Ruby: and Ruby Ray.
Dr. Sharp: Ruby Ray is here with me again today. We had to go to the doctor. So she got picked up from camp early and we are hanging out without her brother, which is pretty special.
Ruby Ray has something special to tell you about.
Ruby: If you need any paperwork, check out my dad’s paperwork packet.
Dr. Sharp: All right, there you have it, folks. If you need paperwork, check out the paperwork packet. I’ve talked about it in the previous few episodes. I’m not going to belabor this point, but if you need paperwork for your practice, you can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/paperwork and check out some of the options that I’ve put together. I think they could be helpful for you.
All right, onto our episode.
[00:01:00] All right y’all, welcome back. Episode 65 of the Testing Psychologist podcast. I’m Dr. Jeremy Sharp. This is also episode #5, our final episode of the What I Wish I knew series. If you haven’t checked out the previous episodes, this is a little five-part mini-series that I’ve been doing about things that I wish I had known when I started the testing practice and things that I wish I’d done differently as I moved along.Today. we got a short and sweet episode. I am talking today about the cost of testing materials. There’s not a ton to say about this other than I wish I’d known the cost of testing materials.
I think going into the testing practice, I was under the impression that testing [00:02:00] was going to be perhaps more lucrative than therapy. I don’t know that that’s the case right off the bat and inherently in testing; private pay, yes; insurance, probably not. Many insurance companies pay less for testing or maybe equal for testing compared to therapy. Some pay more, but at least in my state and my paneling, that is not the case.
What I’m talking about here today is the overhead involved in testing. Overhead comes in two different forms. One of those is perhaps extra office space. You either need two offices to practice in or you need an extra large office and either of those can be a little bit more expensive by virtue of doing testing.
Now, there are folks out there who are doing testing in small offices and that’s totally okay. That [00:03:00] happens. I think it’s doable. I even did an episode on furniture for testing, so I think it’s doable, but a lot of us end up paying a little bit extra for office space.
The other piece that I want to highlight is the cost of doing testing. The overhead involved comes from testing protocols, materials, scoring programs, of course, test kits. I’ve talked about those many times about how to fund testing kits. So that’s a big one-time expense. And then those tend to recur every few years if you buy an updated measure or need to replenish your library or refresh it. So those can come into play, certainly. It’s quite a bit of overhead, but then I’m thinking about the ongoing cost of testing.
If you haven’t done this already, I would sit down and price out how much it costs you to do [00:04:00] one evaluation, by which I mean add up everything that you spend to make an evaluation happen. So that’s testing protocols which include record forms, answer booklets, any Q-interactive subscription, any pay-per-subtest Q-interactive charges, anything that you’re paying to score things online and other places. Personality testing is a big part of this. So if you’re getting those interpretive reports, those can add up pretty quickly.
So sit down and total up what you spend to do one evaluation. You can do different calculations for adult evals, child evals, brief evals, ADHD evals, and autism evals. You can break it up as much as you want. The trick is to be honest. So track everything that you’re spending to make that evaluation happen.
What I found is that [00:05:00] for evaluations where we are doing a personality test with an interpretive report, the cost can get anywhere between $40 and $50 per evaluation. What I then did was divide that by the typical number of hours that we bill to figure out how much it costs per hour to do an evaluation. You can use that number to do any number of things, but I used it to figure out the hourly cost of doing an evaluation. And then I factored that into what I pay my clinicians who do testing.
I get that question a lot in the Facebook group and other practice management groups on Facebook. It’s like, how do you pay employees for psychological testing? This is something that I discuss a lot that there is some overhead involved and that does affect the percentage or flat fee that you might pay an employee who’s doing testing or a contractor. [00:06:00] Although if they’re a contractor, they should be buying their own testing materials in most cases.
So that’s it. There’s nothing super fancy about this episode, but just putting it out there that you should track and keep a record of how much it costs you to do an evaluation. If like myself, you end up building a practice or scaling your testing practice, those costs can add up. If you’re doing 10 evaluations a month, that’s $500 in overhead that you got to keep track of. If you’re doing 20, it’s $1000, so on and so forth. So, be careful with that. This is different than most therapy practices in that we do have a cost of, I’ve heard it called cost of goods sold; whatever materials you have to use to run your business.
That’s it. I wish I’d known that. I would have [00:07:00] probably handled things a little bit differently, maybe paid my employees a little bit differently. Certainly, I would have been more cognizant of trying to maximize efficiency when doing evals. I just bought whatever I needed and spent money on interpretive reports and whatnot over the years. So, I would have done things a little bit differently, but it’s all to the good to have a good handle on your accounting and know where your money goes in your practice.
Just to recap, testing can be expensive. Know that if you’re just getting started. If you’ve been in practice for a while, go back and look at those numbers if you haven’t run them before, and it can give you a little bit of insight into your monthly finances.
All right. Thank you as always for tuning in. This is the last episode in our, What I Wish I Knew series. Let me know if you enjoy this series approach. This is a little bit [00:08:00] different. It’s an idea I got from my friend, John Clarke over at Private Practice Workshop and some other podcasters. I haven’t done too many series here, but I just finished up two. So let me know if they’ve been helpful. If you’d like other topics in other series, I am happy to do that. I do have some interviews coming up down the line, which I’m excited about, so stay tuned for those as well.
If you have not checked out my paperwork packet, I think this is the last episode I’m going to promote it hard just because it’s brand new and I’m excited about it, but I worked hard on several paperwork packets for your practice and they can help you whether you’re just getting started or you have been in practice for a while. They’re all testing-specific. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/paperwork. The coupon code “podcast” will get you 20% off your entire purchase. So definitely check that out.
Last of all, [00:09:00] if you are thinking about growing your practice or starting a practice or want to level up your practice, if you’re thinking about coaching, or even if you’re not thinking about coaching, maybe now’s the time to think about coaching. That’s what I do. I would love to help you build, scale, or grow your testing practice. If you have no idea what that means, that’s totally okay. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/consulting and get some more info. And if you have more questions, which most people do, you can schedule a complimentary call with me and we can talk about whether coaching would be helpful for you in your practice. And if not, I will hook you up with anything else that might be helpful that’s out there.
All right, y’all, we did it, five episodes of What I Wish I Knew, go check out the rest of them if you haven’t heard them and I will be back soon.
All right, take care. Enjoy your summer.[00:10:00]