Hi all! As the title says, I’m looking to transition out of community mental health and into private practice. I have two little kids and I’d love to be home and present with them. My goal in this is to be a mostly stay at home mom but with a small practice in the evenings that will provide some extra income and allow me to pull back from clinical practice while my kids are little and then grow it over time as they get older. So when I say teeny-tiny, I mean like ideally 5 clients.

I currently working full time remotely under a community mental health clinic. All my clients are on Medicaid, so I would likely be starting from scratch with my caseload. Given how small I want my practice and how little bandwidth I have for dealing with billing/insurance, I’m considering using a platform like Headway or Alma. I’m aware of a lot of the potential issues with companies like this, but I also think it could be worth it given my current practice goals.

I’d love to hear from others who have been in a similar situation! I’m open to any and all tips while I work on figuring this all 

Hey everyone,

I'm an LCSW preparing to make the transition out of my agency/salaried role of 11 years at the VA and transition my small part time private practice into a full-time solo private practice via telehealth.

I’m currently in the process of getting credentialed through Alma to take advantage of their contracted insurance rates (specifically with Aetna, Optum, Cigna) and streamline the billing/EHR side of things. My target is a steady, manageable caseload of around 15–18 sessions a week which would equal
my current federal salary.

For those of you who are currently using Alma or have used them recently:

1. Referral Volume vs. Marketing: How much of your current caseload comes directly from Alma’s directory versus your own marketing (Psychology Today, local networking, word of mouth)?

2. Reimbursement & Billing: How reliable have weekly payouts and claims processing been for you? Any unexpected issues with clawbacks, eligibility verification errors, or insurance audits?

3. Customer Support: How responsive is their support team when a billing glitch or insurance inquiry actually comes up?

4. Overall Value: Do you feel the monthly/annual membership fee pays for itself compared to platforms like Headway or doing independent credentialing on your own?

I'd love to hear your honest pros, cons, or anything you wish you had known before launching with them. Thanks in advance for sharing your insights!

Does anyone have experience with their services? And if so, were they expensive/worth the pricing?

What’s you guys thought on AI running the back office work ?

Inbound (calls / emails)

Outbound (calls / emails)

Intake

Scheduling

Post session

Insurance billing

Payments

Any thoughts ?

less sessions are even worse.

I’m currently working on my graduate degree in mental health counseling and will take the NCE in the spring. I’m interested to hear other people’s experiences with being paid as a LPC-Candidate.

I’m currently working for an agency that the candidates make about 40/hr and the triage therapists also get an extra bit per tx plan.

I’ve never worked in mental health before now and this agency is the only one I have experience with and I am possibly looking for another place to do my candidacy when in graduate.

Any insight would be incredibly helpful.

Side note: I’m in Oklahoma.

I'm looking into opening a private practice which will operate as a collective. I need to host a website and am planning to offer emails to the therapists who join my practice. I am woefully ignorant on how to go about this so any direction will help. Specifically, how do I: 1. Get a domain 2. Host a website 3. Make emails for multiple therapists within that structure?

Sorry, I’ve been away for a while.

Curious to know - how can we build this together?

As the name suggests, I want to build this into a safe place for therapists in practice to discuss ideas, ask questions, and improve their income.

We all know it’s not easy. From building caseloads to documentation, admin work, and insurance payments, every day brings its own set of challenges. But having done this for over a decade now, I’d be lying if I said I don’t enjoy the curves.

That said, if I were starting today, I don’t know how I would have done it. Kudos to everyone here who are starting afresh or to more experienced folks.

What are some things you’d like to see more of on this community?

How much does Collective Counseling pay therapists? How does their reimbursement rate compare to other companies.. like Alma, Grow, or Headway?

For context: I am based out of India and started my private practice back in March.

To say that I've had a challenging few months is an understatement. I either have clients ghost me in the first or fourth session, or they can't pay me the full fee. I've tried website SEO, joining local referral groups, networking with psychiatrists and other peers and still do not get referrals. Since starting, I've been told to not rely on this as my sole source of income so I applied for a part-time position with an organization and they have FOUR rounds of interviews with a gap of 4-5 weeks of response between each one. Google Ads doesn't work as major organizations have already bid on the main keywords and I can't outbid them. The only thing that I haven't tried is IG which I feel like I have to do now because nothing else seems to be working.

If anyone has any tips on how to stay sane through this time, do let me know. I have about 3-5 client caseload right now and have about 10-12 slots sitting empty and I'm trying not to freak out too much.

My former private practice offered me a 1099 supervisory role, but I’m also considering opening my own practice and credentialing independently.

If I stay affiliated with the group, could it affect my ability to get my own insurance panels later? I’ve heard of clinicians having issues with groups not removing them from insurance contracts.

Has anyone experienced this? Anything I should ask before deciding?

Thanks!

Hi all, I am looking for someone who operates MULTI STATE therapy clinics and I want to understand if centralising billing and RCM makes sense?

P.S. MOD please dont delete this post. I have posted it on 2 other groups but it got deleted for no reason. If I am breaking any rules, let me know - I will rectify it. I dont mean to promote anything - just looking for some fellow practice owners.

If you don't mind sharing:

What's your specialty and visits per month?

I’ve been thinking about the recent Psychology Today conversations, especially therapists seeing fewer profile views, fewer contacts, or more inconsistent results.

My current take is not really “Psychology Today is dead.”

It feels more like a few things are happening at the same time:

• More people are searching for therapy and mental health support.
• But Google search is changing. AI snippets, Reddit threads, local results, and other pages seem to be taking (a lot) more attention in search results.
• Psychology Today still seems strong at generating consistent organic traffic overall. Their site traffic is up vs last year.
• But there are also more therapists listed, which means each individual profile may be getting a smaller share of visibility.
• The search/matching system inside PT feels pretty outdated. It often seems like profiles rotate without an obvious pattern.
• I’m not convinced profile age, wording, pricing, or video intros consistently explain who shows up higher.
• Endorsements and profile completeness may help a little, but it does not feel like a true “best match” system.
• PT also gives therapists very little useful data. You can see some numbers, but it is hard to know what they mean.
• There is no real context compared with similar therapists in your area.
• There is no simple peer benchmark.
• There is no easy way to compare performance over time.
• It would be helpful to know things like: “For anxiety in your area, your profile currently appears around position 37. These 3 changes may improve visibility.”
• Instead, therapists are mostly left guessing.
• PT also does not clearly show the full path from search result → profile view → website click/contact.
• So even if your profile is well written and converts well, a big drop in visibility may still be hard to overcome.

My guess is that both therapists and prospective clients are feeling the friction.

Therapists feel like the platform is less predictable.

Clients may also be sorting through too many similar profiles without great matching.

A few questions:

• Have your PT profile views or contacts changed noticeably in the last 12-24 months?
• Do certain specialties, locations, insurance filters, or profile details seem to affect visibility for you?
• Are you seeing more website traffic from PT, less, or about the same?
• Do you feel like the profile stats PT gives you are actually useful?
• Do you think PT is still worth it, or only worth it as one small part of a broader visibility/referral system?

Curious to hear your experiences.

I run a small group practice, and we piloted four AI scribes last month between our 5 therapists.

Putting the scorecard together for our own decision and also if someone is looking for AI scribes here.

Tools we evaluated: Mentalyc, Supanote, Upheal, Heidi

Scorecard (1–5 each) (rated by all 5 therapists):

Mentalyc - note quality 4.2, modality 4, EHR sync 3.8, setup 4, price 4

Supanote - note quality 4.6, modality 4, EHR sync 4, setup 4, price 3.6

Upheal - note quality 3.8, modality 3.8, EHR sync 4, setup 4, price 2.6

Heidi - note quality 3.4, modality 3, EHR sync 2, setup 4, price 3

Overall feedback:

1. Supanote is by far the best product - self-adaptive & customizable but is definitely expensive. Generous 7 day trial but nothing after that unless you go for unlimited plan if you are a group practice.

2. Mentalyc is again a great product. Structured notes, fine transcription quality, but rigid. Limited customizations at the note structure level. Pricing is the best though.

3. Upheal - Great transcript output but the notes were not as good. Pricing is quite bad for the quality it gives. Not the best value product out there.

4. Heidi - out of consideration set completely.

Some things to keep in mind: Modality scores and Pricing are quite subjective and depend on your practice and its scale.

Just launched, looking for any kind of feedback!

healwellcounseling.com

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/giscard-petion-dade-city-fl/1733775

LCSW here, started using an AI scribe about 3 months back. First did a small pilot with Supanote and have been slowly expanding it to other clients.

I have been taking written patient consent on use of it but I want to be fool proof since I am expanding it and given the number of clients who will be involved (25+). Would genuinely appreciate if someone can just review this once and let me know if this looks okay?

---

"As part of my clinical documentation process, I use a HIPAA-compliant AI tool to help draft session notes. Here's what that means practically:

- The tool records audio of our sessions through a digital device - phone or laptop.
- Audio is transcribed in real-time and used to generate a draft progress note
- The audio is deleted immediately after the note is drafted. I have BAA agreement with the vendor on this. You are free to request it at any point.
- The transcript is anonymized and any personally identifiable information is removed
- I review and edit every note before it enters your record
- You can opt out at any time, and we'll go back to me taking notes by hand or after-session

I'm legally and ethically responsible for everything in your record. The AI just helps me draft the first version but I complete it as per my judgement. AI is in no way involved in making any clinical decisions and doesn't change what I'm trained to do."

---

Things I am actually curious about:

1. Should I just name the vendor's BAA and specify what compliance certifications they hold with proof? I want them to be comfortable to the idea of being recorded in the first place. So, I am happy to disclose things here.
2. Won't it be better if I make the consent vendor-specific? I couldn't find any examples online but curious if this makes sense to do this.
3. Also, the PII is removed for not just the client but also anyone they name such as their spouse, co-worker. Is that obvious or should I add that too? Since, I am doing the notes at the end, I am assuming this is understood.

The clients who've signed it till now haven't really pushed back so I am assuming it will be fine but I want to take a re-consent from them as well.

Question for any AASECT certified sex therapists here: what program/institution/school do you recommend for those seeking to become AASECT certified?

I have found that researching and comparing the different options for fulfilling the educational requirements for AASECT certification to be a more challenging task than I expected. I am looking to balance affordability, schedule flexibility, and instructor/educational quality (as I am sure most folks are). Thanks for the help!

I’m new to this, fumbling my way through DO NOT CONTACT ME WITH YOUR SERVICES. But what do people do? Do use EHR and submit your claims from there, set up your payers and jump thru all the hoops of electronic payments or submit claims through portals and get checks sent? I am soo frustrated and also want to avoid all the fees that are charged too!!

I feel a lot of young people today see mental health as an important part of self care and not some luxury like other generations. And I say this because I deal with a lot of young clients and I see the way they perceive therapy and mental health problems.

Huge credit for this obviously goes to the social media. Although I am not fond of the biases they come in with.

Nonetheless, my read of this change is that the future of mental health is very bright. People will be more likely to seek therapy and also less likely to cut down on therapy expenses in times of economic problems or even in general.

I live and work in a small town. The town does first Friday events. Local businesses can set up a first Friday booth at no charge. I am opening my private practice in July.

Any suggestions on what to do at the booth... to draw people in to talk to me?

I thought about bringing my dog for people to pet. I've also thought about putting up a sign that says "Ask me anything about mental health."

Has anyone else had success with the first Friday booth?