Thank you for joining Silver Leaf Practice Management Solutions and Spruce Health to learn how to most effectively launch and maintain your own private practice. Together we take the fear out of opening your new business, with specific tips on how to establish a viable ROI model, what to focus on first when launching your practice, organizational how-tos, and why a secure messaging platform can make all the difference in your communication and collaboration with both patients and staff. We include relevant case studies that illustrate how others have recognized success in this space so that you have a strong guide to emulate.
You'll discover:
- High-yield essentials needed to launch your practice
- The indispensable technical tools required to deliver a professional presence
- The criticality of investing in modern tools
- How to reach your business goals with better collaboration and communication
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Key Strategies for Eliminating the Fear of Launching & Maintaining a Private Practice
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Join the Silver Leaf Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/pmhnp...
Email Silver Leaf: info@silverleafpms.com
FULL TRANSCRIPT - Real-Life Inspiration for Your Private Practice: Webinar Case Studies from Silver Leaf PMS & Spruce Health
well I gotta say these numbers are rising fast and for the sake of keeping us on track I'm gonna just jump right in
0:07 there so good morning good afternoon depending on what Coast you're on my name is Carrie Scott I work at Spruce
0:12 health I will be serving as today's moderator so that we can guide the discussion in a meaningful way and make
0:18 the best use of everybody's time so with that uh let's get down to it we
0:26 are going to go through a couple of introductions so that you know who's on the call with us today I will have uh
0:32 Jessica our Spruce expert talk about uh Spruce health for those of you on the call that are new to us we're going to
0:39 introduce you to Silverleaf and give you a high level of what you can um expect there and then we're going to
0:45 get into the essentials what you need to launch your practice uh the technical tools required to deliver a professional
0:51 presence the importance of investing in modern tools we'll get into an Roi
0:56 discussion along with some case studies and we're going to leave time for questions as well
1:03 um we may answer a few intermittently but we're going to save the bulk of them for the end so please do drop your
1:09 questions into the Q a load them up as they come to you so you don't forget because we are eager to answer them
1:17 and with that I'm going to do some intros here uh today we're meeting
1:22 Beverly Johnson she is the founder and acting manager of Silverleaf PMS Beverly
1:28 is a registered nurse with more than 25 years of er nursing management quality
1:33 and various admin positions in 2018 she researched and figured out how to open
1:39 up a friend's practice she's been hours and hours Education and Research and it led to a very successful
1:46 launch that Drew in more than 700 patients with one provider in nine months pretty incredible
1:52 she led everything from the business startup to maintaining the overall daily practice management and she now leads
1:58 the clinical business consultation website design marketing and EHR building portion of Silverleaf I don't
2:05 know how this woman sleeps but that's pretty that is pretty incredible uh we also have Megan McDonald joining us
2:11 Megan is co-owner of Silverleaf and the virtual assistant director uh she has been in the customer service industry
2:17 for 13 years and she's instrumental in onboarding new practices and helping them to get set up on their technical
2:23 stack so between these two we have a wealth of information that we're going to glean today we also have Jessica Gula
2:30 she is our sales leader and Spruce expert she's joining to share some insights into Spruce and answer any
2:36 questions that the audience may have about Spurs as I mentioned we're going to save the bulk of those questions for
2:42 the end but please do drop them into the Q a as you think of them this event will be recorded I want to
2:49 remind you of that it will be shared with everyone that registers so keep your eyes peeled for an email that will follow up this event
2:56 I will also send you the link to the slides and the other resources that we're going to mention throughout the
3:01 presentation so don't worry about missing anything you are going to get all of it
3:07 uh and with that I'm going to just pass the torch to Jess off to you well hi everyone I'm so excited to see
3:14 so many people attending today um I've worked at Spruce for seven years I have worked in every capacity at
3:20 Spruce uh but I mostly focus on helping people learn what Spruce does and get them set up
3:26 um and so there may be some people on this call that have never heard of spruce I hope not but maybe you haven't heard of it or don't know what we do
3:32 um but we are a HIPAA compliance software for clinics and Healthcare
3:38 professionals ranging from any specialty uh we consolidate all your Communications into one system that's
3:44 going to have an amazing audit Trail as well as be collaborative with your team we do everything from your in-office
3:50 business phone to using your cell phone for a virtual business phone to fax email texting both by SMS and by secure
4:00 messaging and as you can see from that image that's a little screenshot of our app we have a mobile app plus web-based
4:06 so we really just want to help Healthcare practices be more efficient and secure in their communication and
4:12 that's what we've been doing to help you do that but if you have any questions we're also going to have our contact info at the end
4:18 um and one of the reasons you know we partnered with silver leaf and have them on the webinar is because they also work
4:25 with Healthcare practices and provide so much great education to them that I work with so many of their clinics that then
4:31 end up using Spruce so that's why we want to bring them on we're really aligned in making sure that Healthcare
4:36 practices are efficient for both patients and the providers so that's it for me for now
4:46 thanks hey Jessica so thanks for that great introduction from us for us you guys that's very nice we have been
4:52 helping providers launch their private practices for a little over four years now and we offer our wide range of
4:58 services Carrie um touched on a few of them but we also offer billing credentialing virtual assistant Services
5:04 we do help set up Spruce for some of our clients we do EHR setup HR Services
5:10 marketing website logos you name it we probably do it pretty much anything you need to start up a practice or maintain
5:16 your practice after you get it up and going so we also um offer you know
5:22 consultations to those that may have need questions answered when they are getting ready to start up their practice
5:27 or even for those folks that are in their practice and are still kind of like well I'm not sure you know what to do here maybe I need some help we can we
5:34 can help you with pretty much anything you need troubleshooting with um we've tried many products and platforms to find out what works most
5:41 effectively and efficiently for practices across many different fields of Specialties and even sizes from the
5:47 one provider up to I think the biggest provider was close to 20 providers in their um their office so various
5:54 different sizes but that's how we stumbled upon Spruce um we've been recommending to Spruce to our clients ever since
6:07 so the next thing we're talking about is the essentials needed to launch your practice and this is where I kind of come in a
6:14 lot um to help folks kind of get started we do the consultations and everything but the things to be thinking about just
6:20 from the very start you want to get yourself off on the on the right foot um so to speak so here's a you know a few few pointers
6:27 um and by no means is this everything it's just some things to get started with and to think about um the first thing think futuristically
6:34 like what are you know what is your plan gonna your practice going to look like in a year from now five years from now
6:39 10 years from now what is that goal where are you trying to get um you know and you want to plan
6:44 accordingly so just because it's you today but in 10 years you might want you know Partners or whatever plan for that
6:49 now um have a solid business plan and use that as your roadmap to guide you
6:56 um and there's plenty of help online for business plans because I know people kind of get you know stumble around with trying to figure out their own business
7:01 plan but there's lots of information online to help you with that um decide if you're going to be a solo practice a partnership or eventually
7:08 multi-provider group talked a little bit about that um talk to a CPA a lot of people don't know they get confused on the business
7:15 structure versus the tax structure and that's going to vary depend on your depending on your future plan so make
7:21 sure you talk to that CPA get that lined out get your tax structure started from the very beginning
7:27 figuring out a name research it make a firm decision and go with it you don't
7:33 want to change it later because that's going to cause a lot of issues for you and processes we've had providers do it
7:39 they start with one name they get halfway through all their setups and stuff and decide either they found out somebody else has a name similar or they
7:46 don't want to use that name and they change it Midway that's a disaster I mean credentialing applications get
7:51 messed up have to go back in and change everything in Spruce you know in ehrs and things so pick that name stick with
7:58 it um the next thing is establishing your business with the Secretary of State Most states it's just the Secretary of
8:04 State but there are some business but some states out there that require you to also go through the Board of Nursing
8:09 or your medical board if it's a you know a medical practice and not a nurse practitioner practice so make sure that
8:16 you're checking the rules for your state and then a lot of providers get hung up on the address part and this has kind of
8:22 been tricky especially with the phe the public health emergency ending
8:27 um you know people have been able to start up Telehealth practices during covid um and those have been fine but now that
8:33 the public health emergency is ending there's a lot of things to consider with that and I'm not going to go into that in a lot of detail here because it's
8:39 just not the place for it but strictly a strictly virtual address is not going to work
8:45 um unless especially if you're prescribing Controlled Substances or if you're going to get credential with insurances so just be mindful of that
8:52 um appeal box isn't going to work a UPS box is not going to work so and you definitely don't want to use your home
8:57 address using your home address I've seen people do it lots of people do it and guys once you get your home address
9:03 out there on the internet with your business name it's hard to pull that back and you think about you know a lot
9:09 of product providers that we deal with are Psychiatry providers you don't want patients knowing where you live it's
9:15 just not safe um some people have boundary issues you just don't want to do that so um
9:20 definitely don't do it uh we talked a little bit about the Ryan or the phe ending on May the 11th um and I think
9:26 there's been some recent stuff on that I just don't have the up-to-date uh Biden signed something I think yesterday and I
9:31 need to do some more research on that but prior to that they were saying the phe is ending May the 11th so with that
9:38 ending the Ryan High act will come back um prescribing controlled substances are going to be subject to that meaning that
9:44 you have to see patients in person before you prescribe controlled substances and then your state can
9:50 actually tighten that downward they have more rules as well
9:55 um you get your tax ID with the or tax ID employee ID you'll hear them called a
10:00 tin or an EIN from the IRS super easy to do that online application once you get
10:05 your business established or if you go through a company that will help you do the basic business setup we don't do
10:12 that part because it's kind of legal stuff but um they will actually help you get your tin or your EIN from the IRS as
10:17 well and then kind of think about this every state is like their own country they have their own laws they have their
10:23 own business requirements for that state um they have the registered agent requirements permits controlled
10:29 substance policies like I mentioned earlier so it's not as easy as just jumping from one state to another to
10:35 start your private practice um it's not just like you know just have a license I can go over here and practice it's not that
10:41 easy guys so if you're wanting to do multiple States and practice in multiple states make sure that you have a
10:47 business attorney that's involved and that you are staying you know compliant with all the different state laws and
10:53 those change too if you decide to hire employees in different states there's a lot to doing that
10:58 and then just decide if you're going to be um cash based or if you're going to take insurances
11:04 credentialing alone for a new Private Practice can but doesn't always take up to six months when you join another
11:11 practice it's already established it's quick because their business is already credential when your new Private
11:16 Practice comes into play it's credentialing your private practice along with you so that's why it does
11:21 take longer it doesn't always take six months but just be prepared for that um that time frame when you're getting
11:27 ready to start up so like I said in the beginning this is a few things to consider um we could literally take up the whole
11:33 hour with just talking about you know all the the digging really deep into all the details from starting up so we do
11:39 offer consultations if you need further one-on-one assistance and need more questions answered
11:44 and then um the next thing we want to talk about is a checklist or actually yeah so
11:52 checklist a checklist is going to help you get stay on track and we actually are offering you guys one of those and
11:57 that's one of the links down below um all the participants in this webinar are going to get discounts on our checklist classes previous webinars that
12:04 we've offered these links will be available to you as well in the email that you get and on these slides you can click on you don't need a special code
12:12 or anything like that the discount's already been applied when you click on the link um there is a YouTube video there that
12:17 tells you about all the services that we offer um kind of a free consult I guess you could say to all of our services and
12:24 you can you know get all the information that you need on everything that we offer and then um so you're going to get
12:29 an email with all these after the webinars so make sure you watch your junk mail that may end up Landing in
12:34 there so that you make sure that you get all this and that's a lot of information just in these links that we're providing
12:40 for you so the next I'm going to talk about is
12:47 um you know things to consider when you're establishing your professional presence so there's a few things you need to think about
12:54 um one is your online what is your online presence going to look like are you going to have a website
12:59 um having a website is very important nowadays because it really adds validity to your practice and and you I mean it's
13:06 the first thing you do right when you're looking up a business it's what's 30 what's their website look like it's also
13:11 a place for you to drive traffic to when you're marketing your private practice or when you put your you know your name
13:17 and everything on a business card and you're handling handing those things out it's very important and then on your
13:22 website you should have the availability for online scheduling that's for clients to be able to do that with you and that
13:28 leads me to my next Point your EHR should have online scheduling there are a lot out there that make you go through
13:34 portals and all these things and you know unfortunately I can almost I don't guess it's unfortunate but we do live in
13:39 an instant gratification Society right I don't know about you guys but I don't even go book a hair appointment if I
13:45 can't do it online at two o'clock in the morning um so it's very important that people can just find you book an appointment
13:52 um if you're not doing that guys you're playing phone tag going back and forth trying to get a hold of patients once
13:57 they've called you at the end of the day you're missing out on clients because if they've called you they've called 10
14:02 other providers and chances are if you're doing this part time and you're calling them back at four o'clock in the evening they found somebody else so just
14:10 make sure that you are going to offer online scheduling for your patients and it should be online scheduling to the point that it goes directly into your
14:16 EHR not where you're having to take the schedule and put it somewhere else but that's a whole other conversation
14:22 um social media so there's a lot of people that have mixed feelings about this um some people like social media and are
14:28 very engaged in it and other people don't engage at all however social media is uh you know not going to go anywhere
14:34 it's actually getting more and more prominent and you or someone either that you hire or whatever should be marketing
14:41 your practices your practice on multiple social media platforms and those you know we know what they all are Tick Tock
14:47 Facebook all of that it's very important that you establish that social media presence out there
14:52 and then marketing comes in all shapes and sizes so some marketing you can do yourself it's pretty
14:58 easy I'll definitely help you with that um and then other types Maybe left to the professionals building
15:03 graphics and stuff to post out there helping you with videos so it just depends on you know what help that
15:09 you're going to need all of us have different technical skills um some are more comfortable with building graphics
15:14 and doing videos and others not so much so know when to get help it's a marketing is huge guys it's going to be
15:19 your biggest thing that you're going to budget for in your first year trying to get those patients in the door it's
15:25 never a one and done thing ever you have to keep marketing and you have to figure out what's working what's not working
15:30 you know where you're getting most results and shift your focus so it's just really ongoing until you get that
15:36 steady stream of patience we're like hey slow down got plenty coming in until you get to that point you're going to be
15:42 continuously marketing and then choosing your EHR um this is a topic that our Facebook group constantly
15:49 gets asked about um let me just preface saying that there are there is no perfect EHR they all have issues you just have to figure out
15:56 which ones you're willing to deal with and which ones you're not um but remember one thing that the Reps
16:01 that do those demos for you to sell you those different ehrs are there to sell you a product and they will promise you
16:07 all the rainbows and unicorns and then you know they'll tell you why that their you know EHR is the best one out there
16:13 believe nothing that they say because it's not that they lie to you they just don't tell you things by omission and if
16:19 you don't know the questions to ask once you sign that contract you are theirs and they are not going to let you out of
16:25 it unless you pay them a lot of money and you're going to have regrets so listen to your colleagues um listen to people that have done it before you know
16:31 what go to the different groups on Facebook or do your research um ask us I mean I post things all the
16:38 time in our Facebook groups about um different ehrs and you know problems that we've seen with others Megan can
16:45 also tell you the problems that she's seen from the front office our billing department can tell you there's it's
16:50 just those the way that's just the way ehrs are um make sure they do promise you anything that you get it in writing
16:57 because if you don't and it's just words it's not going to stand up and they're not going to deliver that and I have an
17:02 entire video dedicated to that whole topic topic of picking your EHR the
17:07 other thing to think about is employees versus contractors so at some point you're going to need help we're
17:13 all especially women you know I'm not kind of trying to slight the men out there anything but women like to wear the superhero capes right we want to do
17:20 everything we can do everything we can do the house take care of the kids work a full-time job open up my private practice and do all the things what
17:26 happens is if you've never run your private practice you don't understand how much work your ancillary staff does
17:32 for you answering the phones scheduling patients taking care of all of those little things that you just don't think
17:37 about when you're taking care of patients so you'll need to make the decision whether or not you're going to hire employees or utilize a contractor
17:44 to help you be mindful that the IRS has very strict guidelines on how to treat
17:49 both of these types of workers just because you don't want to hire people and pay taxes or you know provide
17:55 benefits on an employee doesn't mean that you can just hire a contractor misclassifying a contractor and treating
18:02 them like an employee can cost you lots of money um so just make sure that you know the difference between the two and you can
18:08 Google it on the IRS website it's very clear employees versus contractors and then the last Point here is making
18:15 sure that you utilize the right systems and tools to make your practice successful finding something that's free
18:21 not always the best idea but neither is going with the most expensive thing right so remember that your time is
18:26 money and automating processes all across the board saves you both time and money
18:31 so selecting the most expensive EHR doesn't mean that you get the best one right it just means you chose an expensive EHR and it doesn't really mean
18:38 that it's necessary so the same point is true for any systems and tools we hear
18:43 providers tell us all the time well this phone system is free well that's great but that phone system only comes with a
18:48 voicemail so which means that you're going to be spending time calling patients back playing phone tag getting
18:54 caught on the phone with potential patients you know that you can't get off I don't know about y'all but I can't even get my family members off the phone
18:59 in 15 minutes so calling people back you end up spending 35 minutes an hour with them on the phone and that could have
19:05 been a visit or you could have charged them for that so remember your time is money if you don't take anything else
19:11 away from this whole webinar think about that in every step that you make through your whole practice when it comes to
19:16 hiring folks or picking the perfect platforms or whatever your time is money um so investing in a system like Spruce
19:23 and utilizing it to its full potential because it's not always evident when you first log in like all the potential that
19:29 Spruce has and we're going to show you some of that stuff where they the end but it has guys it has so much
19:34 Automation in there that can save you so much time and so much money doing these things and but that frees you up to do
19:40 things like enjoying time with your family and just taking time off because if you do try to overwhelm you'll get
19:45 overwhelmed and get burned out really easy so automating is very very important um and Spruce can definitely help you
19:51 with that all you have to do is see an extra patient once a month pay for it you're done so um that is my part I
19:59 think of this and we're going to go into um the next part
20:10 that was so much helpful information Beverly um it's a lot of information you're able
20:16 to like give some good tips and stuff and per usual people can always sign up um and go to your website to learn more
20:21 and sign up for sessions and your consultative skills um and also I also just want to say you
20:28 know some relief is you know we're just two businesses that happen to work with the same clients and we both just respect
20:34 and see them doing great things together um you know so neither paid by each
20:39 other anything like we're unrelated we just we both find that you know Beverly's team they're they're trying to
20:45 get providers to be more efficient you know we help do that so they love a recommending Spruce that's it
20:51 um but just want to say and yeah and also Beverly is going to tell you the real of spruce what we can and we can't
20:57 do we're not you know uh magicians we there are some things we can't do
21:02 um so she's also a great her team is a great resource if you do have questions because it is hard sometimes to know
21:08 what the right questions are asked about a phone system or an EHR like you said and I see the same thing and I'm happy
21:13 to tell you what ehr's work with Spruce which how you can use any EHR recipes as well
21:19 um yeah sorry go ahead Jess I was just gonna say I see some questions um coming up and
21:24 we're definitely going to address them but I'm going to leave them towards the end because I think everyone will like hearing them together and we can just kind of address them at the end
21:31 um so thanks for putting those in continue and I think you'll agree Jessica we've gone through many providers and many
21:38 different setups and have tried all kinds of cool things some things worked okay some things didn't we kind of you
21:43 know would go back and you know Circle backs and fix things um but over the last couple we've been working with you guys for almost two
21:49 years or probably a little over two years as long as that yeah a lot so I mean we've set up numerous practices
21:55 over the year and years and we're well versed in all the problems that can occur not only while setting up the
22:00 practice but also running it day to day Megan that's Megan's ball game all day long like trying to streamline processes
22:07 with providers and fix you know help them from the beginning or stepping in and trying to fix them so I'm going to
22:12 hand this over to Megan at this point um because she's the one that manages the spruce setups and our virtual assistant
22:17 services and everything and she also serves as practice manager kind of the practice manager liaison to some of our
22:23 clients as well thank you Beverly hello everyone um delving just a little deeper into
22:29 systems and tools um if you're already in practice you are likely dealing with some of the issues we've listed out and
22:36 talked about previously the trick to streamline in your new practice or current practice is doing what you can
22:42 to reduce the number of platforms you're using to get your day-to-day job done
22:48 um it's enticing like Beverly said to go with something free or relatively inexpensive in the beginning as you may
22:54 be concerned with overhead but making sure you have the right Tech stack is critical for both organization and
23:00 growth we have found that utilizing Spruce in all sizes of the project practices and especially solo provider
23:07 practices decreases the front office administrative time significantly whether those things are being done by
23:13 you the provider in between your appointments or afterwards or by someone on staff but organizing and streamlining
23:19 your processes you have more time like Beverly mentioned to see patients do personal things and that also allows the
23:27 front office staff to be able to handle additional tasks outside of those we've been able to eliminate the use of
23:33 multiple practices or I'm sorry multiple platforms and softwares in practices and streamline those processes to save you
23:40 money as someone who's provided support to numerous private practices over the last few years I've witnessed firsthand
23:47 the stress that really does accumulate with simply dealing with phone calls and text messages from patients that volume
23:54 can become very high we've all played phone tag with clients I've sent the same message over and over again about
24:01 everyday things like overdue paperwork or needing to relay the onboarding process to someone and we all know that
24:08 when we're on the phone with a new patient telling them everything that we need we they may not especially depending on
24:15 what they're looking for help with may not be able to gather everything that you're saying to them verbally they may
24:20 need you to follow up with some kind of text message let's see I'm having to return
24:26 voicemails that just State a name and a number hey can you call me back my name is so and so there's no indication of
24:31 what that person might need I found that with Spruce you can rely heavily on the system itself to support you
24:39 um it's important to invest in these modern tools such as Spruce um to enable you to streamline processes
24:46 and workflow as well as increase productivity by utilizing automations
24:51 and decreasing manual processes meaning you're having your phone system do some
24:56 of the work for you these are some examples on on the solution slide of how
25:02 we've applied Spruce and accomplishing some of these everyday administrative needs think of spruce like your
25:09 Communications Hub like Jessica mentioned earlier it's one platform you're sending and receiving emails
25:15 through their calls and faxes you're able to talk with your patients both via text regularly SMS if that's easier for
25:22 some Spruce does have an opt out feature on their platform if someone chooses to
25:28 just regularly text that they have to put permission in there basically they understand it's not compliant but you're
25:35 also able to talk with them securely it's very easy for them to join Spruce on their end it takes I would say about
25:43 20 seconds for them to download the app and enter in their patient information
25:49 so like you know you guys talk to practices getting started or established
25:56 and wanting to expand every day as do I you know they come to Spruce either with an existing phone system they want to
26:01 upgrade or a brand new or new practice and you know so the slide before care is
26:06 you know these These are the common problems we're seeing you know and these problems that you have need to be solved
26:13 in order to be a successful business you know and Beverly touched on this like if you're paying yourself to do some of
26:19 these things where you could be seeing patients and charging Insurance that's a fault and so this is a list of the very
26:26 common things we see that either you know making sure you've researched like
26:31 what you're doing looking at where you spending your hours you know are you capturing potential patients are you
26:37 HIPAA compliant like these are some of the problems that we see so make sure you're addressing these problems and then the next slide is what you know our
26:44 team and their team have come up with to help solve these and they not all need to be you know Human Solutions some of
26:52 these like Megan you talked about are these kind of automations you build in the right technology that you use
26:59 whether Beverly mentioned the EHR they can do online billing I mean online scheduling
27:05 um or like Spruce you can have press one press two for billing and then it automatically goes to a billing folder
27:11 so that you're you don't have to worry about it that your billing team can look at that and and then you're not getting disturbed by that so just wanted to kind
27:18 of give some more context there and you know some of these things you've set up what are some of the other ones on this
27:24 solutions list that you think that your providers respond well to so I actually do Circle back to that
27:29 here in just a second just about you know the different phone trees that you you know the different selections that
27:34 you can put in a phone tree and what those corresponding recordings could do for you um you know so that your system
27:41 is helping you provide information to patients you know categorically that they're looking for
27:47 um and and can help them be most self-sufficient on their end and therefore reduce some of the work that
27:52 you have to do yourself so um I will mention some of that here in just a second
27:58 um I do want to also mention that Spruce does offer you know it facilitates interoffice communication with your
28:04 staff members um with an individual patient thread so if you have a patient message in you
28:09 know hey I have a med concern there are a lot of systems where it's just a text message from the patient and now the
28:16 front office admin needs to go into another system and relay that message whereas in Spruce as soon as that
28:22 message comes over from your patient you're able to directly underneath it tag your provider let them know what's
28:28 going on and the provider has the opportunity to either internally message you back the staff member back and let
28:34 them know how to proceed or they can just externally message the client and let them know you know what to do on
28:40 their end so it really is just such a clever system um and like Jess was saying many things
28:45 can be set up to automatically happen in the background so she was mentioning the phone tree with the selections you could
28:51 set up a phone tree with selections such as appointments or insurance and billing
28:57 these lines upon selection by the patient could provide that additional information to your client making them a
29:03 bit more self-sufficient and reducing the need for a call back so your billing line for example could specify What
29:10 insurances you take or maybe even states that you don't take insurance and you'll provide super bills for reimbursement
29:16 purposes you could put in a med refill selection on your tree that could tell patients what all they need to do on
29:23 their end before leaving that message with the request for you so for example calling their Pharmacy to ensure they
29:30 don't already have refills on hold or prompting them to book an appointment first if they haven't been seen within a
29:35 specific amount of time like three months um you could imagine just how detailed you can get when setting up the phone
29:41 tree and just how much it can help relay that helpful information that we were talking about to both your established
29:47 and potential clients let's say you have a multi-provider practice and would like
29:53 to easily distinguish your patients from that of your colleagues you could even turn to the tagging feature of spruce
29:59 and you can set up a filter it kind of looks like a folder that'll organize those patients the second they message
30:05 it and the system's able to recognize the tag and I believe we even have a photo of this in a few slides to kind of
30:12 demonstrate what that looks like for you inside the inbox but that would make it easy for your providers to go in and see
30:17 oh hey there's 12 things in my filter let me go see what's going on with those
30:23 um often we see um we see often office changes needing
30:28 to be updated you know to the client some kind of policy change that you need to communicate with everyone
30:34 um Spruce offers bulk messaging it's a really clever feature it sends a bulk message to everyone it's one time for
30:40 you but those people do not know that there are other people in the group it just comes over to them so low
30:46 um maybe you're a practice with admin staff that handle different areas of the practice you can set up what Spruce
30:52 calls teams this allows you to assign certain people to certain types of calls
30:58 that come through do you have an outside billing company we can help you set up forwarding of that specific billing
31:04 selection on the phone tree to automatically ring an outside number allowing your billing company to
31:11 intercept the call and handle the billing issue as it comes through um with all of this said we're still
31:17 like Beverly's mentioned before you know when she was talking about setting up your private practice what we're mentioning in this meeting today is
31:23 purely just scratching the surface of the full capabilities of these platforms um especially Spruce and what it can do
31:29 to help you grow um we you know circling back to organizing and streamlining things you
31:35 have more time to do other things and your staff now has the availabilities I handle more higher level tasks like
31:42 filling out legal documentation for you based off of your chart notes you know the less that they need to do uh patient
31:50 communication wise frees them up to do more um tasks like prior authorizations and
31:55 handling medical record requests all of those kind of things
32:01 and that kind of circles us to establishing a viable Roi model and I believe Beverly will pick back up right
32:07 here Beverly you're muted
32:15 it wouldn't be a webinar yeah muted I mean exactly
32:23 you know the dogs barking in the background kids running around um so in combining the right resources
32:29 and the right Tech stack you can definitely get your practice on the right track by being successful from the very beginning because when you're
32:36 setting up your practice you really want to set that Foundation up in the beginning right to be stable and
32:41 everything's growing smoothly versus scrambling trying to oh my gosh I got so busy so quickly and I didn't have the
32:47 right stuff together and you know I'm now I'm floundering and you know I don't feel real stable in my practice and things are just crazy and you know I'm
32:53 working 20 hours a day type thing you want to make sure that everything is established on a good foundation so
33:00 um when you have the right resources you know we can help you with that you know we span all the different uh resources
33:07 from the website design to marketing even the virtual assistant services and we can help get your practice launched
33:12 in a record time but we can also assist any current practice you know to get them back on track so like Megan said
33:18 you know reducing administrative tasks right out of the gate from calling patients back to refilling prescriptions
33:24 minimizing the number of disparate systems you know in place and optimized kind of into one holistic solution I
33:31 mean we say one we talk about one communication solution you know that's outside the EHR and all that kind of
33:37 stuff but Spruce definitely brings all of that communication into one place so create you know creating a set of
33:43 processes too that are easy to set up and and very streamlined for the whole team to use is also very important doing
33:50 these things I think we talked about how this can all help you know with your Roi and everything and helping you save
33:55 money and save time um so with that I'm going to give that back to Megan so that she can go over uh
34:03 what you know she wants to tell you on this slide and then we will move forward we've mentioned it before you guys we're
34:09 just um you know bringing home to you again we help you guys set up these
34:15 um these phone trees autoresponders all of those kind of things that are based
34:20 off a schedule so you can switch between you know a current hours phone tree and after hours phone tree the templates
34:27 that we've used have been brought to Spruce they've been approved the
34:32 engineers you know have it down pat it's really we've really gotten it streamlined with uh building these these
34:39 uh these projects for you so um like we like we mentioned before you
34:45 know streamlining your practices reduces your admin overhead um and and Spruce does all these other
34:51 things like facilitating that smooth inner office communication we were talking about within an individual
34:57 patient thread or organized into broader topics and all of this while being HIPAA compliant
35:03 um I can't tell you the change I see in practices um you know that is a kind of my
35:08 specialty or practices come to me because they feel just a little disjointed things don't feel exactly
35:14 clean and it significantly decreases the amount of time they have to pay for an
35:20 office staff once we get them into Spruce and I just had a text message earlier today from a provider who I am
35:26 setting up a spruce account with now and she just got in today and started using it and texted me that it's blowing her
35:32 mind she said she cannot believe how helpful it's been and she's only been in there since early this morning so it
35:39 really does change the game for you guys
35:44 um some situational stuff so uh let's get into some case studies of clients we've had in the past some of the issues
35:51 they were having as well as kind of how we've resolved those for them um so getting into this one here um this
35:58 particular provider was having uh difficulty collecting payments from their patients so that a lot of
36:05 outstanding invoices 27k that's quite a bit of money um and previous attempts at sending
36:12 those invoices through their EHR multiple phone calls text messages that had all proved pretty unsuccessful
36:19 um what what we started doing was PDF thing the statement attaching it with what you can create you can create these
36:25 kind of canned messages inside of spruce um so you're not having to type the same message over and over again we pair that
36:31 with that kind of secured um the canned message and a payment request that allowed them to make that
36:38 payment on their phone uh through the app it was really easy for them and we saw a huge turn around and getting that
36:44 money it happened almost immediately it was previously seen as lost revenue and
36:49 any collection on that is I mean that's that's great I think that was so awesome the provider was super happy about that
36:56 of course who wouldn't be happy about you know an additional 27 Grand in your pocket
37:02 um and on this slide here it shows you what that looks like inside of the system so you can only take payments
37:07 through this secure platform which I think is great I think that's a really good way to keep HIPAA compliant and you
37:13 can take those payments um you can see the icon down there with a little arrow you're able to integrate
37:19 your stripe and your Square account with Spruce so you're you're able to request current and or passive balances forms
37:27 fees any kind of fee that you need someone to pay it's pretty easy to to request through there uh do this though
37:33 be mindful that if you do start accepting payments through Spruce through that platform that you also need
37:39 to go and properly allocate that in your EHR system those things do not uh match
37:44 up so you have to take the payment from Spruce and go allocate it properly to the appointment in your EHR and then
37:50 make sure that you're deleting or canceling any an invoice that may have originated automatically inside of your
37:56 other system because EHR systems do sometimes automatically create those invoices
38:02 um the next one this was kind of circling back to that multi-provider practice that I was talking about
38:08 earlier the front office staff was having difficulty keeping uh providers
38:13 and patients separated so it was a nine this particular practice was a nine provider practice with about seven admin
38:21 assistants so you can imagine the inbox was pretty wild excuse me
38:27 um what the staff was having to do was go into the EHR system search for the patient and some of these EHR systems
38:34 don't make it easy for you to search you may have to actually change the provider in the system and then you can search
38:40 for their specific clients so you can imagine this was taking quite a while for them to try to figure out who's you
38:46 know whose provider that was or whose provider they needed to contact um so by utilizing tags you can do a
38:54 couple of different kind of tags in Spruce but in this particular situation the best tag to use would be a contact
38:59 tag that allows you to add a contact tag to that person that is it could just be
39:05 the last name of the provider and then you can set up an inbox filter to actually filter those out so you can see
39:12 here on this page how you see the folders for Dr ghoulish and Dr Sanchez towards the bottom there those appear to
39:20 be folders um these are actually those inbox filters that I was talking about and those are set up to specify
39:25 typically read those tags placed on the patient's contact it will automatically filter that call or text into that
39:33 provider specific filter or folder however you want to look at it now Dr ghoulish for example or Dr Sanchez could
39:40 log in and see what patients of theirs messaged in and determine how to help this particular setup would be
39:46 beneficial for a practice that might not even have an administrative assistant assistant or has high such high volume
39:53 that the provider is directly involved in their own patient Communications I just wanted to pop in just with some
40:00 more product knowledge here um you know overall what Spruce tries to help you do as a practice is customize
40:06 it based on what you need so if you need to divide it by provider if you need to divide it by kind of inquiry type
40:13 um it can be done this is one example of a tag you can tag so if you have you know you want to identify which provider
40:20 they're seeing but you still want to go into the main inbox or an admin checks all provider messages you can do that if
40:26 you want it to only go to that exact provider you can also do that so know that like we've built a product because
40:33 every Healthcare practice is very specific has their own needs and so to be successful we really made sure to
40:39 make it customizable to you and you know someone just asks a question about like hey everything's going to my all inbox
40:45 which is kind of like the default you know and so it is important to speak out and once you set up your spirits and be
40:51 like hey I'm having these um issues what do you suggest and we're gonna be like okay so it sounds like you're doing this
40:57 why don't we set up taxed or why don't we set up your phone tree or different things and again don't forget about that
41:03 opportunity time that you're spending manually moving these things so that you
41:09 can upgrade to the communicator and have it automate before you even see it so then you can spend more time with your
41:15 patients and less time doing these admin tasks so I just had to do a quick shout out there but best way is to email sales
41:21 at Spruce health.com if you need if you're not a customer and you have a question or if you're a current customer using this person want to do any of this
41:27 just message into team Spruce and our team is so used to the different workflows that clinics healthcare
41:33 clinics have I'm sure we can help you or if you need extensive support you can you know look
41:39 at their website and see what services Silverleaf offers yeah
41:45 sorry Megan that's that solo one inbox with no filters can make you crazy once
41:51 you're busy your practice gets busy everything's coming in there if you can filter and create those little folders I
41:57 call them folders because to me that makes more sense um to to organize that stuff it will make your life so much easier
42:03 when I do Circle onto that too for our last case study um which is the case of
42:09 the onboarding disaster so you know Spruce really is um such a clever system and I tell
42:15 people sometimes that it sort of works like email so if you're texting with the patient and you archive the message
42:21 because that's really what you want to do you want to archive messages when you're done with them the second that
42:27 that person messages you back the entire thread comes back so you're never losing any information it just continues on
42:35 um so the goal is to leave your inboxes pretty clear so that you know whatever is left in the inbox is something that
42:41 you still need to touch on you need to do something with um so I don't always recommend leaving
42:47 things in your inbox but if you're having trouble and maybe if your EHR doesn't support you how you need it to
42:53 you could use Bruce to kind of help you organize things through in this
42:59 situation and onboarding process so this particular practice super high volume volume was having trouble tracking where
43:07 people were in the onboarding process appointments were approaching their due date there weren't charts weren't
43:13 completed Insurance wasn't verified this was resulting in late canceled appointments and now that's an hour or
43:20 90 minutes even out of a provider's time that they're not getting paid for it's just kind of this blank now in your
43:26 schedule and so a part of my what I do with VMR Services I want to avoid that for my providers so I got with this
43:33 provider and we decided that because of the way her onboarding process was set up she needed help to kind of check them
43:40 off at certain stages and move them into the next stage so we set up inbox
43:46 filters for Herm to track where the patient was in that process
43:51 um it created kind of a more Hands-On and visual method of ensuring the tasks were completed when they needed to be
43:58 completed uh with this method the pr the patient conversation is kind of trapped between these multiple holders that
44:05 coordinate with the stages of this particular practices onboarding process so the image is still focusing on on
44:12 this image here still focusing on filters within the inbox but gets a little bit more involved here you can
44:18 see the labels uh the filters labeled pending insurance tracking paperwork and appointments they're kind of towards the
44:24 bottom of the image um the uh this allows for the practice to kind of route or assign messages into
44:31 the folder pending insurance which is the first step in her onboarding process once the insurance is verified they're
44:38 able to move that full patient thread down into the tracking paperwork folder
44:43 and so forth and so on um this may not completely match your onboarding process but it certainly
44:48 helps them keep their high volume practice a bit more organized um so they know you know whoever's left
44:54 in the appointments folder they haven't been able to get a con in contact with them and so they know to keep trying
45:00 um they know that by the time the thread moves into the appointment's folder that that patient's chart is going to be
45:06 completed and the patient is ready to book like I said this may not fit your practice but this is just an example of
45:12 something that you can use Spruce to keep you organized in other aspects while you're looking at this image I
45:18 would also like to talk about the other folders that you see here or the filters that you see above pending Insurance
45:24 here there have been filters created that correspond with this practice this phone tree so as calls come through and
45:31 selections are made on the phone tree the system Spruce itself will automatically route that call into a
45:37 filter that corresponds with the selection made so if you have pressed one for appointments two for billing if
45:43 they press one for appointments and leave a voicemail there it floods into an appointment's filter and you can
45:48 imagine that this kind of helps you triage your day um for example if an appoint if a
45:54 patient calls in about in this case maybe a billing and credentialing question and they leave a voicemail on
45:59 that line like I said it's automatically going to go into that corresponding folder it allows you to determine what
46:05 folder you think is most important to attend to first and then kind of prioritize what to take care of next
46:10 did you have something to say Jess yeah so and that's for voicemails that come in
46:16 um the other thing that I think we touched on earlier is like you know patients will call a bunch of people to try and you know call a bunch of uh
46:22 doctors listed in their you know insurance or whatever so another thing that you can set up in Spruce is if you
46:28 get in this came up as a q a if you have like a missed call or or even a voicemail left and you're super busy you
46:34 can have an auto text back that says thanks for texting our thanks for calling our practice sorry we missed you
46:40 how can we help you so picture if you're that patient then you're immediately like oh this is cool this is super easy
46:46 I can you know message them and you can also um you know cater the message of
46:51 what it says what time of day so then it doesn't feel disruptive if it's at night you just set that expectation with them
46:57 immediately yeah you can even go a step further guys and assign certain team members to each
47:03 of these filters so they'll get directly notified when something drops into that folder so they're not being notified
47:09 about things that aren't their responsibility and can focus on the things that are again like I said before
47:15 we're really just scratching the surface of spruce's abilities it certainly is the most customizable system we've
47:21 worked with and have done so many different things to help cater to a practices specific needs
47:27 um like Jeff said earlier we're not employed by Spruce we simply just firmly
47:32 believe in their platform and what it's capable of doing um you know to make our clients lives
47:37 simpler and just a tad bit more secure so if you'd like to talk about troubleshooting ways we can help you
47:42 streamline please just don't hesitate to reach out to us and I think I'm going to hand this back over to Jess so that we
47:48 can try to get some of these q and A's I'm sorry for taking up your time you guys are awesome so there was a lot
47:55 of questions that answered some of them you know just typed them out um you know if you want to learn more about Spruce and um we're going to link
48:03 to them and we have a help center as well um but so some of the questions Beverly these ones came in earlier when you were
48:09 um talking about starting a business so um so someone was talking about
48:15 um I'm starting a cash-based practice serving patients in my neighborhood and I'm planning to provide care out of my home I'm an internist I understand the
48:23 the turnaround boundaries like you mentioned don't use your home address and Beverly you're muted
48:28 um are there issues that I should think about in particular when starting kind of a homebound business besides you know
48:35 not registering your address well I mean there's a lot of things to
48:41 make sure you know that you're one the big one is making sure that you're able to stay compliant
48:46 um while you're at the home right you need your own office you need to be able to lock the door on your office people should not be able in the rest of your
48:53 home should not be able to hear your conversation with the patients um that's huge HIPAA violations there so
48:59 you have to make sure that you take all that into consideration the other thing is you need to have a shredder be able to shred your papers immediately because
49:06 yeah we're not we're not completely you know all HIPAA compliant even we're on Telehealth you're still going to have
49:12 papers you take little notes on or whatever you have to make sure that you're able to shred that and discard it um the biggest thing is interruptions
49:18 and stuff too and prioritizing your time um also I find it and Megan could probably back me up on this is when you
49:24 work from home it's difficult to shut things down and walk away and say okay my day is done when you leave a physical
49:30 office then you know your day is done now you go home when you're having your practice in your in your home it's
49:35 harder to do that she's like oh just one more email oh just one more thing and then before before you know it you've ran an hour hour and a half over your
49:41 business hours so make sure that you know when to stop everything so as long as you're staying HIPAA compliant
49:47 um you know and knowing when to walk away I think those are two big things that you should be thinking about they said they were cash pay I think the
49:53 question went away and I was trying to review the question there I think that's a good start because we have some more and a little time I just want to keep
50:06 have any suggestions if someone reaches out to you yes so we do have a lot like if you use
50:11 intake queue that's one of the ehrs that we recommend we have a lot of policies and procedures in there but a lot of
50:16 those can be taken as a PDF too and you can take that information customize it to you know pull it into Adobe or
50:22 whatever PDF filler um and use that content there to modify
50:28 for your practice if you're not using intake queue and where we can just send it over to you you know easily so right
50:34 so a couple of questions came in about ehrs and intake q and Spruce and Integrations and so since enough
50:41 questions came in I do want to address it so Spruce is currently only integrated with one EHR deeply and
50:47 that's called Elation health and we do demographic syncing as well as message sync Spruce has just publicly launched
50:54 an API and so you can reach out to your own EHR and say hey they have an API you guys should connect integrating with the
51:01 HRS is not a simple task it takes time and it's complicated and so now that we
51:06 have this API we are reaching out to all these different ehrs and saying we should connect your customers want it
51:12 the more you ask them for connecting to Spruce the more they're going to listen and want to do it so it's a
51:17 multi-faceted kind of solution so please reach out to your ehrs and ask them to
51:23 integrate with Spruce feel free to email me at sales sprucehealth.com if you have
51:28 additional questions there if you are not integrated with Spruce it's okay your EHR you can copy and paste anything
51:35 from Spruce you just we multi-select or one select each message whatever you want to your EHR and it reformats it to
51:42 be formatted in a more legible form also don't forget Spruce is a medical
51:48 documentation source and it's organized all by the patient's number or their
51:53 name so it's super easy to just go back and check stuff so it's unlike when you're using your cell phone or email
51:59 where you're like this shouldn't stay here it can stay in Spruce so I'm actually seeing it trying to less is
52:04 going into the EHR that happens in this verse because there's a lot of just niceties around texting and call logs la
52:10 la so that's um the one thing intake Q is an EHR the Beverly Megan often
52:15 recommend it we don't have an integration we are in discussions with them and I have no idea if it's going to
52:22 happen or when uh it's unfortunately too many it's too hard to say at this and I don't want to over promise because I
52:27 really want to make sure when we launch it you know it's real um but definitely keep your Spruce
52:33 emails uh view them because we will announce things there and also keep asking your EHR to integrate with us
52:39 because that's very helpful on our side um all right um Jessica so with these questions
52:45 there's I know there's been several answered I was looking through those and there's probably some stuff I could add into those can we get a list of these
52:51 questions that have been asked and then I'm happy to answer these and we can send that out with the webinar because I know that we're getting really close to
52:56 the end of our time and people are asking stuff you know could get a little more detail than just answering one
53:01 simple question I want everybody to have the opportunity to get all of their answers that they might want
53:06 um yeah and then I will respond to them when we can send them all out with the
53:12 webinar that would be great yeah so throw your questions in now and we'll make sure to address them as a
53:18 team and get it and send that out with the email of the recording of this as well and so care why don't we just hop
53:24 to the next slide to to kind of give all the contact information so people can also just start going to our websites
53:30 and learning more um so you obviously of spruce health.com someone also asked about what prices
53:36 were for Spruce and you know we are running the webinar so I will tell you uh prices start at 24 per teammate per
53:41 month you can find them on our website under plans we also have an upgraded plan that includes like the phone trees
53:47 that's 49 per teammate per month all inclusive pricing no additional costs
53:52 um and then our blog dot Spruce health.com is an excellent resource if you want to see a provider like you we
53:59 have them on there so we have every type of practice specialty so and then Silverleaf PMS like go put that into
54:05 your URL on your other tab or whatnot right now and check them out um and then Beverly or make it I'll let
54:11 you take away with other links on what they mean here or care yeah sure so um little secret if you go through us to
54:17 help you set up your Spruce little plug here for Silverleaf um you get a discount on your monthly Spruce too just
54:22 throw that out there um a little bit of a discount not Shameless yeah Shameless oh no no it's great yeah but
54:29 um and then if you want that uh that code to I can provide that guide that to you guys it's on my Facebook our
54:35 Facebook group if you're on there you can email me I'll send it to you um but you have to go through us to set up you know your phone trees all that
54:41 stuff but that's neither here nor there um the classes so there's a class that we that I did that talks walks you
54:47 through and talks you through a lot of things to think about and consider when you're starting
54:52 with your private practice it's like an hour at least like an hour and 20 minutes long um but that is a whole just
54:58 me talking to you for an hour um on starting up your practice the webinar is something that Brittany we
55:04 actually have another partner Brittany who is over the billing and credential and she's also um the third partner here but she
55:09 manages over that area the three of us her Megan and I did this webinar it was
55:14 live um you know talking to folks answering questions about all three of our areas and things that you need to
55:20 think about when you're starting up so it's very useful information as well the checklist um just kind of keeps you on track in
55:25 the very beginning stages like you know establishing business credit and you know all these little parts and pieces
55:31 to get an office set up and things like that so it's very detailed on that very first part of setting up your practice
55:37 and then the YouTube video was basically the consultation video that tells you all about our services if there are
55:42 little tips in there stuff too but you can watch that on your own time and just kind of get an idea of all the services that we offer then we also offer the
55:49 consultations so you can schedule most of our consultations are free except if you want a one-on-one with me to pick my
55:57 brain ask me a bunch of business questions those are chargeable just because it is a lot of business information that you will get but if you
56:03 want to talk to Megan about Spruce and get some some ideas from her that's free you can talk to her credentialing Department free marketing all that kind
56:08 of stuff so you can definitely schedule any credential or any kind of consultation you might want and then we do have an online Facebook group
56:15 um it's primarily for you know psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners but we have all disciplines in there honestly we have
56:21 lactation Consultants we have therapists and stuff like that in there as well so that there's a lot of information that
56:26 is helpful just starting up a practice altogether and then you can also email us at info silverleafpms.com and I'm
56:33 happy to answer any questions there um and Megan you know if he thinks Megan's related I can forward on to her
56:39 as well so that's amazing oh my gosh we covered a
56:44 lot of territory today you guys did great um and just so the folks on the call don't panic I am going to be sending you
56:51 all of these links in the follow-up email so you're not going to miss out on any of this
56:56 um we'll also get the answers to these questions over to you um they may come under separate cover
57:02 but you're going to get everything and more from this webinar with that we are almost at the top of the hour I want to
57:07 thank this entire panel for this incredibly informative discussion today I know that I learned a lot a lot of
57:14 good refresher stuff in there too and I'm guessing that by the number of folks that stuck with us the whole way people
57:20 were really engaged so thank you Beverly thank you thank you Jess uh great thank
57:26 you everyone thank you thank you appreciate it hope everybody joins us next month
57:31 take care guys
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