Therapist's office staff

Out of curiosity, how many of us work with a therapist who has office staff who take care of scheduling and billing, etc.? If so, how do you feel about it? Or does your T work completely alone and handle his/her own scheduling/billing, etc. on top of therapy?

It crossed my mind because, once again, my therapist's secretary came to the rescue today. There are actually several people who work in the office handling the business end (it is a large group practice with several pdocs and even more therapists). The lead office secretary has been there the entire time I've been seeing my T, and she is fantastic. I like being able to take care of scheduling and billing with her rather than T dealing with that stuff.

Anyway, one of the newer staff people handled my appointment scheduling earlier this week, and she deleted one of my appointments when she scheduled a second one (I was supposed to have them both scheduled). T's lead secretary noticed the change today and called me. She was able to get me rescheduled for tomorrow (and wasn't happy with the other secretary). The lead secretary knows me well enough that she knew I was on spring break, remembered I had talked to T a couple of times this week because she had taken messages from me to have him call, etc., and she quickly put two and two together and fixed the problem before it really became a problem. This isn't the first time she's looked out for me that way.

I've always had therapists and pdocs with an office staff and like the convenience of always being able to take care of scheduling right away rather than playing phone tag with my therapist. I remember a few years ago just trying to get hold of a therapist for testing and being totally frustrated that so many of them don't have office staff so I had no option than to just leave messages for the therapist and hope they got around to answering their messages. Drove me batty. As a teacher, I just can't answer my phone at any time of day, so I need to be able to contact someone right away and take care of business. It works better for me that way.

Just wondered what kind of staff, if any, most of you deal with and how it works in your case.

Hi lolagrace,

"Out of curiosity, how many of us work with a therapist who has office staff who take care of scheduling and billing, etc.? If so, how do you feel about it? Or does your T work completely alone and handle his/her own scheduling/billing, etc. on top of therapy?"

My T owns a Private Company.

She employs 6 other Psychologists at her practice.

She also has a full time receptionist / accounts handler / schedules appointments etc.

I don't mind.

She's pretty nice and friendly.

It really does sound like your T's lead secretary is awesome! I'm so glad they caught that mistake and fixed it for you.

Neither my T nor my pdoc uses an office staff. I've never had a problem with either of them getting back to me quickly, and I know that I'm really lucky for that. I once had a pdoc who had a full staff at his disposal, and I could never get a prescription called in, or a phone call back if I left a message. With my current pdoc, if I text her, she gets back to me right away-usually within the hour. She is amazing. My T always gets back to me by the end of the day.

I like dealing with just them for the reason you mentioned-the risk of an office screw up happening with a person who doesn't know me or really care about me is possible. If its working for you though, I think thats great! :-)

My T is in private practice and handles everything on her own. She's always been fairly easy to get in touch with, so it's never been a problem. I actually prefer that with my t. It was so hard for me to just reach out to my t at first, that I don't know how I would have handled having more than one person to deal with.

My pdoc has an office manager that handles scheduling, billing, and most of his contact with patients. She's phenomenal and I'm so glad she's there to handle things for my pdoc. He gets side tracked very easy. He's a great pdoc, but no "office" sense. His office manager always looks out for me and if anything weird pops up, she'll contact me right away.

Yeah, if my pdoc had to handle the office end, it would be a disaster. His desk is a nightmare. Fantastic doctor, but he'd be awful handling the business end on his own.

My T would probably do fine handling things on his own; he's a bit obsessively organized actually, but he likes not having to handle the business end. The only time he gets involved with insurance is when they actually need to talk to him about my status. Otherwise, office staff handles it all.

My t is in private practice and handles all of her own stuff. I've never really had a problem getting in touch with her, sometimes I leave a message and she has always called me back, other times I've called expecting voice mail she actually answers the phone. Usually when I'm frantically praying for voice mail, is when she answers.

I've had several therapists over the years--all in private practice. They all handled their own scheduling and it was never a hassle. Most had standing appts with me, so that made it easy.

I only saw one with an office person, who was a disaster and ended up taking up more of my time and the therapist's time with her mistakes and then fixing the mistakes by making more.

The one I see now hires a service to do her billing, but I pay cash so don't deal with anyone but her. I wouldn't have it any other way. If there's a glitch, she is always checking her email and phone, so not a problem with communication.

That's the other reason a secretary works better for me. I can't do standing appointments; my schedule it too crazy for that. So being able to call when I'm sitting in front of my calendar on my computer to schedule with the secretary just works better in my case.

I've never had scheduling mess ups except just recently with the new additional secretary. Fortunately, the problem has always been caught and taken care of before it actually became a problem.

I've only had therapist that had no staff or no frontline staff. My former therapist even does her taxes

My T owns her own practice and doesn't employ office staff. She does, however, hire outside billing. My scheduling is easy, because it's the same days, same times, every week.

My P's wife handles his front office and booking; last time I was there she told me that my P is bipolar. I was too surprised to press for details.

My t has 2 partners and they have 2 receptionists/gatekeepers who answer the phone, make appointments, and do the billing. The receptionists are a little frustrating because it's impossible to get in touch with T without going through them and they are very effective gatekeepers and quite inflexible.

Both are private sole practitioners with no staff as were the other two I saw at other times in my life. I would not use one who had office staff. And here it is not usual for the ones in private sole pratice to use staff. I have never had dificulty scheduling appointments or getting them to respond.. One uses an outside biookkeeper and the other does not. It is not a huge deal to me because I pay in cash each week and have not had difficulty with them knwing I paid. I much prefer dealing directly with them over the payment.

He has no office staff. Since I have standing appointments every week, there are no weekly scheduling issues, and on those few occasions I've had to reschedule I've done it with T directly - usually by text message. ExT worked in a larger practice with secretaries who sent me the bill every month, but T did all scheduling herself (she did not allow standing appointments) and none of the other staff knew who I was.

I prefer it when there's no other people involved. I would find it very uncomfortable to have to speak to a receptionist/secretary/gatekeeper every time I got there, which is something I've never had to do. I also didn't like getting a monthly bill, quite apart from the fact that it was expensive, because of the lack of privacy.

My therapist works at a satellite office, there isn't a receptionist or any billing people there. She does her own scheduling, and normally is the only person in the office, on some occasions there will be another therapist using the other room, but normally there is just her.

My T and few other T's practice in the same office but there is no office staff. I guess each T (including mine) does all their own stuff. I prefer it this way. I would feel VERY uncomfortable if there was a receptionist who knows my personal stuff. Filling out forms or even having to tell the receptionist why I want to talk to T if I needed to get hold of T...just makes me uncomfortable.

My T does not accept insurance so I'm sure that makes his life much easier. In the few months I've been seeing him, I haven't had any issues. I pay cash every other session. Before I leave a session, I schedule the next session. So far T has not cancelled on me. I have T's e-mail and cell phone if I need to get a hold of him. T told me during the first session that he checks his cell phone for missed calls/messages in between each session and if there is a true emergency, he returns it asap. But otherwise, T said he returns calls/e-mails from clients at the end of each day before he leaves office.

I laughed at the gatekeeper reference. My pdoc has gatekeepers--his answering service after hours. I totally get their job. They handle calls for about 8 pdocs and I am sure patients call after hours for mundane reasons like med refills, etc. that should be handled during office hours, so their job is to not put those kinds of calls through, but only let the actual emergency calls through. Probably a horrid job when I actually think about it.

Last time I was in the hospital, when my pdoc was getting ready to discharge me he told me to call him if I had any problems whatsoever. I half jokingly said, "I will if I can get past your gatekeepers at the answering service." He said to just tell them it is an emergency and they will get the call to him. I told him that it isn't always an emergency though, not really. He said the kindest thing: "Chris, in all these years, you have never called me when it wasn't an emergency. You have never taken advantage of the system. I consider any call from you important at any time of day or night. Tell them it's an emergency; call me." So that is what I do. In fact, he's not always on call (the pdoc's take turns answering emergency calls), but apparently they have a system worked out amongst themselves about certain patients, because on more than one occasion when I've gotten a different pdoc on the line, a few minutes later I've gotten a call directly from my pdoc. He takes care of me.

my therapist is private and does it all herself. the place she works at always has a receptionist though.

T works in an office that holds quite a few other T's. I'm not sure how the offices and stuff work, as T was originally "borrowing" one and now has her own. There is, however, a centrally used office staff. The various T's and office staff interact much like a close knit family.

I like the office staff a lot, and didn't have a problem with telling T when I didn't like one of the ones (who is now gone). We only interact in the beginning and at the end to pay, but they know me by name and they know my personality - that I like my receipts emailed, schedule my own appt's online, etc.

In the beginning there was a few issues with them not documenting my payments but they all knew me well enough to take my word that my payments were made (this happened a few times) and just voiding whatever the bill said I owed.

Also, when I missed an appt. I didn't realize I scheduled, the head staff lady was so genuinely apologetic that I missed it and she would have to charge me that she almost tried to force T to do a phone session with me. Lol, T was up for it, but I was not so I declined multiple times but thought her effort was sweet.

There is a new office staff now, who I didn't like because I don't like new people and I have to tell her who I am every week and who I am there to see (the rest of the staff, I can nod and wave and go sit down without talking). However, she is getting better about recognizing faces now and I am starting to like her as well.

That's nice that the lead secretary is so helpful to you. My therapist doesn't have any staff, though recently he's moved his practice into an apartment office where more therapists work, and one of them who is also the landlady does have a secretary. I absolutely hate that she's there, but I'm glad that nobody handles anything related to my session appointments, money, messages, or anything like that. If my therapist hired someone else for that I think I wouldn't see him anymore. He has enough clients as far as I know but he always deals with the scheduling and money, calls me back if I call him, etc. It's not rocket science and most therapists in my country work without staff.

T has a great admin person. Pdoc has one awesome one and one totally suckass one.

My T works at a group practise. It's not that big, but they do have offices in several cities in the country. The billing and making of appointments is taken care by their office staff. I'm ok with that. I don't have contact with them that often. My sessions are at the same time every week.
It has been like that with all the previous therapist. I've never been at a privite practise or something.
But my current T is going to change workplaces and she told me that her new workplace will be smaller. They don't have a secetary, so she will have to take care of stuff like that herself.

My therapist doesn't have staff and I wouldn't use one who did for privacy reasons.

Scheduling has never been a problem.

My t doesn't have staff and deals with everything himself. I prefer that.

My T is a one man show but uses tools to help him with billing and scheduling. He uses something called yellowscheduling.com. I get a reminder email one to two days prior where I either click on "Yes, I am coming or No, please reschedule" then 2 hrs prior to the appointment I get a text reminding me of the time of the appointment.

I would not like to have to go through staff first. It would feel like going through a body guard or something.