is going away by any means.
The research will say that it is pretty good at reducing the time that we spend on these tasks. So if you’re afraid of AI or you think we shouldn’t be using it, I think you’re going to get left behind, just being honest.
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 [00:10:00] 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 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 [00:11:00] everyone is switching to TherapyNotes.
The Personality Assessment Inventory Bariatric, or PAI Bariatric, compiles the results of the PAI into a useful report just for bariatric surgery candidates. Log into PARiConnect, PAR’s online assessment platform, where you can administer the PAI and select the bariatric score report to view the result based on bariatric presurgical candidate norms. Learn more at parinc.com/products/pai-bariatric.
Let’s get back to the podcast.
All right, let’s talk about something even more advanced. I’ll be honest, y’all, I have not gone this route, but I’ve done a lot of research into it. So this will be something like integrating, for example, an AI chatbot on your website or an AI agent to help with client scheduling and administrative tasks.
So there are some HIPAA-compliant chatbot services [00:12:00] out there. There’s Simpler AI, there’s Tars, there’s Windy, and there are a lot now. I think Windy was one of the originals, but these others have come on the scene as well.
And so how this works is you essentially connect one of these AI chatbots to your website and also connect it to your EHR. So you would need an EHR that allows a chatbot to integrate with it. You can use the chatbots to answer simple questions like, What is your address? What is your fax number? When is your earliest available appointment? How do I book an appointment? How do I cancel an appointment? Things like that.
You can set it up basically like an FAQ so that it can handle any of those common questions that people are asking about. What kind of work do you do? What kind of evaluations do you specialize in? Do you test for autism? Things like that.
And then you have to monitor it and tweak it here and there to make sure that it stays dialed in, but [00:13:00] some of the chatbots can learn from themselves. So as you get client questions, they can learn and get better and better.
So if you are at this place where you’re ready to automate a little bit more, go to the next level beyond just an EHR, spend 2, 3, 4 hours over the next week or so, diving into chatbots and see if there are any that can actually fit for you. I’m certainly going to be looking at this over the next quarter. It’s a Q2 project for our practice.
In the next section, we’re going to talk about patient engagement solutions, so keeping clients involved and happy. So, this can work in a lot of different ways. When I say patient engagement, it’s essentially, how do we keep our patients well dialed in and connected to our practice at different points?
So, engaged patients are going to show up more, they’re going to invest in more services, and they’re going to have better outcomes. It’s [00:14:00] not just about sending emails, though; it’s ongoing communication, education, and convenience. So it definitely helps with no-shows. Also helps if you are trying to “upsell” clients after the evaluation. Keeping them engaged is a good thing.
There are a few examples of how you might do this. The one that comes to mind right away is if you have a waitlist where clients are waiting, let’s say 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 months to get in for an evaluation, you can keep them engaged by adding them to an automated email sequence. That should be pretty easy to set up. You could use MailChimp or Constant Contact or ActiveCampaign, any of those email platforms.
And as soon as someone books their intake, you add them to this email campaign. That’s essentially sending them one email a month. It’s keeping them engaged. The first one might be, [00:15:00] hey, thanks for scheduling your appointment. We look forward to seeing you.
The second month it might be, all right, you’re still on our wait list. Please let us know if you have any questions or if anything has changed. The third month it might be a piece of content that is tailored to their concern. So it might be an info sheet on neurodevelopmental disorders or something like that.
So, you see where I’m going with this? It’s not really about providing super valuable content that’s helpful, but it’s more about staying engaged and keeping them present with the practice, because we found that a lot of people will try to look for other solutions that can offer a shorter wait list, and we want to keep them engaged and let them know we haven’t forgotten about them.
Another way that you can keep clients engaged is with post-evaluation feedback. We [00:16:00] can’t solicit reviews, but we can ask for feedback, and that’s what I’m talking about. So there are a ton of automated patient engagement tools out there. You can do a Google search and find it.
This is that thing like when you leave your dentist’s office within like 10 minutes, you get a text that says, how did we do? I haven’t seen many mental health practices using it, but there are options out there, and you can also create your own.
For example, we built a simple tool within Google Sheets that lets us essentially add the client name and email address right after we do feedback, and then it is automatically programmed to send out a feedback survey within four weeks. And then we get that customer feedback automatically.
There are other ways to do it. You can use something like Jotform, you can use SurveyMonkey as long as it’s the HIPAA-compliant version. So there are lots of options [00:17:00] out there for patient engagement, but I think that’s a great option to keep people engaged and connected to your practice.
The third option is that once you finish up a feedback session, you can also add that client to another email campaign depending on their concern. So you might have a separate campaign for ADHD diagnosis, autism diagnosis, and learning disorder diagnosis.
I’m thinking off the top of my head, but you add them to this email campaign, and then they get three to six automated emails once a month or every two weeks where you’re providing them some helpful content. You’re checking in, you’re saying, hey, have you connected with any resources I recommended? Let me know if you need help. Hey, do you need another feedback session to discuss the report? I’d be happy to meet with you. And you include your scheduling link.
So this is just another way to keep clients tied to your practice [00:18:00] and invest in services at your practice if you’re willing to provide those things, of course. Like I said, you’ve got to walk the line, and we can’t solicit reviews, but we can ask for feedback, and we can try to keep patients engaged.
A lot to digest from this episode. If you’re listening and thinking, oh my gosh, this sounds completely crazy, I don’t have the time to do this. You don’t have to do it immediately. Like I said, these are slightly more advanced techniques, but these are the things that will set you apart from other practices as well. And so it’s worth putting a little bit of time into.
And if you can’t do it yourself, hire somebody to do it. There are plenty of college students who’d be happy to figure this out for you. This is in the marketing realm, college student, Upwork, Fiverr, there are folks out there who can research and set these things up for [00:19:00] you. So you don’t have to do it all yourself.
I hope this has been helpful. If you want to talk through any of these options, do some implementation and some research on tools that can help you, let me know. You can book a strategy session at thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting. We can get really hands-on, dive in, and try to figure this out together. Good luck, happy researching, and happy technology testing.
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 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 aspiring practice owner, I’d invite you to check out The Testing Psychologist [00:20:00] 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.
The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this [00:21:00] 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 supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.
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