Retention

Tips for Maintaining a Full & Healthy Schedule

• Maintaining a healthy schedule requires rapport building skills, competence, and discipline.  

•  It's an area often overshadowed by a focus on clinical growth. Of course, clinical competence is necessary but learning to build and manage a full schedule is crucial to a therapist's, and client's, success. Because: Clients Have to Come Back to Get Better. 

• Great news! Good retention can be taught to and learned. Check out the tips from the video below as well as some pertinent  linked articles.

Retention = Golden KPI 

The most important part of a clinician's role. Expectation:  70% of intakes attend 7+ sessions

Focus on Feeder KPIs

#1 Scheduling Prompts:   Are you prompting clients to reschedule at every. single. session. ?

What % of your appointments are follow-ups being offered?

Schedule clients out at least 4 sessions or best retention. 

Are you directing your clients to the administrative desk for scheduling needs? 

(* may be exceptions for those who are remote and/or working evenings/weekends/hours outside of 9-5)

• Our administrative team is here to help protect our clinicians' time. Do not use those *precious* clinical minutes to help your clients with their (typically) messy scheduling needs! 

• Utilizing our administrative team helps your retention from the start. 

  • How? They are better at scheduling than we are ;) Our administrative team is on top of re-occuring appointments, they protect our boundaries and don't feel pressured when a client needs a time that isn't available, they ensure they are on the cancellation list so that they do not fall off our schedules completely. 

• Coaching your clients to use admin team:

  • • Ensure they know how many appointments to get booked out, what treatment dose you recommend and anything else they might need to know before checking in with admin. 

#2 Client Education:  Use the bookends of the first session to educate your client and set expectations.

Are you educating your client on frequency on dose data?

 Are you mapping the therapeutic journey/ reviewing progress?

Do you have a strategy to make it past pre mature termination high risk periods? Session  5 is the most comon drop off point. 

#3 Reassure Your Clients! 

These are questions every. single. new client. in front of you has:

• Am I in the right place? / Can you help me?

• How long will this take?

• What's your plan for me? (initial impression and treatment course) 

• How often do I need to come back?

• How much is this going to cost (admin and billing answer this one for you before the first session) 

Utilization

How is your utilization/scheduling habits? Goal is 80%. Out of the clients you have how many are being seen regularly?

1. 1. Be proactive. If you have openings; FIRST- participate in building your schedule by reaching out to clients who have fallen off. 

•      Who are the clients that have fallen off  of your schedule?  Who needs to know you have available appointments?

  • Make a list and admin will assist in notifying them you have openings.

  • Everyone needs intakes but be careful not to rely on an endless stream of intakes.

  • Admin will send a text through our HIPAA compliant messaging system with the following text:
    "Hi There! This is a message from Clarity Counseling Center. We hope you're doing well! We just wanted to reach out and let you know ___________ has some openings next week. If you'd like to get on their schedule you can book an appointment online through your client portal via our website. Or feel free to contact admin at 910-444-4771 or clarityoffice@claritywilmington.com and they'll help set you up. Take care!"

1. Educate clients on ways to schedule: with admin, through their portal, calling, emailing, and with you during session. 

2. Reoccurring appointments are your BFF. New therapists often do not schedule out because they start out with an open schedule and available appointments are not a problem. As their caseload grows, client's bad scheduling habits become apparent. Use the admin team to support scheduling. This is what they are here for. :)

3. Use your cancelation list. And ask clients to schedule regularly, starting when your schedule becomes open. Frame flexibility and motivation for your clients when added to the cancelation list.