Start a Counseling Practice

To help healthcare providers improve their medical billing collections, Thriveworks recently launched a website dedicated specifically to provider medical billing. The website, which provides information on Thriveworks’ professional billing service, also provides over 20 articles, and a growing library of billing videos, providing tips for DIY medical billing. Visit the site here: Medical Billing.

Thriveworks is planning to launch it’s third counseling location, in 2012, in Richmond, Virginia. This recent announcement came on the heals of the opening of their second location, in Philadelphia, PA, in January of this year. While an official address has not been announced, a website provides details and a general overview of the new practice. The new Richmond counseling office is expected to open for business this spring.

Learn more here: Richmond Counseling

Here is a new video from Thriveworks about “Thriveworks Practice Builder.”

For your counseling practice, your medical billing team can be a huge strength and asset, or a nightmare. Too often it is poor billing processes that destroy therapy practices. Consider these 3 questions.

Question Number One: Are you receiving payment for your claims?

Obviously, the point of medical billing is to get paid for your work. But what is reasonable to expect?

A: You are doing well if you receive between 96 to 99 percent of claims, or better said, percentage of money from claims. I make this distinction because if you’re billing for different services, and you’re getting paid on your small claims, but not your high-fee claims, you could potentially have a high percentage of claims paid, but a lower percentage of total money in the door.

A quick note: having 100% of claims paid is always what you’re aiming for–that would be ideal. But in the imperfect system you’re working with (healthcare), be satisfied if you’re receiving 98%.

Consider it a Red Flag is you’re receiving under 95%

If you’re at 94%, don’t panic, but its time to look closely at your reports, and determine where you’re losing 6%, so that you can make changes.

Read On: Counselor Medical Billing Questions

I have profiles on Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Technorati, Ning, Squidoo, XING, Yahoo Answers, MySpace, Yedda, Furl, Blogger, WordPress, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Yelp, Knol, Facebook, Orkut, Foursquare, and Skype… to name a few.

Most of these accounts I hardly use. Several I’ve been on once to create the account and only remember them when I receive email newsletters, which I unceremoniously delete. And, now that I’m thinking of it, a few of the above sites might be defunct by now.

Students and colleagues have been finding me online for several years, so I’m used to getting the occasional “friend request” from someone I have taught or worked with. However, more and more often I am receiving social networking requests from clients—either my own, or from clients of other providers at Thrive Boston Counseling. This poses some clinical and ethical considerations.

Read Facebook Counseling Article

How Much Money Can A Master’s Level Counselor in Private Practice Make?

According to Salary.com, the average Licensed Professional Counselor working in Cambridge, Massachusetts makes $39,778 a year*. That’s beyond bleak. For a city where a 900 square foot apartment can run over $400,000, it’s dismal.

Is this our fate? Financially speaking, are counselors better off getting jobs at Wal-mart?

I don’t think so.

With good practice planning, counselors can do better. For many, earning over $100,000 profit in year two of private practice is an obtainable goal. In this article, we’re going to look at the financial aspects of running a private counseling practice.

Note: the following numbers are rough estimates for a single practitioner in private practice. For your purposes, you may need to adjust expenses, client fees, and volume based on your own personal practice goals, and on the costs of living in your area.

Read Counseling Article

From recent graduates to seasoned clinicians, today it seems that everyone in part- or full-time private practice is asking the same question: “Should I accept health insurance?”

It’s a complicated question. The decision whether to accept third party payments will have a big impact on your counseling practice. The question is made even more difficult as there isn’t just a lot of information to consider—there is also a lot of misinformation about working with insurance companies.

Below are a few semi-misguided statements I’ve heard from counselors worried about accepting insurance. I’ve tried to provide a helpful response to each statement:

1) “I’ve heard I should stay away from accepting insurance.”

Read Counseling Article

A new video we put together reviews three important questions to ask your mental health billing team (or medical billing company), to determine if you practice is up to standard!

This Counselor is very frustrated, because his insurance claims keep getting denied

Medical billing is a frustrating process for counselors who are often juggling too many business tasks, as well as trying to provide excellent clinical care. In fact, many counseling practices collect less than 85% of the monies that they’re rightly owed from insurance companies. However, with good planning, and a smart billing staff (in house or otherwise), your practice can reasonably expect to collect between 96-99% of claims.

Look out for these pitfalls! There are many reasons that claims can go unpaid, including:

1) You Waited too Long to File the Claim

The vast majority of insurance companies allow 90 days from the time of service to file a claim. However, some insurance companies allow only 30 days to file (and a very few, such as Medicare, allow a year—wow). When claims are filed too long after the date of service, they are rejected.

Read the rest of this article here: Counselor Medical Billing Article

As professional counselors, we help others. It’s in our DNA, our learned behaviors, and our personalities.

This is usually a good thing. However, it has its dark side too. Over the last 10 years, I have noticed an alarming reluctance among counselors to run their practices so that they benefit both their clients AND their selves.

It’s as if counselors have the motto: “If it’s good for me, it’s probably bad for my clients—and it’s also probably unethical.”

The follow article–which is pretty long, so it’s broken into two parts, gives Step-by-Step strategies for improving counseling client retention. We’re really excited to have you read this article, so be sure to leave us some feedback!

7 Strategies for Ethically Improving Client Retention

7 Strategies for Ethically Improving Client Retention (Part 2)