to face or online), and how you serve them (i.e., what services you provide). The mission statement becomes a rubric that determines the scope and boundaries of the business and the practice. When deciding if a service is appropriate to include in your practice, ask yourself a few questions to check your personal and professional goal alignment: 2. “Does it stay within our location, or will it have to be outsourced?” 3. “Who will provide this?”
It is important to investigate and meet the needs of the community, but also to look introspectively into yourself and consider what you feel called to do. This statement serves as the vision of all you will do for the next few years.
Step 2: Build A Team Implement your mission with the assistance of more experienced professionals. Seek continuing education to maintain your play therapy knowledge and skills, but also seek relationships and implementable advice about building and growing your business. There are professionals who provide free or inexpensive advice on HIPAA compliance, marketing, and networking, for example. Using their free services can help you decide where to spend more on the paid services you need. Do NOT skimp on really important things, such as your website, your insurance, and your legal structure.
decide how you would like to legally structure your business. Skipping this between a limited liability company (LLC) and a professional LLC (PLLC), but you should work with a knowledgeable attorney to pick the right structure for you. Beware, copying other people’s contracts will give you a needs. Hire an attorney familiar with how and why to set up a business entity. This team member will help you think through and navigate the foundation at the beginning will save you a lot of time and future headaches.
As therapists, we easily suggest mentoring to our clients, but do we seek it out when we need it? When I decided to own my own business and not and a marketer. I read books to learn about management through policies and procedures (e.g., Gerber, 2001). I attended workshops on private practice ethics and developed relationships with ethical private practice a marketing plan, and write a procedure manual. These extra resources were added business expenses, well worth it in the long run to keep my dream from becoming a nightmare.
Step 3: Remain Flexible to Adapt to
Unforeseen Changes Your business will continue to develop. You will learn amazing new things, meet new people, and see new opportunities. Amid all this change and growth, reevaluate your business often. Like all dreams, yours may wander
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into new areas. Use your mission statement to determine where you are in implementing your vision. Be ready to respond quickly to new information back to your central calling and mission statement to ground your business on the solid foundation you have created.
Legal and professional challenges occur all the time in private practice. Many of the therapist owners I know keep up with a few quality podcasts and services (e.g., Huggins, 2010; Mills, 2017). These podcasts provide real time information and support to those who need real world ideas from people who know the world of therapy, HIPAA compliance and messy family dynamics, as well as the world of lawsuits, digital records, etc. just the right phone service or Electronic Health Record (EHR) Service.
Considerations for Mitigating Risks The reality of managing your own business necessitates breaking a lot of preconceptions.
• insurance panels telling them where it is located and what you do. Using social media, networking, and local print media are all ways to secure a professional reputation and establish your expertise to begin developing referral relationships.
• Second, consider which kind of investment you can afford to make: upfront or back-end. Upfront investment entails a quality team of people thinking through the business and begins prior to providing services. Back-end investment entails responding to something going wrong—a complaint, a bad experience for a client, or a program that fails to thrive. For example, although another clinician may allow you to copy his or her business documents, those documents may have been written for a different kind of therapy practice. A couple’s therapy practice may have different issues than one unique to working with children, and confusing custody situations may go unaddressed. In some areas of practice, this may be mildly annoying to clients, but in other areas, you may open yourself and your business to violations and complaints at the state-board level. This will cost time and money only
• Third, private practice ownership is lonely at times. You have a great team, your vision brought in wonderful co-counselors, but in the end, all decisions come back to the owner. Create time for peer relationships and support. Find other play therapists or family-focused clinicians to discuss all parts of your business. When challenges arise, your support system can help determine how you react to those challenges.
• Fourth, review the laws and regulations governing your business guidelines govern licenses in each state. Federal law does not match state requirements exactly. Reviewing policies and procedures should be a regular business practice, and it is prudent to follow the most restrictive laws.
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