Converting new referrals into weekly patients can be very exciting in your speech therapy private practice, but if done incorrectly, it can cost you big time in the form of lost revenue, unnecessary wasted time and most importantly poor patient satisfaction.

In this episode, I answer some recent listener questions about non-therapist clinic ownership and then dive right into the correct way to bring new patients into your private practice. I also highlight very important steps so that the whole process of patient onboarding is accurate and smooth.

In this episode:

01:04 – Over 39,959 listeners to the show

02:18 – Welcome Dana, PrivateSLP All Access Community

03:35 – PrivateSLP Blueprint

05:45 – Private Practice ownership,

06:40 – Partnerships

08:14 – Onboarding your first patient

09:25 – Demographics

09:47 – Insurance Information

12:55 – Privacy policies

13:48 – Consent release and assignment

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Before you go out and spend a ton of money on getting a lease, a building and turning on electricity, phone systems, computers and all that jazz, make sure you have a healthy positive relationship with a therapist who can help you in your private practice.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone you’re listening to the Speech Therapy Private Practice StartUp Podcast. This is episode number 44. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a Speech Pathologist since 1993. And these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one Podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails and all the questions. As of today, today is Tuesday, October 23rd 2018. We have well over 39,959 listeners to the show and I’m super grateful and delighted you guys are out there getting good valuable free information. Because let’s face it. Value is what you get in the absence of money and these podcasts are free for you. So if you wouldn’t mind just please go to your iOS or Android platform of your choice and leave some good 5 Star feedback out there, that way other people just like you can get the same valuable information that you’re receiving right now.

And also I wanted to let you know we have a space available for the Perfect Student, that’s where you fly into Tucson, Arizona; work with me hand in hand and we’ll hope you get credentialed and set up your billing, you learn how to manage your referrals & patients, and how to bill and how to collect them, all those fancy things like that but you do have to fly into Tucson to work with me and that takes time. But if you can’t do that the next best thing is to work with me in the PrivateSLP All access community, that’s where you can find me every single day I’m logged in and it’s just a great place to work with other people. I would like to welcome one of our newest member. Her name is Dana and she is working on her Private practice and I know she’s getting good value already and she is asking many questions and I’m just so glad that she’s here. There’s over right now just 101 threads to choose from. With over 437 messages we have just different sections of the community. There’s a results section, discussion section, a place where you can meet other members in your community, trainings, there’s live trainings, we’ve got live trainings on employees & payment and things to consider when you’re moving from paper charts to electronic charts and how to double your practice in ten months even if you’re not ready. There’s things about copays, deductibles, co-insurance, how to make your Website and how to make sure you’re getting good patient satisfaction and getting good feedback. There’s also trainings on key performance indicators, mindset goal achievements, speech therapy codes, accounts receivable. There’s something what I teach called the BTS principle, that’s behind the scenes. There is just a ton of information and that’s just the live training.

If you keep looking in the community you’re going to see things about marketing insurance, what I call the PrivateSLP blueprint. Also the referral roadmap how to just supercharge your private practice and get those referrals coming in. Also new patient intake courses and MPI trainings, even how to set up your phone systems, computers and all that stuff. This forms and their media releases on financial hardships, contracts that I use on a daily basis for my own business. There’s a place in a section in there called for the chart, their super bills, daily note forms, case history forms, home programs, time spreadsheets, visit payment authorization, tracking sheets and visit logs. All that’s in the PrivateSLP All Access Community, and all you have to do is sign up and you’ve got immediate access to all these things plus me and I’m here to help you. If you can’t sign up just yet. I do understand that everyone. It’s not for everybody and this is just for those people who really want to change their life. And sometimes people just aren’t ready. And if you’re not ready that’s Okay. If you want me to answer some questions, all you gotta do is send me an e-mail kyle@privateslp.com and I’ll help you. I can’t tell you how many times when I’ve pick up the phone after I receive an email. And people are surprised they say, “Wow, you really do call me” and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to help you. Ask me a question and I’m not going to take the time to type this out. I want to talk to you and I want to meet you. And I want to see what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, so I can help you if I can. So don’t be surprised if you send me an e-mail or if you go to the contact form at privateslp.com, if you leave me one of those voice messages don’t be surprised if I pick up the phone and call you back, because I truly want to help you be successful. So that’s all available privateslp.com.

Recently I had a couple people ask the same question so I’m going to throw that out there before I get into today’s topic which is Onboarding your first patient. But recently a couple of people had asked me and reached out to me via email. They wanted to know if you have to be a Therapist to start your own Private Practice. I mean in a nutshell the answer is No. But it’s kind of like owning a restaurant. You got to have a really good Chef if you want to have a very popular restaurant, Right? I mean if you’re going to offer good tasty food you better have a really good Chef. Well, it’s kind of the same thing in the therapy world if you want to have your own Private Practice you can, you’ve heard me say it. You can have it but you’re gonna have to pay therapist to work in your Private Practice so before you go out and spend a ton of money on getting a lease, a building and turning on electricity, phone systems, computers and all that jazz, make sure you have a healthy positive relationship with a therapist who can help you in your private practice.

Now another part of that question is do you recommend Kyle that we have a partnership. I can’t answer that. I’m not you but I do know in the people that I have spoke to in the past. Partnerships generally don’t work. And I’m not here to tell you what to do. I’m just telling you from personal experience and things that I see, things that I hear and one of those things is about partnerships. If you don’t have the right relationship with others that relationship will not last. And I’ve seen that time and time again in the Speech Therapy Private Practice world. So it’s up to you if you want to make a partnership and have your own practice with a therapist. If you’re not a Speech therapist yourself but if you really think about it if you’re a Speech Pathologist and you want to start your own Private Practice you’re in a good spot because you don’t have to really pay yourself when you’re first starting out to do all the evaluations and do all the treatments. You’re in a good spot, so you can slowly grow it over time. But if you’re not a therapist and you need a therapist to start that business, you’ve gotta have some money in the bank to do payroll, meet payroll and pay for those evaluations and treatment. So it’s just something to think about. Consider the restaurant like I said you have to have a good chef to have a popular restaurant with good tasty food. So think about that when you starting out, and I hope that answers those two questions.

Today, I wanted to talk about Onboarding your first patient and this is something that I received a few emails in the past and so wanted to throw that out there now. So when you’re onboarding your first patient, first of all what is Onboarding mean. That means the process of getting that patient in to your business, getting that patient evaluated, treated and getting that patient good customer service, good quality service because you can’t have a business unless you have an offer that converts. And for Speech Therapy Private Practice our offer is Speech evaluations and Speech therapy. So the first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to receive that referral. And then once you received that referral the next step is you want to contact that family to get that patient’s schedule. Now normally, the first visit is going to be an evaluation and when you do an evaluation of Speech therapy, it could be a language eval, speech eval, voice, swallowed, dysphagia, autism whatever it is y