Hi! I’m Amy Neal

Hi, I’m Amy Neal, and welcome to Private Practice Cents. I wanted to share a little bit about who I am, so you have an idea of who’s behind the scenes when you’re looking at trainings, workshops, or one-on-one consultations with Private Practice Cents. I’m a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in North Carolina.

So, a little bit about my journey as a therapist and a business owner. I actually grew up thinking I didn’t like math, and I tried to avoid the business side of things in both college and grad school. I chose a grad school that didn’t require the GRE because I was terrified of taking it. I got my lowest grade in grad school in my research statistics class, the one class that had a little more math.

As I was going through grad school, I was not interested in starting my own private practice. I remember tuning out one of my internship professors as he explained how to fill out an insurance claim and what needed to go where. I didn’t think I would end up billing insurance. I thought, “Well, surely I’ll work for somebody else, and they can handle that.”

I graduated in 2013, and in 2014 I got my first job in community mental health as an Intensive In-Home team lead. It was a rough job because of some of the crisis work we had to do, but I didn’t have to deal with any of the billing side of things. At that point, that was nice, and I still thought I didn’t want to work for myself or have a private practice.

Fast forward a few years: the schedule started wearing on me, and I realized my income potential was limited, so I started looking at other options. Once we started growing our family, I transitioned to a group practice offering outpatient, office-based therapy for children and adults. I worked with anyone from age three all the way up to when they became Medicare eligible. I never knew which client was going to walk through the door or what their presenting issues would be.

After a few years of working and balancing parenting, I realized I needed more income and wanted more flexibility in my life. When the pandemic hit in 2020, that really solidified it. I started exploring telehealth platforms such as Teladoc, Amwell, and MD Live. I onboarded with a few of them and tried them out, but I was frustrated. When I looked at the numbers, I realized I was still getting such a small portion of what insurance reimburses. And if I was doing telehealth anyway, what would really be the difference if I just worked for myself?

So at the end of 2020, I finally decided I needed to open my own practice. I opened my own virtual practice and credentialed with insurance companies over the next few months. By about April 2021, I realized I was full enough that I would need to transition out of the group practice. In July 2021, I went fully out on my own.

I see about 22 clients a week on average. I’m still all virtual, and I work with a variety of insurance companies. I credentialed myself with a few, then dropped a couple as I saw what worked and what didn’t. At first, I hired a biller because I thought billing was going to be really complicated. But I realized an EHR makes it so simple that I took it over myself.

Private practice has been the best decision I’ve made for myself and for my family. It’s given me more income and more flexibility. I get to work from home, which was really important to me, and I have more flexibility to do activities with my child. I’ve also loved having more autonomy over my caseload, so I can offer my services to the age groups my skills are best suited for, and focus on areas I’m truly passionate about.

I started Private Practice Cents because I want to help other therapists who feel stuck like I did, in a position that didn’t work for me financially, schedule-wise, or clinically. I know the idea of starting a private practice is terrifying, and I want to help make it easier.

Private practice and the business side of things is one of my ADHD special interests, but I know it’s not everybody’s. I enjoy learning all the ins and outs of business structures, how EHRs work, and insurance credentialing, but not everybody is like that. My goal is to synthesize the information and give you what will work for your business, so you don’t have to sort through all of it yourself. I can narrow it down to what applies to your situation.

My goal is to help therapists who feel overwhelmed and confused by it all make business, financial, practical, and clinical sense out of starting and running their private practices.

Join my newsletter for updates about upcoming trainings and new resources. I also have a free Facebook group where we talk about private practice and troubleshoot questions and issues as they come up. Thanks so much for following!