Medical credentialing (the process of getting on insurance panels) is a hassle for many health providers. In response to this, several credentialing software companies have popped-up over the last few years, promising that their software will make the credentialing process easier. But will it?

I’m often asked how to build a full caseload, frequently with an implicit skepticism, as in, “In this economic climate, it’s impossible!” Yet, some practices are still so full they have waiting lists. What follows are 40-plus quick tips for filling your client roster. They’re a mile wide and an inch deep, but the ideas [...]

I have profiles on Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Technorati, Ning, Squidoo, XING, Yahoo Answers, MySpace, Yedda, Furl, Blogger, WordPress, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Yelp, Knol, Facebook, Orkut, Foursquare, and Skype… to name a few.

According to Salary.com, the average Licensed Professional Counselor working in Cambridge, Massachusetts makes $39,778 a year*. That’s beyond bleak. For a city where a 900 square foot apartment can run over $400,000, it’s dismal. Is this our fate? Financially speaking, are counselors better off getting jobs at Wal-mart? I don’t think so. With good practice [...]

From recent graduates to seasoned clinicians, today it seems that everyone in part- or full-time private practice is asking the same question: “Should I accept health insurance?”It’s a complicated question. The decision whether to accept third party payments will have a big impact on your counseling practice. The question is made even more difficult as [...]

Medical billing is a frustrating process for counselors who are often juggling too many business tasks, as well as trying to provide excellent clinical care. In fact, many counseling practices collect less than 85% of the monies that they’re rightly owed from insurance companies. However, with good planning, and a smart billing staff (in house [...]

In my last article, I talked about “the counseling office” and how, while it may be true that therapist offices are sometimes poorly designed, client’s expectations of what counselor offices should look like are often derived from what they’ve seen on TV (read the previous post to view images of some fantastic TV counseling offices!).

[Readers, don’t forget to leave your comments below—I reply to every comment or question!] It’s hard to get people to talk about your business…if you’re a restaurant. If you’re a counselor, you’re really fighting an uphill battle, as clients need to overcome the social stigma of being in counseling in order to tell others about [...]