Stress Awareness Month: Reducing the Stress in Your Private Practice

Written by Kelsey Someliana-Lauer, Therapy Practice Solutions VA 

While April may be Stress Awareness Month, many small business owners feel stress all year round.  Business owners, compared to other employees, report higher levels of both stress and worry.  Among mental health clinicians specifically, up to 61% of clinicians show signs of burnout - one of which is intense stress (if you want to learn more about burnout, check out our blog about it here).  With these stats, it’s no wonder why you may be feeling some stress - or a lot of stress - if you’re a mental health clinician running your own private practice.

How can mental health professionals who run their own practice cope with stress? Check out three of our top tips below on how to shift from stress away from managing your private practice.

Utilize an Electronic Health Record (EHR)

An Electronic Health Record, or EHR, is a key way to organize your practice and reduce stress.  An EHR is a software that typically assists with storing client files, keeping documentation neat, insurance billing, client payments, scheduling, and more.  There are a variety of EHRs on the market currently - just some examples are Theranest, SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, and TherapyAppointment.  Utilizing an EHR cuts down on stress as EHRs streamline the less-fun features of running your own practice (hello, filling out insurance claims!).

Customize Your Schedule and Rates

One of the reasons many mental health clinicians start their own practice is for better hours and better compensation.  However, clinicians often fall into the pattern of compromising schedules and payments in the beginning of their practice to get any and all clients they can.  While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can lead to stress as you suddenly find yourself stuck in the same long days and low wages you left your previous job because of. 

As a mental health clinician, like any other professional, you deserve to be compensated well for your specialized skills and continuous training.  Determine what the going rate is for similarly trained professionals in your area, and don’t be afraid to charge that rate.  Similarly, don’t be afraid to have set hours and stick to them - you’ll rarely, if ever, find a doctor’s office that will come in two hours before opening to accommodate a single client.

Start a Team

Doing it all on your own is stressful! If your practice has grown to the extent you can handle on your own, you can expand in multiple ways.  If you’ve got a waitlist, consider adding another clinician (or two!) to accommodate more clients.  If you already have a group practice but you’re caught up in administrative tasks, consider hiring a practice manager to take care of things for you.  If you just need someone to take over social media, website development, insurance billing, client communication, and scheduling, a virtual assistant would be perfect for you.

We get it - starting a practice or just keeping it going can be extremely stressful.  This April, don’t let stress be your enemy - offload some of that worry!  A Therapy Practice Solutions Virtual Assistant can help you transfer your paper files to a new EHR, keep your schedule and billing in check, and so much more.  If you want to build your team by adding someone who can take all those administrative tasks without being added to your payroll (not to mention, who doesn’t require benefits), reach out today to meet your perfect match.  We look forward to hearing from you!