Time Savers

How To Save Time When Scheduling Therapy Clients

June 3, 2022

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I'm Aisha — private practice strategist for mental health therapists looking to ethically blend their clinical skills with entreprenuership without burnout. 

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Why You Should Offer Self-Scheduling

Offering self-scheduling is an expectation that the majority of the public has from service-based businesses.

Most people rely on self-scheduling and calendar reminders as a way redefine time management.

Did you know that BEFORE the pandemic about 97% of people expected online scheduling as an option when scheduling a healthcare appointment? Source: Black Book Market Research 

And I can’t imagine that statistic has decreased since telehealth has increased in popularity.

What Do You Need to Offer Self-Scheduling?

Most electronic health records (EHR) include an online scheduling feature and they allow you to set boundaries on the days and times that appointments can be scheduled.

Simple Practice, the EHR I use in my solo private practice gives you the chance to make specific appointment types available via self-scheduling and now you can limit the number of appointments that can be scheduled in one day.

Say goodbye to back-to-back scheduling and calendar overwhelm!

With all the features this technology tool provides, you can decrease the likelihood that a scheduling mishap will happen.

There are tons of bells and whistles that come with your EHR and it’s in your business wallet’s best interest to use a dynamic tech tool like this to its full potential or else you're just flushing money down the toilet.

Should You Offer Self-Scheduling for Therapy Consultations?

If you think current clients should be the only ones with access to request time on your calendar, well you would be mistaken.

By limiting self-scheduling to only current clients, you could be missing out on an opportunity to work with your ideal client population.

There are several moments in your ideal client’s path to therapy where they may second guess their decision to reach out for help.

If  it’s difficult to get in touch with you, or there are tons of barriers to move from where they are to where they want to be, they might give up and go to someone else’s website or worse, lose steam all together.

By connecting your online calendar to your client inquiry form, this reduces friction and creates a seamless transition for potential clients to hop on your calendar and feel more confident that they are making a decision that’s in their best interest.

If your website is missing a client inquiry form or you have one and you’re not attracting the clients that your clinical skills are well-aligned to serve, grab this template so that you can inspire your ideal client to schedule a therapy consultation with you.

Conclusion

Using technology in your practice can help you maintain work-life balance by saving you more time, energy and effort, especially when it comes to scheduling and rescheduling client appointments.

You’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to cultivating your ideal schedule (and you always have been) and part of managing your schedule is knowing when to outsource tasks that take your time and attention away from running your practice and living your life beyond the session.

If you haven’t figured out your ideal schedule yet, consider using this guidebook to help create a schedule that works for you, not against you.


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