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SimplePractice Group Practice Scheduling
For group practices on SimplePractice, Katie matches each caller to a clinician by your rules and books the session directly into SimplePractice.
Many calendars behind one phone number
A group practice is a matching business. Each clinician has a specialty, a set of insurance panels, a license type, a schedule and a caseload that is either open or full. Callers do not know any of that. They know they need help with their teenager or their marriage, they have a particular insurance card, and they can only come on Wednesday evenings.
The person answering the phone has to hold the whole grid in their head. When that person is out, or simply on another line, matches get made badly or not at all.
Shared phone coverage makes this harder. When three people take turns on the front desk, each asks slightly different questions, and the coordinator ends up calling clients back to fill the gaps.
The inputs a good match needs
Katie collects the inputs your team uses to decide, every time, in the same order:
- The concern, in the caller's words, and the client's age group
- Payer and plan, or self-pay, so staff can check which clinicians are in network
- In-person or telehealth, and which location
- Every time window the client can attend
- Preferences about clinician gender, language, faith or a specific name
Insurance panels and the costly mismatch
Booking a client with a clinician who is not credentialed with their plan creates trouble for everyone: a surprise bill, an unhappy client, and a reschedule with someone new. Because Katie captures payer details on the first call and books only with clinicians your panel list says take that plan, the mismatch is caught before the first session rather than after it.
If you give Katie the list of plans your practice accepts, she can tell callers which ones you take. Verifying the client's actual benefits with the payer stays with staff.
Open caseloads, full caseloads, and associates
Your practice decides which clinicians are accepting new clients and which are full, and Katie follows that list. Many groups also route some new clients to pre-licensed associates working under supervision, often at a lower fee. That is a business and clinical decision for you to write as a rule; Katie describes those options to callers the same way every time and books by that rule, leaving any case it does not settle to your coordinator.
Where the booking happens
MedReception AI is live with practices on SimplePractice, and Katie books the session there during the call, with the clinician and visit type your rules point to. The structured summary arrives with every matching detail attached, so your coordinator can see why each match was made and adjust it like any other appointment. A demo is the best place to walk through how your particular group would set this up.
Frequently asked questions
- What if a caller asks for a clinician whose caseload is full?
- Katie tells them what you have approved, for example that the clinician is not taking new clients right now, and offers the alternative you prefer: another clinician, your waitlist, or a referral list you supply.
- Can different service lines have different intake questions?
- Yes. You set the rules, so couples, child and psychiatry calls can each carry the extra questions your clinicians want asked.
- Does this work for groups with several locations?
- Yes. Location is one of the matching inputs, and your rules can steer callers to the office or telehealth team that fits them.
- Will Katie spread new clients evenly across clinicians?
- She follows the distribution rule you write, for example offering new adult anxiety referrals to clinicians with open caseloads first, and books in SimplePractice accordingly. Fairness is easier to manage when the rule is written down rather than living in one person's head.
Ready to implement this for your SimplePractice practice?
Book a demo and we'll run your own calls through Katie: new client inquiries, sessions booked straight into SimplePractice, billing questions and the crisis escalation rules your clinicians set. You'll see the booking and the summary your staff receive after each call.