One thing that I am really passionate about is business planning and having a strategic business plan for your business. If you don’t already have a business plan, I highly recommend you create one for your practice. Having a business plan will help you answer some important questions related to your practice, for example: Should you join all insurance panels or a select few?
Here are some of my tips for you, when deciding to join insurance panels:
Know Yourself and Your Goals
If you are a person who is really ambitious or you know one day you want to have a large group practice, then you may want to consider joining all (or most) of the insurance panels. Joining multiple insurance panels will increase referrals to your practice.
Multiple Insurance Panels for Group Practice
Having clinicians who are on all (or most) insurance panels will allow you the best opportunity to service your community. This is a great way to set yourself apart from other practices in the area.
Low Paying Insurance Panels
By being on low paying insurance panels and having a lot of clinicians, it ends up balancing out, especially when it comes to volume. A lot of the time with a group practice, it’s more about volume. It may be more beneficial to see 100 clients at an $80 session rate than to see 50 clients at an $110 session rate. Expenses per client also tend to lower the larger that your practice becomes.
Private Pay Solopreneur
If you a solopreneur and want to have a mostly private pay practice, but there’s hard to fill time slots in your schedule or there’s a particular insurance panel that a lot of people in your community are on or one that pays really well, then it may be best for you to join just one or two panels.
It’s important to do some research on insurance panels. Some things to look while conducting your research:
- What insurance panels pay in your area?
- How quickly is the turn around?
- How much paperwork is involved?
It all goes back to what your goals are that you’ve laid out for your business in your business plan. The fastest way for me to grow was being on insurance panels. I was very motivated to increase my revenue quickly and being on multiple insurance panels helped me to do that. In my group practice, it has helped us take on more clients because we accept a good amount of insurances within the area. Again, that directly aligned with my business plan and strategic goals.
Amanda Patterson is a private practice consultant who helps therapists create business and marketing plans. She’s the owner of a group practice, Caring Therapists in South Florida. She’s the founder of My Private Practice Collective, an online community for therapists in private practice.
