Private Practice Management Tips + Tricks
Check out all of our video content for private practice management tips + tricks from psychiatrist and practice owner Dr. Brian J. Dixon!
Practice Management Tips Inspired by Beyoncé
Simply Psych Versus
Mental Health Workforce Shortage
Music & Mental Health
Bet On Yourself
Physician Empowerment
And don’t forget about our blogs and articles on all things private practice management and success for clinicians in the mental health ecosystem!
How to Succeed by Failing
Everyone has heard somebody mention the lessons they’ve learned from failing. Even in a galaxy far, far away, the infinitely wise Jedi Master Yoda said, (paraphrasing here) failure is our greatest teacher. And while this is all true, not everyone knows exactly how to...
Marketing for Private Practice Owners
Check out this video on marketing tricks of the trade! (You need only watch about the first two and a half minutes.) These marketing tricks of the trade are wild. And you’re right to feel both a little bewildered and betrayed by your favorite places after knowing that...
Health Insurance Prevents Scaling
Launching a private practice requires making many hard decisions. To avoid burnout, clinician-owners must increase their time doing actual patient care. This requires reducing the number of hours spent pushing papers, of which health insurance is perhaps the biggest...
The Importance of the Niche for Therapists
A successful practice is one that DOESN’T treat everyone. Huh?! But if you don’t treat as many people as possible, aren’t you missing out on potential patients/clients? Nope. But if my schedule isn’t full, how is it possible to grow beyond that capacity? No, no;...
Take the Leap and Start Your Private Practice
There’s a business adage that says anything you create or do as an owner will take three times as long as you hoped and cost three times as much as you budgeted. While that’s not the case every time, the moral is that starting a brand new business is most likely going...
Why My Psychiatry Practice Doesn’t Accept Health Insurance
Physician burnout is frighteningly common. There are more reasons for this burnout than I could begin to capture in this article. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of overworking and unnecessary bureaucracy behind the scenes at your average hospital. As one case among...
It Costs Money to Give People Money!
Starting up as a sole proprietor in private practice is very interesting, financially speaking. Most times, you treat the business bank account as your personal bank account because – for all intents and purposes – it is. (That is until you get yourself a really good...
Finding Black Mental Health Folks
Representation matters. Seeing someone who looks like you on TV, or in a book, or representing you in government is a key component to self-realizing your own unique potential (which was always there, regardless of if society deems you worthy in the moment; you are...
It’s the Money, Duh
The mental health ecosystem has been financially neglected for decades. The result: this reality that we find ourselves in, as depicted by a sobering graph from the New York Times of people who literally reached out for help and gave up before getting it. Let that...
Whole Office Care… for Therapists!
For the mental health clinician, practicing therapy can be taxing. It is a highly emotional environment (not to mention mental, spiritual, even physical at times). The moments spent treating mental healthcare seekers could be flexed as the primary source of their...
Building Better Networks
Mental healthcare professionals are experts in their field of practice. After up to 12 years in higher education, they deserve that title of expert! But do you know what’s not included in their years of school and training? While they’ve gone into thousands of dollars...
988, Welcome to the Ecosystem!
Inpatient, outpatient, PHP, emergency… These terms and constructs are just a few of the pieces in a robust and comprehensive healthcare ecosystem. However, as of 2022, each of the areas are islands in the stream with poor connectivity and almost no coordination...
Doctors as Owners, Employees, and Everywhere In-Between
Psychiatrist, Own Thyself. Medical education has an interesting way of skewing one's perspective. Contrary to public belief about doctors and egos, medical students immerse themselves in teamwork. Without it, the soon-to-be-certified healthcare professionals would...
Get Unstuck: The Power of Interviewing
Complacency holds you back from realizing your full potential. For the career-minded individual, this is a growing, daunting source of anxiety and stress as the feeling of being stuck and purposelessness pulls you down. If this sounds familiar, jumping all-in and...
Get Unstuck: The Power of THINKING of Vacation
Gone are the guaranteed days of traveling across the country for work trips, vacationing in the mountains during the winter, heading to the beach for a summer-time adventure, and even the good-old-fashioned road trip to see Grandma. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on,...
Get Unstuck: The Power of Pushing Through
Everybody gets stuck sometimes. As an expert in mental health, the realization that you yourself are not immune to moments of feeling completely overwhelmed, boxed in, anxious, and sometimes stuck can be a pesky, slippery fish to grasp onto into the vast flowing river...
Where’d the Mental Health Workforce Go?
Shortages are currently in no short supply. In fact, the only consistent thing in the world right now are shortages: barriers to receiving a desired good, service, or even care. COVID, war in Ukraine, supply chain, consumer demand, the list goes on; we’re feeling...
The Charcuterie Career
We live in a culture that is defined by one size NOT fitting all. While this is an empowering position full of endless possibilities (have you been down the cereal aisle of the grocery store lately..? TOO MANY OPTIONS), it can seem overwhelming. This is especially...
Getting Things Done
Running a successful private practice relies on one thing: getting things done. Thoughts, prayers, wishes… all are great in their own right. But as Thomas Edison (probably) once said "a vision without execution is just a hallucination." Starting a practice can feel...
Simply Psych’s Seven Keys to Self-Care for Clinicians
“Self-care.” “Wellness.” “Mindfulness.” All of these words and concepts, though probably all good-intentioned, can get confusing quickly. At Simply Psych, we believe in practical practice management tools to help you help others. We also believe that finding peace and...
Handling “Too Convenient”
Handling "too convenient" encompasses the whole spectrum of quality, quantity, and cost. Maybe things shouldn't be quick and easy every time. A patient had a helluva time coming off their nicotine vape pen. Firstly, nicotine is not only super addictive, but putting it...
Spotlight on the Mental Health Workforce
Let's put the spotlight on mental health workforce, and their recognition will help turn awareness into action with mindfulness. Disconcerting data from the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health suggests that despite the substantial increase in suicidality in adults...
Appoint a Child Psychiatrist to the National COVID Task Force
“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Mental health clinicians are rarely at the table. Mental health has always been given the short end of the stick when compared to specialties and surgical procedures regarding focus, funding, and preference in clinical...
Eat What You Treat
Should medical treatment be a business? It’s an age-old question that many people feel VERY strongly about. After all, is it ethical to “make money” off of human suffering? The obvious answer is “absolutely not,” which is why we conceptualize it differently. The...
Misinformation/Disinformation Worsens Mental Health Stigma
There is a LOT of misinformation and disinformation out there. Take a gander at this article then make sure to come back: “Misinformation” vs. “Disinformation”: Get Informed On The Difference - Dictionary.com Where's the intent? Misinformation is generally not meant...
What is a Mental Health Interpreter?
Translators are wizards. They take one language and turn it into another, thus promoting understanding and a greater sense of knowing and being known. As an interpreter helps two different parties realize how similar they are, growth and celebration is born. But...
Therapy Apathy Vs. Acceptance
Starting a private practice is technically easy. Running the practice is a whole other matter. What every successful owner will recognize eventually is that it’s hard doing everything, and impossible to do everything with excellence. The first two phases of both...
Make it Easy for People to Pay You
Starting and running a private practice is so unique to each clinician. And whether you go with a full stack agency (like www.MyDocSpace.com) or a specialty MSO (like us), the key is to remember that you can customize every step of the process. One place that trips up...
Therapist, Better Help Yourself
BetterHelp has been in the public arena lately touting their 17,000 therapists who are ready and available to meet the needs of patients nationwide. From the patient perspective, it sounds like an amazing opportunity. Pick up the phone and get matched to a therapist...
Wayfinding for Therapy
Imagine waiting three months to see your therapist only to be told, “You’re in the wrong place.” It happens to patients all the time within mental healthcare because our sector’s wayfinding frankly sucks. As a practice, be specific. Call it niche, call it focus area,...
Therapists, What’s on YOUR Mind?
Companies like Sondermind fill a needed service. It is needed because there was a void in mental and emotional healthcare around connecting patients to therapists. But what about starting your own practice? How will you allow your patients/clients to receive the best...
Growing the Private Practice Pie
The modern ethos is the “abundance mindset”; that there is much more in life than we’re willing to embrace. There truly is enough to go around (and then some). Yet, in a capitalist society, fear and scarcity drive the economy. If the pie only has eight slices, I need...
SSL Certificates Expire at all the Wrong Times
You don’t have to be a tech genius to know that when a website crashes, all hell breaks loose. Imagine you’ve created a wonderful, insightful, booming business selling the finest grapes in the world. GetYourGrapes.com is a hit, and people from Cali to Italy to Japan...
Prior Authorization is Nightmarish
Every second counts in managing your practice because the focus is always on the end user (client, patient, customer, etc.). In building an efficient practice, accounting for every second is vital. Anything that wastes time hurts you and your client/patient/customer....
Physician-led Airline Medicine
Psychiatrists are incredibly good at innovating solutions to unusual problems. Dr. Dixon has encountered managing a seizure on-board a plane. Social media is full of examples of burned-out physicians having to continue their work at 40,000 feet, while on vacation,...
Anti-MSO = Support, Not Control
Management services organizations seem like the perfect opportunity to help with the administrative, non-medical work involved in running a practice. Freeing up physicians to actually spend their working hours treating and helping patients instead of doing...
Cultivating success in private practice (w/o insurance)
Mental health clinicians are burning out at an increasing rate. There are more reasons for this burnout than I could begin to capture in this post but suffice it to say, there’s a lot of overworking and unnecessary bureaucracy behind the scenes of every employed job....