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One area of having a private practice that most of us dread is billing.

For many helping professionals, billing patients for our services can be difficult. This might be for several reasons:

1. We are happy to help out and feel guilty about charging for our services
2. We worry that our patients might not be able to afford private therapy
3. We don’t want to appear (to patients/families) that money is a motivation for treating privately

The truth is though, that our services ARE valuable and that we shouldn’t be ashamed or fearful to put a monetary value on our skills and time.

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The Boston Globe just released a list of the fastest growing jobs by 2018.

Among them? Several careers in the allied health professions.

1. Occupational Therapy Assistants

• Occupational Therapy Assistant Median Salary (2008)  $50,830
• Projected increase in 2018   30.7%

2. Physical Therapy Assistants
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It’s finally summer!

I hope that you’ve been able to make it through the Spring and have great plans for the upcoming summer. One of my greatest pleasures of summer is catching up on my reading. Whether I’m at the beach or on a bench at the park, I enjoy making time for reading.

This year, one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2010 was to read more books that are “patient accounts” or memoirs about a diagnosis and/or recovery. I have found that reading books written by patients and/or family members have given me a new perspective that really adds to my skills as a private practitioner. As opposed to scholarly articles or textbooks that are focused on clinical presentation or treatment techniques, these books focus on the experience of what it’s like for individuals and their families to actually live through their illness. The books have opened me up to seeing the joy and pain of daily life that I don’t always get to see in our treatment sessions.

I wanted to share a few of the books that I’ve read this year and wanted to recommend:

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The Best Materials For Private Patients… Are those you easily transport and use with multiple patients!

One of the difficulties of treating patients in their homes is that you don’t have immediate access to all of your regular treatment materials. Some therapists may bring a few items with them or use the patient’s home or natural environment as part of treatment. While this can be extremely functional, it is more difficult to prepare for.

It’s always best when you can use a certain material repeatedly over sessions or with different patients. Even if you’re working on different things, using the same materials can cut down on your load and prepping for sessions.

A few years ago, I put together a box of materials for my car. I decided that if I was going to do home-based therapy, I needed to have access to my favorite materials no matter where or who I was working with. I bought one of those trunk organizers and added: Continue Reading »

Last week I wrote a post asking why you chose to become a physical, occupational or speech therapist. Some people chose these careers because they are natural helpers and want a medically related field but don’t want to become a doctor or nurse. Another part of the decision might have to do with having a good stable job with a decent salary and flexible hours.

But what I want to discuss this week is: now that you are an established PT/OT/SLP, what keeps you in this field?

What I’m encouraging you to do is to use the two concepts: Continue Reading »

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted to be a veterinarian? Or a teacher? A fashion designer? Or a marine biologist? What was it that drew you to those careers at a young age? Was it wanted to help animals or people? Was it creativity?

Not many eleven-year-olds are running around telling their parents and peers that they want to be occupational therapists when they grow up… Somewhere along the line you heard about the career that you eventually chose to pursue. Maybe you had a relative that was a Speech-Language Pathologist, or injured yourself and had to go to some physical therapy yourself. Or maybe you had a grandparent who had a stroke and needed to have occupational therapy…

After you initially heard about the career option, you had to make a conscious choice to pursue PT/OT/SLP as a career choice for three major reasons: Continue Reading »

We all lead lives that are too busy. It’s just enough to get through the day with our regular jobs, our families, children/partners schedules, household maintenance, errands, and hopefully a few private patients! It’s exhausting to try to get it all done.

One of the major benefits of treating private patients is determining for yourself when and how you can fit them into your schedule. When I first started out treating privately, I was working four 10-hour days with Fridays off. I was able to see my small caseload of patients Friday – Sunday.. at their convenience. I was eager to see as many people as possible at whatever times worked for them. I got burned out after about 6 months of treating the long days and no flexible weekend time for myself. Not to mention I now had 3 day weekends but my private patients tied me to Boston!

New Work Schedule… New Patient Schedule

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No matter what business you’re in, you need your product or service to appeal to a certain group of people. One of the ways to differentiate yourself from fellow colleagues is to specialize in a certain population, diagnosis or treatment. People who pay for private treatment want to hire the best clinician for the job and if you’re a recognized expert, there is a higher chance that the patient will be:

• referred to you by someone who knows you’re a specialist
• hired by a patient who wants your clinical expertise

My strongest area of clinical expertise is in adult neurogenics, specifically cognitive disorders post traumatic brain injury (TBI). I have attended conferences, read the literature, participated in professional forums and worked on a daily basis with this population and I have the hunger and interest to continue learning and working with this population. Continue Reading »

Facts about SLP

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School-based physical, occupational and speech therapy providers have a unique opportunity to offer services to children over the summer. As it gets closer to summer, you need to start thinking about how to market yourself and your skills to colleagues and friends.

One of my OT friends wants to treat some private clients this summer and sent the following e-mail to some of her friends/ colleagues:

Hello Friends! Continue Reading »