What if you have decided that you need the help of a practice manager or administrative assistant, but you don’t need full-time help? If you are a solo therapist running your own private practice, then a full-time or even part-time administrative employee may not make sense for your practice. Fortunately, there are several alternatives to hiring an admin assistant who works exclusively for your practice. 

Share an administrator with other practitioners. 

If you find office space in a building with other mental health or healthcare professionals, sometimes you can find locations with an on-site practice manager who you can pay to take on your administrative work in addition to the work of the other providers. If not, you could try coordinating with other professionals in your building to hire a practice manager. Or you could coordinate with other therapists in your area to hire a virtual office manager to work for all of you. 

Hire a billing service. 

There are a number of companies that offer billing services for therapists for a percentage of the collected amount (around 5%)or for a flat-fee per claim. I suggest asking for referrals and looking for a company that someone you know has experience with rather than going with the first name you come across. 

Some companies also offer assistance with getting you credentialed and contracted with insurance companies, usually at a flat fee per application (typically around $100-200 per application per provider). This usually isn’t a complicated process, so it may not be worth the cost, but it’s worth considering if you are already hiring the service for billing.

Use a virtual assistant. 

There are virtual assistant firms such as AskSunday and Upwork that enable you to hire virtual assistants from all over the world. One benefit to using such a resource is that you can find quality help for a significantly lower cost than hiring someone local. Although virtual assistants can help with scheduling and client emails and calls, you might not want to use them for such personal client interactions until you find an assistant who you like and trust. 

If you don’t want to use a virtual assistant for more direct client interactions, then you can use them for tasks such as: making sure practice expenses are paid, calling insurance companies, ordering supplies, and sending out invoices. You can also give them larger projects such as working on your referral base by compiling a list of all of the physicians in the area and sending emails to them introducing you and your practice. 

You can also use companies such as Freelancer and Fiverr for more specialized tasks such as local and social media marketing and website development. 

If you would like more information about how to set up and manage your own therapy practice, you can get all of this and more by purchasing my Step-by-Step Program to Starting Your Own Therapy Practice (Coming Soon!). I am also available for hourly consulting services.

Hi. I’m Cindy Donley, a private practice consultant with over 20 years of experience helping businesses grow and succeed. I am the co-founder and director of operations for a group therapy practice established in 2011, which was started as a solo practice and now employs seven full-time therapists and has tons of referral sources and a constant influx of new clients. I now work helping therapists like you start up successful therapy practices. Contact me if you are ready to start your own practice!