If you run a private mental health practice, you’re not just a health care professional. You’re a businessperson. In addition to scheduling sessions and seeing clients, you’re in charge of reception, marketing, bookkeeping, administration, technology, and even vacuuming the carpets. Operating as efficiently as possible means you can help as many people as possible while keeping billables high.

Take a second and imagine a world where your email inbox only contained qualified leads. Where you didn’t have to squeeze important phone calls in between sessions or leave them until the end of the day when you’re tired and wanting to go home. Where you don’t have to stress about turning people away, even though you know they desperately need help, because you have no capacity.

The good news is that a solution is coming. It’s called Ravel Mental Health, and it’s an innovative platform designed to revolutionize the online booking process for therapists by matching mental health patients and providers. Stick with us, because in this blog, we’ll explain how it works.

Does this resonate with you? Embrace the future with Ravel Mental Health.

Mental Health Services in America Need to Change

My name is Nancy Cowden, and I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’ve been working in San Diego, California, for more than 20 years and have run a private practice for the last nine. Lately, things have been insanely busy. I get a lot of referrals from my various online profiles, but when I ask my clients about it, they tell me it’s was difficult trying to find me. Whenever they search therapy profiles online, there’s no way to tell if they’re current and the provider is still working.

Is your phone ringing off the hook with people looking for therapy? Is your inbox overflowing with messages? Are you turning them away because there aren’t enough hours in the day to help?

You’re not alone. This is an issue that mental health professionals are facing all over America. Demand is higher than ever before, which means we need to work smarter rather than harder when it comes to finding better way to serve the people who need our services most.

We all know that asking for help is a big step. It’s an exercise in vulnerability, especially when you consider that most people are at or near a crisis point at this time. However, finding a therapist can be overwhelming and extraordinarily difficult. Maybe that provider doesn’t have availability, maybe they don’t take the right insurance, or maybe they don’t specialize in the services that person needs.

All of these issues could go away with a comprehensive directory of mental health services where people can quickly find suitable providers and schedule appointments. This is a straightforward and practical way to improve the process and increase access to mental health care right now.

That’s why I created Ravel Mental Health. It’s a website specifically designed to streamline this process in a therapeutic context, based on what works in my own practice:

• Clients can search for therapists by the date and type of appointment, which means no longer searching for and reaching out to individual providers just to be knocked back.
• It’s easy to select the type of provider you want to see, with options to choose psychiatrists, social workers, relationship therapists, family therapists, art therapists, and more.
• It’s easy to tailor your search to your exact needs using a range of very inclusive options, such as language, religion, treatment approaches, and modalities, to find the right fit.
• Providers can add videos to their profiles to make it easy for patients to get a feel for who they are and what they’re like instead of just relying on text-based biographies.
• Ravel Mental Health will automatically send reminder emails to both the provider and the patient once an appointment has been accepted, to make scheduling a breeze.

These are simple changes, but they make a big difference to the way we do business. Ravel Mental Health will be launching in California and rolling out across the country, meaning therapists all over America can prioritize clients right from the start and show them great care from the moment they learn your name instead of waiting for them to walk through the door to your office.

You can help solve America’s mental health crisis. Find out how.

A Client-Centered Approach to Mental Health Services

All mental health professionals share one thing: a commitment to putting our clients first. We are in a very privileged position and get to hear the intimate details of people’s stories while we help them take meaningful steps towards achieving their goals. We’re all bound by strict ethical codes, of course, but many of us go above and beyond in our daily work to help people as much as possible.

To put our business hats back on for a second, we all know that this is good for our bottom lines. The more people we help, the more referrals we’ll get. This is a win-win situation. It makes sense to give people the best possible experience right from the start, when they hear your name for the first time, by ensuring the delivery of our services is seamless at every stage. Your online booking system plays a key part in this, because it’s the first interaction they’ll have in what’s hopefully a long and successful relationship. But it’s about more than that. Great experiences are also great marketing.

At the end of the day, nothing is better than word-of-mouth. Sure, Google Ads and Facebook Ads are great. Yes, it’s important to have a website that looks professional and modern. And okay, the classic neighborhood flyer-drop never really goes out of style. However, nothing beats a conversation between two friends if one of them has had a great experience in your care. This is because one friend can tell the other exactly who you are, what you can do, and how you can help the other.

That’s what we’re trying to replicate with Ravel Mental Health. You won’t just be another faceless mental health professional on the internet. We want to give clients enough information that they feel they know and trust you before setting foot in your office — as if you were referred by a friend.

As we said at the start, Ravel Mental Health is designed to send you qualified leads, matching you with the kinds of people you specialize in helping. This allows you to jump straight in to doing what you do best, increasing your chances of getting great outcomes for your clients. And if they happen to make great referrals along the way, well, that’s obviously great too.

Want to get better at marketing your practice? Read more.

Delivering Mental Health Services for the Future

The future of mental health services is here. If there’s one thing we all learnt from the outbreak of COVID-19, it’s that our services need to be fast and flexible. Technology makes it so much easier to use our time as efficiently as possible and to meet people where they are, whether that’s on the couch in our office or on a screen in their home, to ensure their needs are being met.

That’s where Ravel Mental Health comes in. If you want to maximize the amount of time you’re in session and minimize the time you spend on administrative tasks like calling and emailing people back, this is the perfect solution. It’s time to revolutionize the way you do business.

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