Private Practice Development- Why You Should Build Your Practice Through Private Pay
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Private Practice & Private Pay
It’s true that there are many potential clients that will want to use their insurance to pay for services which is completely understandable. In my consultations with up and coming clinicians there is an automatic assumption that when you are working within the field of mental health, building a private practice through private pay is much more difficult to do and creates barriers for potential clients who count on using their insurance. The reality though is that none of this is true.
Building a private practice is difficult whether you take insurance or not, and ultimately if you provide high quality, helpful services, having a private pay practice will not be a barrier for clients. For this Training Report issue of Private Practice Development, I want to explore how you can build a practice without taking insurance, why this is actually more beneficial for clients and finally I will present an argument for how this can enact positive change on our healthcare system. Let’s first explore how to build a practice only through private pay.
Strategies For Building A Private Pay Practice
When up and coming clinicians are establishing their fees, it can often be difficult to determine what price they should set, especially if you are out of pocket. I have a helpful strategy that can help answer this question for all clinicians: First, ask yourself what is the least amount of money you are not willing to walk away from?; second, look at what other professionals within your field of specialty charge and cross-reference that with your selected number. Odds are, your price probably falls within the bell curve of what is considered appropriate costs for services. It is absolutely critical for you not devalue yourself but also to make sure that you are not over-inflating your costs. If you charge far more than the industry standard, this can potentially lead to negative feedback from other potential clinicians that might refer to you.
Another critical point here is the concern about missing out on clients that use their insurance. This can easily be addressed by creating several slots where you allow sliding scale fees. There are two possible ways to handle this: first you can establish a standard sliding scale fee that you feel comfortable with; or second, you can collaborate with the client on what both of you feel is an acceptable price for service that works for everyone. There are far more potential clients that will pay out of pocket than you probably realize. If you are planning on making this field your ‘life career’ your happiness counts too. After all, it’s a marathon not a sprint.
Limitations Of Insurance
I cannot stress enough that that in my opinion, an ideal healthcare system would not financially cripple both providers and consumers. There isn’t a perfect healthcare system in the world, but there are some that are far better than the United States. With that being said, it is important for you to factor in how insurance companies can in some cases actually be harmful for client care. For some clients, their insurance companies will ultimately dictate treatment terms. For instance, a client may only be covered to see a clinician for 10 appointments. But how can an insurance company know that the client’s mental health symptoms will be improved in 10 appointments?
The number 10 is very specific, but there is an even more impressive and specific number than 10…100 billion. That is the number of neurons that are in one human brain. And between those 100 billion neurons, there are 1 to 4 quadrillion synaptic connections. It is certainly possible that a client can resolve their concerns in 10 appointments, but to try and fit everyone into a ‘10 appointment box’ seems to me that insurance companies are making the claim they have perfectly mapped out those 1 to 4 quadrillion synaptic connections. There is NO evidence based treatment that can specify positive treatment outcomes in 10 appointments. Even worse than the number of appointments that an insurance company will allow, the type of interventions you use may or may not be covered. It is vital that as clinicians we be both authentic and honest with our clients, and if we feel there is an intervention that will offer our clients the best odds at improving their symptoms, we owe it to them to provide that service regardless of what insurance companies think.
Additional Considerations
There is another problem in all of this that is rarely talked about as well. The costs for securing advanced degrees has been sky rocketing which has left graduates of clinical psychology, counseling and medical school in financial ruin. With insurance companies reimbursing at such low rates, there is no incentive for talented individuals to pursue careers in this field and leaves those currently practicing with very few avenues to pay off their student loans. Couple that with the fact that many insurance companies have been increasing costs and cutting service options for consumers, makes this healthcare market even more unstable.
By breaking away from what I refer to as the Mental Health Industrial Complex, clinicians and consumers can regain control of the market by establishing what fair prices actually are. There was an insurance company several years ago that was asked about the rising costs and low reimbursement rates to which the company representative stated they were just paying therapists what the market stated they were worth (The Wall Street Journal). My response to this is let’s make sure that consumers decide what services are worth, not insurance companies.
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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