Welcome to the world of psychotherapy private practice, where you have a million and one decisions to make daily. Don’t worry too much. You can do this. While you are busy learning how to track expenses, get clients in the door, help them to the best of your ability, and keep your paperwork straight, you may be smart to automate and simplify as many processes as possible. One great place to do this is by using templates to guide your notes using an EMR system.
The Benefit of EMR for taking notes
Consider how you have been taking notes. Has this been with pen and paper? A laptop computer? Perhaps you’ve even made your own template that you can easily pull up after each session on a Word file document. and this can be a great way to experiment with what works best for you. Creating this type of template helps you to know and be consistent with what you need in your own psychotherapy progress notes template. These methods certainly get the job done, but have you ever used an EMR for taking notes? Among their business perks, such as insurance billing, payment processing, calendar scheduling, referrals, and E-screening, they can also be used to take your note-taking to the next level.
How to Make the Process Quicker
By using an EMR, the notes template you set as your default is ready to go with the click of a couple of buttons. Built-in templates could include the SOAP method, labs, vitals, rating scales and more. Best of all, there is what is called the clone feature, which automatically copies and pastes notes from the previous session. From here, you can make small adjustments as needed.
Psychotherapy Progress Notes
By doing your note taking in an EMR like Luminello, your notes are auto-saved every two minutes, and all documents are HIPAA compliant. Because of this, you can quickly mail notes or charts to a treatment team member. On top of this, you can bill your client right from a note. It also allows you to book a follow-up appointment or send an e-prescription from the same system.
Customizing Psychotherapy Progress Notes
If you decide to upgrade from the free version of Luminello, you unlock the ability to create custom templates to be exactly as you would like or need them to be. With the form builder tool, you can add custom fields, checkboxes, dropdowns, multiple choice, free text and more. You can also input your own common answer choices within the dropdowns which let you click the right answers instead of typing. Another great perk is having access to the ability to clone ALL notes for every client on your schedule for the day with just one click.
If you are curious about trying an EMR system, but are concerned about the price, you can try the basic version of Luminello for free as long as you like. Luminello is great for psychotherapists because it is designed by and for mental health professionals and doesn’t have all of the traditional general practice medical doctor services that you don’t need for your practice.
