Being the business-savvy practice owner that you are, you may be thinking about the best ways to grow your group mental health practice in the coming year. The combination of a creative marketing strategy coupled with an efficient behavioral health EHR and Practice Management software can make a big difference in your bottom line. In this blog, we discuss five proven ways to grow your group practice.
- Diversify the Skill Sets of Your Mental Health Providers
To compete in a world of complex mental health issues, your practice needs behavioral health providers who can meet the diverse needs of clients. For example, you could consider adding therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists specializing in eating disorders, sexual identity issues, or the dynamics of minority families to your staff of general individual and family providers. People with unique needs are bound to feel more comfortable with mental health providers who have received advanced training in these areas.
- Speed Up Your Group’s Workflow with EHR Software
Documenting patient notes is a necessary but time-consuming aspect of providing mental health services. Unfortunately, the requirement can become so overwhelming that it cuts into the time mental health clinicians have available to spend with their clients. You may have even provided your staff with general patient charting software only to feel disappointed with the results.
At Valant, our sole focus is on providing software for use in behavioral healthcare private practices.. Unlike other software programs that consider behavioral health as an afterthought, Valant is designed by a psychiatrist, built specifically for the workflows unique to mental health providers after experiencing the frustration of trying to run his practice using programs designed for primary care and other non-behavioral health disciplines.
Valant’s software can help providers improve the delivery of their clinical care with the following features:
- Clinical Documentation
- Clinical Reporting
- eLabs
- ePrescribing
- Intake and Assessment Automation
- PDMP
- Telehealth
- Treatment Planning
Practices looking to grow will also appreciate the functionality that can help improve your efficiency from a practice management standpoint:
Valant’s EHR software also offers a patient portal, enabling your clients to complete intake paperwork and assessments prior to their appointments, pay bills, request appointments, manage their demographic and billing information, and sign in for telehealth appointments.
- Create Seamless Telehealth Experiences
Whether it is work or childcare conflicts, transportation problems, or concerns about coronavirus mitigation, more behavioral health clients than ever before prefer to complete a session with their behavioral health provider via telehealth. Behavioral health practices also benefit from telehealth with fewer client no-shows and the ability to access more patients who might have never come into the practice in person.
If your practice still provides only face-to-face appointments going into 2022, now is the time to integrate telehealth. The reality is that you will lose many clients to competitors if you do not offer services in the format they prefer. You can learn more about Valant’s fully-integrated telehealth option during a live demonstration or by contacting us with questions.
- Maintain a Strong Social Media Presence
Most Americans have at least one social media account, and they expect the service providers they work with to be on social media as well. Facebook and Instagram can be especially useful to give potential clients a glimpse of what your behavioral health clinic has to offer and introduce them to staff.
However, you need to avoid making the common mistake of setting up social media accounts on behalf of your clinic and then neglecting them. This can be worse than not establishing accounts at all from a patient’s perspective because it shows a lack of commitment. If you do not have the time to maintain the accounts yourself, consider hiring a marketing manager or outsourcing the task.
- List Your Behavioral Health Practice in an Online Directory
Online directories of local providers are the first place many people look when beginning their search for a provider. The website publishing the directory should give you the opportunity to introduce each clinician and provide additional details about their experience and training. Using keywords in your listing directory that correspond to unique mental health issues can also help your practice reach more new patients.
Is your behavioral health practice ready to grow? Please contact Valant to request a live demo to better understand how our EHR software can help you reach your group practice growth goals.
