Optimizing Your Practice for Sustainable Operations

Streamline and improve your workflows so you can work smarter, not harder, and scale your operations with ease. Develop strategies that can be used by your entire team while maintaining a consistently positive patient experience to attract and retain clients.

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Guidance for Established Behavioral Health Practices

Evaluate the health of your practice by collecting data and scrutinizing the efficiency of your daily work. Identify what “success” looks like for you, and put strategies in place to reach that goal.

1

Invest in Robust Reporting

Regular reports on your most important KPIs will help you understand what’s working at your practice, as well as your challenges. It’s a good idea to run reports on financials and billing, client retention, provider productivity, and operational items such as appointments scheduled and average wait times. Basing your decisions on real data will help your business thrive.

2

Create a Consistent Patient Experience

Creating a consistent patient experience starts with standardizing how you interact with clients. Develop consistent workflows for common processes like intake, scheduling, and billing, and responding promptly to client communications with standard brand language where appropriate.”

3

Reduce Touchpoints with Prospective Patients

Simplify the process for new patients to schedule appointments and reduce the number of steps needed to get started with your practice. Instead of expecting them to reach out to you, wait for your response, and participate in phone tag or email chains with your staff, consider online appointment requests and automated intake options to jump-start the process.

4

Streamline with Better Billing Practices

Billing for behavioral health can be complicated, and if you don’t have a tight handle on it, it can easily overwhelm you. This results in denied claims and long-overdue payments, which ultimately hurts your cash flow. You’ll need to create a system for checking documentation and accuracy on claims, and then track them through the insurance system for prompt reimbursement. A good billing software and/or outsourced billing can help.

Maintaining Your Practice

20 KPIs for Private Practice

Experts in behavioral health metrics, Valant has put together a comprehensive white paper outlining 20 key performance indicators private practice owners should take into account when tracking the progress of their practice toward its goals.

Maintaining Your Practice

Common questions asked by others like you

How can I better engage patients without expending too many resources?

Engaging patients can be a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be a drain on your resources. By automating patient engagement efforts, you can keep clients plugged in without overwhelming your workload. Appointment reminders, auto-sending documents like outcome measures and “homework” between appointments, and a patient portal with a messaging feature are all easy ways to keep clients engaged without demanding copious amounts of maintenance on the practice end. With the right tools, you can improve patient outcomes and keep clients happy without expending too many resources.

How can measurement-based care improve my practice?

By regularly measuring and tracking patient progress through symptom rating scales, you can personalize treatment plans and make data-driven decisions that lead to better patient outcomes. Measurement-based care can improve communication and trust between you and your patients, as they see that you are invested in their progress and have a clear understanding of their needs. It can also improve the efficiency of your practice, as you can quickly identify patients who need additional support or a change in treatment and adjust accordingly. Reviewing symptom rating scales can even help patients learn to spot signs of a relapse or worsening of their condition.

How can I reduce claims denials to improve my revenue?

Often, claims denials are the result of simple errors such as typos, misspellings, or incomplete information. Ensure that you accurately capture patient demographic information on each bill. Software that pulls patient info from your central records for billing is the easiest tool to cut down on mistakes. It’s also imperative to check a patient’s eligibility before they begin sessions, so you know up front what is and isn’t covered by insurance.

What reports do I need to monitor the health of my practice?

To monitor the health of your practice, regularly review productivity reports at both the practice and provider levels, client retention and outcome measure reports, referral source reports, and payroll reports. By regularly monitoring these reports, you can identify areas for improvement, track progress towards your goals, and make data-driven decisions to improve the overall health and success of your practice.

Maintaining Your Practice

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