- Electronic Health Record – Simple Practice
- Payroll Software – Gusto
- Phone System – Grasshopper & Telzio
- Email – Google Workspace
- Group Chat – Quip
- SOP Organization – Waybook.com
Today, I wanted to record a short episode and talk to you about one of my favorite topics, which is actually software. I am a huge nerd and I love testing and using software to run my business, both of my businesses. And it’s actually surprising how much software is, I would say maybe required to run a modern practice, but it’s one of the things that I actually really enjoy. So I want to tell you about, let’s see, five or six of my favorite platforms that I use to operate my practice on a day-to-day basis.
I do have a document in my notes that’s called The Stack, and it’s literally just a list of all the software solutions that I use for various different things, from email, marketing to telephones to task management, business dashboard, et cetera. And so I kind of just track what tools I’m using over time. And yeah, there’s eleven or twelve different platforms that I use to perform different functions.
I wanna tell you about six of them. So the first one is Electronic Health Record. Almost everybody who has a modern practice uses one of these, and there’s quite a few to choose from.
It’s no secret at this point that my favorite is Simple Practice. I think I’ve been a Simple Practice customer for…gosh, at least about seven years, and I’ve seen that platform develop over time. Just really love the team and love what they’ve done and what they continue to do.
No EHR is perfect. But for me and for my group practice, Simple Practice really does make things easy. Everything from scheduling to billing and invoicing, telehealth – all the things that we need to run the group practice. So that is my number one choice, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. So Simple Practice for EHR.
And then payroll software. This company is not yet a sponsor of the podcast, but fingers crossed, they will be soon! Gusto – I’m sure you’ve heard this name; maybe you even use this platform. And I don’t have anything to compare it to, to be honest, because it’s the only platform that I’ve ever used. But it’s truly a delight to use and their customer service in my experience has been fantastic.
I call them too often, probably, but I do have the concierge plan and so I have a dedicated support team and I get to talk to the same couple of people all the time and they just help me solve so many issues related to payroll and employment.
And I use the HR Pros to answer questions about human resources and after record an episode about this in a couple of months. But I’m currently going through a somewhat painful payroll tax audit, and as a part of that process, I’ve had to submit and upload probably about 200 documents from Gusto and from other platforms that we use to track time for the therapist and to run payroll.
Gusto has been fantastic. From their customer support to the reporting features inside the platform, I’ve been able to export and grab all the data that I need to satisfy the auditor. So, Gusto, if you’re listening to this, you need to come sponsor the podcast because I’m a fan!
And the next one is phones. Forever and ever – actually, years and years ago, I had Google Voice and like that very much. But when I started the group practice, I switched over to Grasshopper, which is not commonly used among group practice owners because it’s not billed as being HIPAA-compliant, but I’ve used it for many years and really like it a lot. And I actually did get the company to sign a BAA. So I have that on file.
If I was going to switch from Grasshopper, I probably go to a company you might not have heard of called Telzio, which we have demoed. And we’ve helped several of the therapists that we support through Productive Therapist get set up with Telzio. It’s a nice platform, it does all the things you’d want it to do for a good price, and it’s HIPAA-compliant for a pretty low cost. So that’s phone system.
Email – we’re using Google Workspace, and that’s been a good experience forever and ever. Not too much to say about that; it’s basically a business email with my group practice domain name, and they also have a really great support. That’s why I enjoy using that.
And then for the group chat option, we use a program called Quip, which is actually owned by Salesforce – a huge, huge company. And this is actually just something I use because I got a lifetime deal on it so many years ago. And it’s kind of like if you imagine Google and something like Slack, which is like a chat platform, those two things kind of match together – that’s sort of what Quip is.
And we use that, I’m in that platform every single day talking to my therapists and doing various things. It’s not HIPAA-compliant, so we don’t chat about client-specific information in there. And with this one, if I was going to make a change – which I might at some point I would switch over to Google Chat inside of my Google Workspace account – then everything that is written in those chats is then more secure and more private; then we could talk about clients as needed in the chat there.
But for now I’m still loving Quip. It’s a good tool.
And then a more recent one that I’m using for onboarding and documenting standard operating procedures is WayBook– WayBook.com – similar to something like Trainual or some other platforms that are really built to be like a business playbook.
And we’re still building this out and pulling all of our standard operating procedures and various policy documents together, putting them in one place, making them organized, and then being able to give the therapists and various people in the business access to certain things so that they can review and sign off on certain policies.
This is also a lifetime deal that I got through a Sumo com – you might have heard me talk about that before. Unfortunately, this deal is no longer active, but it was a good one: pay one fee and then use it for life.
So those are six of my favorite software platforms that I used to run my group practice. And like I said, there’s several more that I won’t mention on this podcast, but I will put a link in the show notes to a resource which I believe is called The Best Software Tools or something like that, which is a list of a ton of different things for different categories.
And also it highlights the ones that we use and like and then other options as well.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode! I think maybe in my third business, in my next career, I should start a software service company or something because I don’t know, it’s just something that I enjoy!
Probably a little too much, but quick productivity note for you here – and I do try to follow this one – switching tools or switching procedures is often something that will limit or hinder your productivity, so it’s not a good idea to switch from one thing to the next too often.
If you can imagine if you were to switch EHRs every six months, it would take so much time and effort and you would be constantly learning and configuring and tweaking a new EHR. So if the tools that you’re using now are working and there’s no major problems or bottlenecks, I would say stick with it until it’s really worth the time and effort to switch to a new tool. That’s just a productivity tip for you there.
So thanks for listening to the Productive Therapist Podcast, and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye!
Hey, are you still there? Oh, good, good. It’s me – Uriah. I just wanted to ask you a quick question: have you heard of the Productive Therapist Business Directory? Oh my gosh, you’re going to love this!
This is literally the only business directory built just for therapists, and it’s The Go-To Place to find the support and services you need to grow your private practice. This is where you’re going to go to find your next SEO provider, maybe your Google AdWords specialists, your next business coach, maybe a virtual assistant, and so many other things.
So go check it out at Directory.ProductiveTherapist.com
Have a good one!