This short article will point you in the direction of three free tools to automate your private practice!  You'll be able to register a free business line, automate your patient scheduling, and take credit card payments on your smart phone!

You shouldn’t have to manager every damn second of your private practice. These three tools make it easy and automatic to take and route inbound phone calls into your business, schedule appointments automatically, and charge for copayments, coinsurance, and deductibles without any awkward check-writing. Let’s get started..

Google Voice

Google Voice is a free service that enables you to register a free business or personal phone number that you can forward to any verified phone, on a customized schedule. You can also receive texts and voicemails and screen phone calls quickly and easily.

So if you wanted to take all your business calls Monday – Friday at your office, from 8am to 4pm, you can forward all your calls to your office line. Want to block calls on the weekend? You can (but probably shouldn’t if you are struggling to grow your private practice!!!).

Lot’s of options, easy to use, and free. Here’s a video walk through on how to get started:

Doodle

Doodle is a platform to quickly find a time to schedule your first appointment with a new patient. You can send them a Doodle link for a specific day or set of days, connect your calendar to make sure they can’t overlap appointments, and let them pick the best time for them.

Scheduling with Doodle reduces back and forth dramatically — they simply see when you are free or not and can make a decision that’s best for them. Fear not, they cannot see who is on your calendar, just that you’re not free at that time.

Doodle integrates with Google Calendar or iCal (Apple Calendar Application) seamlessly so anytime they schedule an appointment, your calendar is automatically updated — and you’ll be notified as well!

Check out this simple to use tutorial on scheduling with Doodle: http://support.doodle.com/customer/portal/articles/761313-what-is-doodle-and-how-does-it-work-an-introduction

Square

Find handling copayments, coinsurance, and deductibles a little stressful? Trust us, we understand — this is a huge “heartache” amount therapists as it can be uncomfortable to exchange money before or after an emotional (or not) session.

Welcome to Square — a payment processing system built for small businesses just like yours!

Square enables you to accept credit card payments on your smart phone quickly and easily. You can request a “Square Reader” to actually swipe their card or you can punch in their credit card information right there on the application.

Square let’s you charge patients using their app quickly and easily — you can add their email address to send them a receipt as well.

Easy to setup and easy to use, Square helps you handle the awkwardness of collecting payment from your patients.