Practice Building 2.0 for Mental Health Professionals: Strategies for Success in the Electronic Age

Book excerpt: How to use technology to effectively market your private practice. Building and maintaining a private practice today requires initiative, creativity, and a willingness to adapt new tools, technologies, and techniques to your business. As a therapist, and a small business owner of a private practice, you face the challenges of fluctuating market trends, infrastructure inefficiencies, seismic changes in demographic populations, complex reimbursement systems, and technological advances which alter practice patterns. Your “therapist side” may be reluctant to think of yourself as a businessperson; however, if you are to keep offering your valuable services, you owe it to yourself and your clients to build the most effective and efficient practice possible. To do so, you need to take advantage of the latest technology. Tracy Todd presents a number of technologies that will help you build, maintain, and expand your practice. He clearly walks you through the (surprisingly easy) process of creating your own Web site, highlighting the usefulness of features such as online scheduling and payment systems. He also provides overviews of podcasting, videocasting, blogs, and electronic file management, pointing out the benefits of each, and how you can go about applying these tools to your practice. The result is a book that will help you streamline your administrative duties, while expanding your clinical reach—thus helping your practice thrive.