CLINICAL


EDITOR’S COMMENTS: Promoting therapist wellness through business structure.


Restructuring the Practice Model to Create Space for Professional Growth


| MICHELLE M. PLISKE, MSW, LCSW, RPT-S G


rowing a therapy practice is about the growth of its greatest assets: therapists. Creating a clinical space that provides professional support to a play therapist community while simultaneously providing the best care possible to clients was the primary goal in re-creating policy and business practice guidelines for an outpatient


mental health clinic in Hillsboro, Oregon. The clinic originally followed a hybrid of models from other organizations and private practices; a fee-for-service group practice with a productivity based percentage compensation plan where counselors completed the administrative duties. The clinic opened with four clinicians and quickly expanded to six. This allowed for low initial investment, high clinician autonomy, and some protections of a corporate structure.


10 | PLAYTHERAPY | June 2018 | www.a4pt.org


This plan potentially permitted for excellent pay and a lot of clinician        Problems quickly materialized. Therapists showed signs of burnout in    They were overwhelmed with the administrative aspects of client care,  to investigate claim submission issues, or calling community partners to coordinate care. Clinicians found it challenging to create a holding space for parents in which to process the emotional toll of bearing witness to their child’s suffering and, then, within the same session, ask for the client’s account balance to be paid. These challenges are familiar to play therapists working within the current healthcare industry, whether they are in an agency or a private practice setting.


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