5 Minute Read: A Guide to Successfully Building a Practice

A therapist’s ambition ventures beyond the beginning. A therapist builds something. A relationship. A persona that carries through all their work. This post is a guide for therapists wanting to take their practice to the next level. People are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to own and operate a successful therapy clinic that provides therapy to patients in need within the community. It is a rich and rewarding career path.

This blog post guides practice and clinic owners who one day aspire to provide one or more disciplines, offer brick-and-mortar therapy services, home health, or teletherapy services, and accept one or more insurances. Or, if the preference is to remain small and operate as a single provider or with a partner, this blog post can also help you.

Structure and Form

Pick a clinic structure that works for you and your life because you need a rock to lean on when times get tough. Carefully decide to own and operate a sizeable multi-disciplinary clinic. Staying small and lean is an excellent path; chances are you will be able to focus more on your patients. Read About Us to learn more about who we are or read this blog for a Foundation Level 101 How to Start a Clinic but for those more intrepid readers read on:

Talk to the service industry, and stay tuned in.

First, go look at other therapy clinic websites and truly understand what others just like you are doing in your service areas. Then take the next step of contacting the service industry.

Begin your scavenger hunt now! Those truly dedicated to building their practice using the best available information commit themselves to always seeking to learn more. An alternative learning resource to look to is vendors for your business type. Your mission, should you accept it, is to find the best-curated content on the internet and stay tuned in. All you have to do is follow their content.

Software vendors, EMRs, and service providers like billing agencies, credentialing companies, HIPAA compliance companies, or wellness companies are excellent sources of information. Use them! Affording their services aside, they want to equip you with the knowledge to facilitate your journey whether or not you move forward with them. Trust us!

After all, the only reason companies like us exist is that they are successful and help clinic owners achieve something of value more than our services cost you(i.e. hire a billing agency to help effectively and efficiently bill your services). EMRs exist because clinic owners have demands and requirements that only a modern EMR solution like TheraPlan can satisfy. Below are examples of vendors that tailor their services to Therapy Clinics and you should check their website out:

EMR: TheraPlan
Billing Agency: EEP
Credentialing: Clinic Connection
HIPAA Compliance: HIPAA Assist

As a clinic owner, you will want to be comfortable calling companies and eliciting information from them. Schedule demos or conference calls but gather as much information as possible and process it.

Build your business plan.

One way therapists can quickly start the right way (and by spending no money) is by building a business plan. That’s right; we just told you that with all that education and fellowship, more than likely, you never once were taught how to run a successful business. You are going to have to pick that up on your own. The great news is that you’ve more than likely already observed a clinic/ business in your CFY. Take a moment to recall that experience now and then keep reading below. And if you already have a plan, dust it off. And if you are still reading…that means you’ve been maintaining your business plan all this time: read our blog post One Secret to Credentialing That Even Insurance Companies Don’t Know.

Our advice is to start with the basics. Start with building a business plan, and you will have a good foundation. Then, rewrite that business plan tailoring it to a therapy clinic business, and you will have a better foundation. Then, rewrite that business plan again after you’ve been in business for a couple of months or a year or two, and you will have the best foundation to grow. Rinse and repeat over the company’s life until you execute the exit plan.

Gain knowledge of the business plan composition process, knowing that the shelf life of a business plan is short. One easy way to visualize the business plan is to jot down sentences starting with a wh-word. Don’t get fancy- just use paper and pencil. The Who’s, What’s, When’s, Where’s, and other important words like ‘how’ all come together to form one big puzzle you are assembling. If a billing agency wrote this blog post, the question might be, “What billing-related activities must I perform to be successful.” If an EMR/EHR wrote this blog post, the question might be, “What technology is required to operate a successful clinic?“

At Clinic Connection we focus on the credentialing piece of the puzzle for therapy clinics, and we think a great question you should be asking yourself is:

What credentialing program is required for my clinic to be successful?

A program is a related set of business processes managed and executed indefinitely, hopefully flawlessly. Your clinic’s Human Resources (HR) program oversees the life cycle of a team member’s tenure with your business, from hiring to firing or resignation and all the in-between. Your HR program implements one or many credentialing programs.

A multi-disciplinary clinic with behavioral and speech therapy will have two similar but distinctly different credentialing programs. The credentialing process you need to perfect for speech therapists differs from behavioral therapists. More specialties mean you have more administrative procedures to learn and perfect, more insurance companies to contact/engage, and more hoops you have to jump through. The more disciplines you offer, the more complicated your credentialing program becomes.

Brick-and-mortar ST, PT, OT clinics (SPOT), and home health clinics that are not 100% private pay all require credentialing with insurance companies or another payer. Suppose you only have a home health business or solely offer telehealth. In that case, it will limit the insurances you can accept, and generally speaking, the more insurance companies you take, the more complicated your credentialing program becomes. Stated another way, the fewer insurance companies you accept, the less a burden (and cost) you have relative to credentialing. There is a reason why 100% private pay has been all the rage lately.

Talk to other clinic owners.

Talk to other clinic owners and ask how they manage various aspects of their operation, and ask often. Ask if they have any lessons learned relative to credentialing. You may be surprised to learn that many clinic owners love to share their experiences and want to help others grow. You just need to know where to find them.

Focus on the fundamentals.

The credentialing advice below is for clinic owners of various types. Check out our other blog post detailing how to implement good solid clinic policies that support credentialing requirements.

Three fundamentals for each of the three stages of the clinic lifecycle:

Implement a credentialing program that works for you today and in the short term. It could mean credentialing only yourself and documenting the process while seeking to learn more. If you have a team of therapists already in place and just now deciding to take new insurance will lead to research and discovery. Be prepared to learn as much as possible about the new insurance by calling, consuming, and digesting the content they publish like blogs, or email updates and alerts.
Improve your credentialing program by focusing on your strengths and being aware of your weaknesses. A single clinic owner/ speech therapist venturing out and offering, for example, occupational therapy as a new discipline by hiring the right therapist is quite different than going into business with an OT therapist/ business partner. It would seemingly be much easier to manage the company when you have the subject matter expertise close on hand. A lot of clinic owners struggle with this. Subject matter expertise is both clinical and business. Some people have one but not the other. Choose your partners wisely.
Outsource your credentialing needs to a trusted 3rd party like Clinic Connection. Many clinic owners have already realized the benefits of outsourcing their credentialing program to us in all or part to help them focus on what they do best. Read this blog post on how to choose the right credentialing company to provide credentialing services.

We tried to pack as much into the ‘5-minute read’ as possible. We must be brief with the closing—so good luck and best wishes.