Jonathan S.
03:27 - 18:02
Welcome. Welcome.
How's everyone doing? It's looking like my camera's a little off here. Happy Friday.
Thank you for for spending time, with SimplePractice in the community, those that that have joined us, for those benefit. I'm Jonathan S.
, humbly trying to figure out my camera here and just make sure you've got a full view, which I still look like I'm out of the screen. So I apologize on that.
One second here. Am I good? Awesome.
Awesome. Well, let's let's get started.
Somebody was kind enough to let me know that the camera is just fine, for a mugshot. But, anyways, no.
Thank you for for joining. It's really great to spend time.
I can't believe that this is my thanks for the laughs. I love it.
I need it. It's my ninth livestream of the year.
Thanks to those that continue to return. Thank you to all of those that submit questions in advance or just even, two letter prompts like AI.
It definitely, month to month, continues to give me a really good sense of, you know, where our customers are at, what's top of mind for you in terms of your practice, in terms of, the the platform that we're endeavoring to provide, and I'm excited to, avail myself today for for questions. As you'll see, I also have, just like the last livestream, have some special guests joining me, as well from the SimplePractice team.
But let's let's get into it. So I mentioned themes that were coming out over, you know, presubmitted questions this month, but then previous months as well.
And couple things continue to stand out. One top of mind for all of you is the changes that we've been rolling out with insurance, and billing, both in terms of the features and functionality, changes in workflow, as well as pricing.
The other top of mind, item continues to be everything AI. And oftentimes, it's hard for me to glean, you know, what the statement AI means.
Some are very specific in terms of privacy and security. Others are, less specific.
But there is, a ton going on in that realm, and I'd I wanna make sure that that we touch on that today. And then the other piece is, you know, often characterized as big tech platforms.
And my my sense is is that, you know, each of you or not each of you, but that is that is top of mind as it relates to, you know, fundamental why we're all here, which is supporting independent private practice clinicians and how you get referrals, how you work with insurance, etcetera. So we will we will touch on that, as as well today.
So before I get started, I guess, first from insurance on, on my from from my perspective, and then, you know, please add questions to the to the q and a. Make sure to upvote, those from your from your peers and others with us today.
That'll help me, that will help me prioritize, what to get to. But first on first on insurance, which is, one, each of you, probably saw the announcement that we've, been making changes to our, billing and insurance workflow.
As part of that, we now have two two offers, which is effectively essentials for those of you that are comfortable, working with insurance directly and submitting claims, on your own. And then I'm also really excited about, a higher tier package that we've got, which is insurance navigator that has, you know, everything is part of essentials.
But what's really unique is some, additional features around auto, verification of benefits and member obligation to, an AI powered claim assistant. And then in an AI world, my favorite piece is direct access to individualized, insurance specialists.
Anytime you've got a question or a claim question on a claim, an enrollment, etcetera. And I think the reason that we're continuing to invest so heavily insurance is that, you know, one, as as you're all experiencing more and more clients, the expectation is to be able to use insurance to pay for mental health care.
The cost of health care is, continuing to increase, dramatically, and it's it's a consumer expectation, for all of us that, you know, if we're paying for, you know, either government sponsored or commercial insurance, that we have an ability to utilize those benefits. I mean, just as as an anecdote, I think our initial quotes just for our commercial insurance at SimplePractice from the carriers was, like, a 20 or 30% increase year over year.
And, obviously, employers are paying for that, but then also individuals themselves. And then on the flip side, you know, there's two fundamental things is, you know, someone that's providing care for individuals, which is, it's still way too difficult for individual providers to get stood up, spend time with insurance and figuring out, how to submit claims, if those claims are gonna be reimbursed.
And we have an opportunity to, continue to do a lot more, in in this regard. The second piece is I mentioned, you know, the anecdote of, you know, within SimplePractice of our carriers coming back to increases, in in our own insurance coverage for for teammates at SimplePractice.
And, I just wanna let you know that we we also fully appreciate that your rates are not increasing at that same amount as well. And so it's it's almost a squeeze where the clinicians that or the clients, there's a client expectation of you're able to use insurance.
There is a huge time cost associated with being able to work with insurance, especially as a solo or small group, practice. And then the third piece is that rate design, rate benefits is not keeping up with, is keeping up with that.
And so that is something that, you know, we're gonna continue to look to press on in terms of across all three of those areas, which is making it really easy for you to, work with insurance, across each of those workflows. But then also, you know, in many ways, complete the loop in terms of, you know, where can we make it easier for you to, achieve higher rates, as part of your practice as well.
So with that, enough of a opening monologue here. And let's let's get to the the q and a, and I'll start with the most, upvoted questions.
Alright. Jordan, great great to be with you today.
Thank you for for the question. Can you please address the pricing increases while also taking away key features for billing? I think this is, this is a a a great question.
Couple things is, one, we're we're really not taking away any of the the key features. The whole if if you're referring to that, the entire, piece here might be the key features might be we are now definitely pushing people to a new billing experience in terms of the billing hub or simple invoicing, which, I appreciate is is absolutely a change to a workflow that you have, become accustomed to.
And that, it's in and of itself is, absolutely a change. But, really, we the whole point of essentials was really to bolster and make it easier to not only submit claims, but, you know, still be able to, you know, do what you need to do in terms of if you wanna check benefits in advance, to new features like setting up claim rules, to having presubmission checks, and, and then also notifications of claim tracking, and and where that's how that claim is progressing, through the through the system.
So appreciate that in many ways that it's a it's a change in workflow, but I hope that what you're seeing is no, you know, call it takeaway in terms of in terms of features, in and of itself. Alright.
Let me go to the next question from Katrina here. Hey, Katrina.
Thank you for the the question. If we are using the insurance verification and the information comes back incorrect or that there is no information and we're still charged for it, What is being done to ensure the information that is received by the insurance verification is accurate? What are the reasons that these are coming back with no information, and what is the plan to correct this? A couple pieces here from from my perspective was is look.
There is a, let's see here. There's a few few parties involved, clearing houses, the payer, and then certainly the client that you're providing care for, and having confidence in one's ability to check, does somebody have insurance, plus an ability to understand where that client is at against their deductible, what their coverage is, etcetera, is is complex and, unfortunately, way too difficult to get at a bunch of that information.
So in the essentials features, where, as you're pointing out, if you're in the essential assurance, it is 15¢, to for each manual verification of benefit. In the navigator plan, the insurance navigator offering, those are all included in that price and are auto auto completed, with with each, with each, new client in advance of that appointment so that you can be confident in in what you're charging.
In terms of what happens when, it returns, you know, call it a null feature or, or if the benefit information is incorrect, we acknowledge that but are are tracking it on on our end because with, and tracking the accuracy in the background. And so right now, just just for everyone's benefit, we are approximately, you know, 80 to 85 accuracy on that verification of benefit and pretty darn close on the, on the member obligation.
Within the top 100 payers, 100 top 100 is based on the the amount of volume that we're, processing on SimplePractice. We continue to see very high levels of accuracy.
This is a situation where you'll see over time, and this is where a lot of our investment is going, is how do we continue to naturally improve that accuracy based on historical claims that have been submitted through SimplePractice to how do we get more up to date information either directly from payers, or clearing houses. But I think what I'm encouraged by is that, you know, overall, we're seeing, you know, for those billing on SimplePractice, over a 90 plus percent, pretty close to 94%, you know, clean claim submission rate in terms of, in terms of, you know, not needing to, you know, have a claim that is, rejected or edited or requiring, further follow-up.
So hopefully that that answers your question. I also, am am just looking at the at the chat, and I wanna bring on, two individuals today to introduce you to the the SimplePractice community.
First one is is Dylan O'Hare, who I was about to say is a a former biller, but he's a current biller as well, a teammate, employee at SimplePractice, and then Jordan DeSimone, who leads our overall billing and insurance, within our customer support team. I, before, I let them introduce themselves, I think it's it's great to have them on the call today because as I'm scrolling through the the chat of questions, there's a ton on insurance and billing.
And my sense is is that having them, in the proverbial virtual backstage, they're shopping at the bit to be able to augment some of my answers to these questions. Jordan, Dylan, do you wanna just quickly introduce yourselves? Don't take up a bunch of airtime, though, so we can get back to the the q and a.
Dylan O'Hare
18:02 - 18:17
Yep. You got it.
Short and sweet. I'm Dylan O'Hare, director of revenue operations here at SimplePractice.
I've been a SimplePractice user myself for over ten years and working with folks like you for the last twenty five. Really excited to be here.
Jordan?
Jordan DeSimone
18:17 - 18:34
Yeah. I'm Jordan DeSimone.
I'm a senior manager of customer success and support here, primarily focused on working with our insurance, billing support teams. Also have a background as a clinician myself and a biller.
So, definitely, understand the the pain points y'all run into.
Jonathan S.
18:34 - 28:44
Awesome. Alright.
Let's let's go back, to the questions here. Carrie, thanks for being with us.
Carrie's question is, will there be any consideration for adjusting the fee structure for solo practice owners? Very disappointed with the removal of the free monthly claim limits in addition to the increases. I considered adding, the carry aid, but with the price increase, that won't be an option for me now.
Gary, thanks for your question around, around pricing. We we we take the the sediment here very seriously, and as we made the decision around the the the plan to remove, free claims is is really, garnered in the fact that, we wanted to make it equal for everyone to work with insurance and make sure that the the cost of supporting the insurance functionality and features, was equal, and an ability to process that across all, core software subscription packages within SimplePractice.
Our hope from the testing that we've done is that, certainly acknowledge that is it is an increase in the cost to process claims. But what we are seeing from the testing that we've done in results is, time to claim submission is being reduced, and our hope is is that over the aggregate of the claims that you're submitting with over the course of a month is that revenue collection through the new features and functionality that we have at SimplePractice is considerably more, than the the cost that it is as both as part of the essential, and insurance navigator in terms of the value that we're getting at.
I would say we are, we are not even, thirty days since the announcement. And, I appreciate that, with this change in pricing and features, we are effectively asking you to revalidate sort of the value that you're getting from that specific insurance workflow relative to the price that we're charging you.
And so my hope is that, you can see that. Certainly, if you have any questions on the flow, please don't hesitate to reach out to support, or others, but, hopefully, that, the value continues to to be there.
Alright. Let's let's move on, to the next question here.
Jonathan S. , in the last six years, I have been with an appreciated SimplePractice.
I see add ons at additional costs and taking away of the built in phone service regarding billing. As a solo practice, this hurts.
Please offer something that sounds hopeful and savings oriented for solo practitioners, like myself. Thank you, Jordan DeSimone, for being a a long standing SimplePractice customer.
Look. How do I let me think about this question because it's it's a really thoughtful question in the way that you've you've framed that, and it comes back to, as we think about, operating on SimplePractice, whether you're a solo clinician, group practice owner, an additional team member as part of a practice, our product, team, in particular, data and support, is it's all about saving you time and money to successfully run your practice.
Historically, that has been very geared on saving time, and I can assure you it's it's top of mind in terms of, we're able to see sort of, product usage, where you're falling down in the system, where you're spending, tons of time, etcetera, but then also where you're submitting tickets to customer support, and how can we make changes in the workflow to improve that. And so, fundamentally, my my hope is that as we continue to release features around making it easier around documentation, broader client communications and mass document sharing, on on a you know, making reporting and insights to your practice, more attainable, so that you can have more control in terms of, how do you make decisions that can help you run your practice more efficiently? I I would I would say our we are, continuing to embed that across virtually all, stages of the product or all aspects of the product to to save you time, and my hope is that you see value.
Now things like, notetaker, and Caraid, or the premium insurance features, those are things that, as you point out, are absolutely add ons that come at a cost. And, certainly, they not certainly, but they also come at a cost to SimplePractice.
And so we take that into account in terms of both, who is this this add on feature most aptly going to be used for within SimplePractice, but then also for things like, for everything with with AI, you know, making sure that clinicians continue to have choice in terms of where it's embedded in the product and how they're going to in and having choice in terms of where they want to add that in terms of their workflow. And so you'll see us both, you know, make look at those trade offs from a pricing standpoint, in terms of in terms of add ons.
Thanks for your question. Just because we're already twenty three minutes here, for if if there's any follow-up questions to that, I'm putting my email in the chat, for anyone to use at any point in time, today or in the future.
Let's go on here to to Shay's question. Shay, why were we not notified of the billing software changes in advance or given a grace period to learn the new system being able to toggle between, old and new? Shay, this is a really good question, and there's there's two two pieces to your question that, that I'm that I'm hearing here is is one around communication and and changes, and then the second is an ability to toggle off between, the old workflow and the new workflow.
First on communications. I and I think you're probably referring to billing software changes in advance, because on the insurance changes specifically, at a minimum, anything that is, you know, quite substantial around the billing and insurance changes, we look to give at least, you know, thirty days notice.
Many of you can see that that's both, through email, which I fully appreciate that, people don't always check email. We do our best to also leverage other channels like in app notifications, and do that in a way that is isn't annoying or disrupting your your sessions and an ability to come back to.
And then also, many of you are also active in in other, you know, online forums, whether it's Reddit or our own Facebook community, that will continue to put that information out. On the, and we can all so I guess I will acknowledge when there are workflow changes that in some ways maybe we think are small, we can always continue to work on how do we help guide you through those changes so it's not a surprise when you're looking to do important work wherever that is across the platform.
The second piece is on the toggling on and off. And this really comes down to, you know, time and investment from a product and engineering standpoint in terms of what we've experienced within our beta and early adopter testing and how quickly people are, you know, call it understanding new workflows, getting value from those new workflows, and the change management associated with that.
And so on the on the billing hub as well, which that might be what you're referring to, we continue to see, you know, continued adoption, good feedback and time savings. And so that's not something that, we put the level of investment in on design InDesign to, enable that to to toggle back and forth.
But it's absolutely something that as we continue to think about, you know, large workflow changes to be able to give that functionality, for a certain period, of time. Let me go to the the next question here from Rachel.
Rachel, key features include hiding the co pay on screens. Now I have to click different drop downs to view, hiding secondary assurance, another drop down, etcetera also.
Jordan, do you wanna this sounds like a feature request in terms of the user experience there. Do you wanna do you wanna hit this one?
Jordan DeSimone
28:44 - 30:10
Yeah. I can definitely speak to this.
So, it sounds like, we're referring to the insurance tile towards the right hand side of a client's profile. When our team kind of redeveloped that around VOBs and verification of benefits, it was more of an oversight that they were no longer pulling in the co pay and deductible information that you're entering in the client settings.
So they're we've received that feedback over the last couple weeks, and our product manager that owns that area of the product is actively working, to return that functionality. They're gonna take a little bit longer than normal to do that just because they wanna make sure that if we're surfacing it there, we're also surfacing it in a lot of other areas that would be really helpful.
So they're doing a full round of discovery around where would it be helpful to see that information in addition to that tile. But once they complete that, they will be, implementing some updates to return that.
For secondary claims, if anybody has attended our livestream, our billing brief livestream, you'll have met our product manager, Maggie. That is what she will be focusing on for the remainder of the year is enhancements around secondary claims.
So we are aware that with the new design, that has changed a little bit, but we've also received feedback for a long time now around better tracking, better functionality, and also notifications around when secondary claims are ready to go out. All of that, Maggie, is gonna be working on over the next few months, and we expect very early next year, to start releasing a lot of enhancements around secondary claims.
Jonathan S.
30:10 - 30:36
Thanks, Jordan. Thanks, Jordan.
Here's another question from from Gina that, Jordan, you might be really or or Dylan equipped to handle here. But sometimes I receive denials in the mail for a patient's primary insurance and need to send that denial form into the secondary insurance company and have no way to do that in the system.
Can you elaborate on how that might be handled best here?
Jordan DeSimone
30:36 - 30:56
Yeah. Absolutely.
I'm sure Dylan, you probably have a couple of workflows. I'll just say real quick, Gina.
We definitely have this ability set up in the system for you to do, and there might be a couple of configurations we need to adjust for you to to get that working successfully. So definitely feel free to reach out to our support team so we can walk you through that.
But I'm sure, Dylan, you have some recommendations on how to manage that as well.
Dylan O'Hare
30:56 - 32:06
Yeah. You know, actually, Jonathan, this really should still be possible if you're receiving the denial EOB in the mail.
You just have to do a little bit of extra leg work than you would if you had the ERAs enrolled for your primary. So you can go ahead and create that secondary claim and then you're gonna see we've added some of our own proprietary boxes that basically mimic that primary EOB that you need to send over to the secondary.
And so if it's on paper, you're going to have to create a secondary claim and then you're going to just plug in the information that you see in those blue boxes. I believe one is box eight is what we call it and then the others are going to be below the line items.
So you're going to put in how much was charged, what was denied, if there's any any write offs already applied during that denial, and then the the cards and rocks as they're called, which are those denial codes like c o 16. So in that way, it is possible.
I would also say that if you are able to get your e r a enrollment set up, for that primary payer, from there, you'll actually be able to just generate that secondary claim and that's all gonna auto populate for you.
Jordan DeSimone
32:06 - 32:17
I'll just give an extra pitch too for our help center. If you type in secondary in the search field in our help center, you'll find some resources there both written in video.
And then, again, our our support team is happy to walk you through that as well.
Jonathan S.
32:17 - 32:32
Awesome. While we're on secondary and some some overlap here, but, from Carlin, when can we move it to automatically adding to billing appointments ready to file?
Jordan DeSimone
32:32 - 32:44
Yeah. So similar, kind of details as as previously.
We'll be working on this throughout the rest of the year, and very early next year, we should be releasing some enhancements around that.
Jonathan S.
32:44 - 33:19
As as Jordan's alluding to, this is, active discovery and build within the product to streamline secondary insurance. So you'll see you'll see changes in q four and then certainly early next year, as well.
Summer, will the individual insurance specialist be US based? Jordan, do you wanna handle where our insurance specialists are today?
Jordan DeSimone
33:19 - 33:20
Yes.
Jonathan S.
33:20 - 33:20
We.
Jordan DeSimone
33:20 - 33:20
Yeah.
Jonathan S.
33:20 - 33:20
I guess,.
Jordan DeSimone
33:20 - 33:21
So.
Jonathan S.
33:21 - 33:38
because, Summer, we do we have, support teammates, in The US, Mexico City, and Dominican Republic. But, Jordan, can we clarify where our insurance specialists are are to be based or.
are based?
Jordan DeSimone
33:38 - 34:22
Yep. So we have, two teams now to align with, our new insurance tiers.
Our essentials team is, all over the world, and we do keep them, largely to written support to make sure that they're well supported in understanding whatever problems you bring into us and solutions we're providing and guidance and making sure we're looking at the whole picture. Our navigator team is largely in The US, and it is folks that have been with our CS team for three, four, five, six years.
Really experienced folks, understand insurance well. We do have a few folks that are located in Mexico City in The Dominican Republic on our navigator team, and these are folks that have been working on insurance support for a couple years and have really excelled at it.
And so we've brought them on board, for that level of support as well. But the large majority of the team is is US based.
Jonathan S.
34:22 - 34:43
Awesome. Thank you.
Jordan, good to see you. This was from a while back, the or earlier today.
The insurance phone number no longer showing on profile page. Can this come back? Also, the co pay is not showing, either.
Jordan, did you move. where the phone number originate?
Jordan DeSimone
34:43 - 34:58
Yeah. Yeah.
Similar to what we, addressed earlier, I believe we're talking about the insurance tile to the right of the client's profile. Again, some of those details that you're entering in manually to the client settings that are no longer showing up there was unintentional, and we will be returning that in the coming weeks.
Jonathan S.
34:58 - 37:12
Got it. Thank you.
Alright. Sharon, why would I set up insurance clients on SimplePractice when I can get them set up on a different platform and not have to pay for this? Really, really good, question, Sharon.
Certainly, you can do that. You can you can absolutely, bill off of off of SimplePractice, either, you know, via a third party, or, you know, directly through a clearing house, etcetera.
But what we we look to do is fully embed that with within the platform. And our sense is is that, yes.
It does come at a cost. I'm not, and and likely at a higher cost than what you would get doing it on your own.
But that integration not only supports the functionality of security and compliance, but more importantly is our hope is that we can take on more and more of the workflows through our software and AI and whether that is, you know, as as Jordan was alluding to there in that last question is upon a client intake, uploading their insurance card, do they have insurance or not, all the way through the claim submission process. And my hope is that while we've made it made changes both to the workflow but then also pricing, is that, that is in a point in time.
And we have a very large team across product and engineering and data that has looked to continue to improve, that process and the benefits of the specific, integration themselves within within SimplePractice. Another question, Mikaela.
We need a button like we have to telehealth send link for in person session as a reminder for appointments. Jordan, don't we have appointment reminders for telehealth?
Jordan DeSimone
37:12 - 37:47
So do you have appointment reminders? One goes out automatically at whatever cadence you set it at, so twenty four hours of for an appointment, forty eight hours. And then I believe there's one that also goes out ten minutes before the appointment.
Telehealth appointments, I believe there's a way on the appointment fly out on the calendar to manually trigger a reminder. We may just need to double check our resources on that.
But if you're finding that you are automating reminders or manually sending them out and clients aren't aren't receiving them, that's something that you can reach out to our support team, and we could take a look at, like, those specific client cases and let you know why things may be not working correctly.
Jonathan S.
37:47 - 45:44
Awesome. Awesome.
Really, really great, question there. Let's see.
Dylan, I did see a notification on free credentialing. Could you please share more information on that? Thanks.
Great question, Dylan. As as, many of you have seen, we have been actively looking to include, and make it easier for credentialing and recredentialing within SimplePractice.
As I talked about at the beginning, just the entire process of getting stood up with insurance, credentialing, contracting, is is very manual and time consuming. And as we think about credentialing, we have been testing that, with a partner as part of, an experience or workflow with new customers joining SimplePractice that are interested in getting stood up with insurance.
That insights and testing has given us a ton of information in terms of the process itself, the performance from the partner, the level of integration that we need to support that. And so we are actively in development of, evolving our credentialing solution to be available for existing customers as well.
We don't have an exact time line, to share yet, but my hope is that this is something that we're gonna be able to roll out later this year to, existing customers. Let's see here.
Let's see. Why why don't I as and I just think about sort of presubmitted questions.
The the topic of AI or is like I said, there was just a number of fields that all that was listed was was AI. And I thought maybe helpful to to maybe address this from my.
perspective, certainly, in some ways, with with a level of excitement, but in many ways with, an extreme level of of caution, particularly, as it relates to things like, permission and access to to a patient record, or a note and how we're protecting that, or sensitivity around, call it, individual user use of AI outside of simple practices. We think about, still one of the top use cases, if not the number one use case, within AI is around social and emotional support, and really what that means for the field.
When I talk to clinicians on our team, read what's happening in the community, whether you're a mental health clinician or a physician in general, clients, patients are showing up with, questions that maybe, you know, are generated from a chat that they've had, or consulting, in many ways, AI, which is changing the way, that that you work. And so we are, at at SimplePractice, doing our best to, number one, ground this in, particularly as it relates to AI and clinical workflows, is that that you have choice for how you integrate AI into the practice for yourself and for your clients and that you feel like you have complete control in terms of where that is embedded or not, but then also transparency for your clients as well, and continuing to give you, control there.
The second piece is also recognizing that, the field is is changing, dramatically. And so our product and engineering and and data teams are, both hard at work in terms of improving the quality of our notes to improving, and expanding features like we've got within Caraid and in a cautious, way continuing to embed, where we see the power of AI to make your lives, easier, and more successful in running a practice and where so and where you choose to reference AI, in terms of diagnosing treatment plan, other patterns that maybe AI can help, recognize.
And that's where we've even embedded on administrative workflows, like within claim assistant, which, does not touch an individual, patient record at all, or any PHI, but it does reference it's able to look at where SimplePractice, is claims are being edited or denied by payers and creating a simple rules engine to produce a result or a suggestion for for you individually on why a claim might be edited or rejected, and hopefully, continue to learn so that we can prevent that in the in the in the future and, you know, continue to increase, you know, call it what we call internally the first pass yield rate or or pass to to claim submission. And so, look, we we appreciate that, look, there's there's both a lot of noise, in the world around AI that we're all experiencing in our daily lives.
It's dramatically shifting, in many ways how you're thinking about running an independent practice and and, providing mental health care. And so our hope is that we can stay on top of it, as much as we can for you, and provide both education and tooling, to integrate it where you so choose.
I provided my email. If you have any thoughts or questions on the topic, please feel free to reach out to me directly.
This is a transition that, we're all working through, and very open to feedback from from the from the community. Let's go back to the q and a here.
We've got a a top up voted question from from Taylor. It would be great to only allow clients to select certain insurances during the intake process.
There are so there are so much for so much for them to sift through. If they could only see insurance companies that we are credentialed with, that would help.
Oh, I love this this feature request, Taylor, and us us figuring out how do we make it, super explicit on the front end, depending on how you have SimplePractice set up, and accept new clients to, put you to have that be more explicit in terms of the type of insurance that you're going to work to accept, in workflow. So great add here.
As we think about, the booking widget and the intake workflow, therapy finder, the partnerships that we're developing with payers in terms of surfacing availability and what types of insurance you workflow work with, we will, we will, keep that top of mind. Next question, from Shay again.
Shay, thanks for for the question here. Will we be charged 39¢ or $1.
79 per secondary claim as well? This feels like double dipping already. Jordan, will you handle this?
Jordan DeSimone
45:44 - 46:11
Yeah. So really regardless of whether it's primary or secondary claim, the fee is assessed, if the claim reaches the payer.
So that's when we're charged for it, and that's when we apply the fee on our end. So any claim that reaches the clearinghouse and if the clearinghouse catches an issue and kicks it back, which usually shows up as a scrub error, those are not charged.
But anything that makes it to a payer, the fee is applied whether it's primary or secondary.
Jonathan S.
46:11 - 46:32
Thanks, Jordan. And, Jordan, with with some of the new function just to follow on this this thread a little bit, but with some of the functionality that we've, released in terms of creating claim rules, etcetera, is is is that something that can help, unvoid avoid unnecessary claim submission?
Jordan DeSimone
46:32 - 47:15
Yeah. Absolutely.
So I I was speaking with a customer the other day who was billing this particular payer, and this particular payer required, like, a different piece of information on the claim than they use for all the rest of their payers. So a lot of most of the time, they were going in and manually editing.
But once in a while, they were missing a claim, and that claim was going out and getting rejected, and they would have to manually fix it. So with the new claim meta rules, we set up a couple of rules for him, so that's all automated.
And he pretty immediately was like, oh, that should save me about 10 to 20 claims a month of rejections. So, you know, each each claim, only has a certain amount of sense being charged to it, but that can certainly add up over time.
So we are seeing an addition of time savings also, savings on fees by not having as many rejections come back.
Jonathan S.
47:15 - 47:16
Awesome.
Dylan O'Hare
47:16 - 47:38
So you put the eligibility checks there. If you're not sending out claims where where you didn't realize that between the last appointment and this appointment that their coverage has lapsed, gone inactive, there there's major time savings there as well.
Because then you're not making it all the way to the payer, getting that denial, incurring the cost, and then still having to figure out what's going on with their insurance to start all the way over again.
Jordan DeSimone
47:38 - 47:55
And I'll just throw out real quick too. I'm seeing some folks in the chat, mentioning having issues with rejections.
Definitely reach out to our support team. We would love to take a look at your account specifically and let you know, what we're seeing and what recommendations we would have, to have a smoother billing experience.
Jonathan S.
47:55 - 48:32
Awesome. Thank you both.
Jonathan's got another question or as I'm starting to read through, feature request. But for those working with divorce custody cases, it would be helpful if the portal messaging feature allowed for messaging both guardians on the same thread, more than one person allowed to be checked as responsible party, so both parent names populate onto the same invoice.
Jordan, a couple things going on here. Do you have a immediate response of either a fix or whether this is just a straight, you know, feature suggestion for us to track?
Jordan DeSimone
48:32 - 49:27
Yeah. So, for those who've been around a while, many years ago, we implemented a couple of different, enhancements that we called enhanced client management, to tackle some of these issues.
But I do know that with divorced parents in particular and not wanting to have full visibility across both parents, especially in the billing things, or messaging, that has been a request over the years. So I will say our team is very aware of that and has that on their road map, in terms of further enhancements.
In the meantime, if you've never spoken with our support team to get some suggestions on, some alternative workflows to kinda make it work with our current functionality, definitely reach out. I know our team speaks to customers a lot about, managing those different dynamics with who's involved in treatment.
So they can definitely give recommendations if you haven't received that before. But we do know that it's not the most, it's not the smoothest process, so we'll continue, working on that for y'all.
Jonathan S.
49:27 - 50:04
Awesome. Awesome.
Jordan, another suggestion here. An ability to search within a chart for keywords would be really helpful.
Jordan, fairly certain that this is on the road map at one of the stages. I don't have the exact, date here, but this is absolutely on on the radar for the product team.
You surfacing that here is is is fantastic. So so thank you.
Jordan or Dylan, am I missing anything on the the functionality here today? No limitation. K.
Dylan O'Hare
50:04 - 50:20
No limitation. I will say that I'm very used to when I'm looking for something, when when I'm doing the billing work is to do a little keyboard shortcut in my browser, get the command f and find my words that way.
But.
Jonathan S.
50:20 - 50:46
Fantastic. Jessica, thanks for being with us today.
Also, co pays. Effective and term date info is now missing on the insurance info from the account view.
What is the expected time that it'll be put back for visibility? It is very time consuming to have to open each insurance to see what the client responsibility is. Jordan, Dylan?
Jordan DeSimone
50:46 - 51:14
Yeah. Yeah.
We were mentioning this earlier that that, those missing manually enter details in the client's profile. The estimate we've been given by our product team is one to two months.
We do hope that will be quicker, but that's a conservative estimate just not to, overpromise. But, again, as I mentioned earlier, we are looking at that problem more holistically, to kind of further, enhance how you're where you're seeing that information, how you're receiving it, compared to how it used to be.
Jonathan S.
51:14 - 52:18
Thank you. And, Michaela, is in the messaging thread, can there be a way to separate client and clinician messages? I this is a great this is a great suggestion because we we don't have that that functionality today, at least by, color coding at a minimum, but an ability to filter.
Michaela, thank you for the the feature suggestion. We will we'll take this down, both add it to UserVoice, for the community to, upvote, but then also get into this product team.
UserVoice is not the only source of, of what we use to to make changes within the product. So thank you.
We've got a question here from from Michael not too long ago. Hey, Michael.
If Medicare automatically creates a crossover secondary claim to Medigap, Medicaid, do we get charged for a secondary claim? Jordan,.
Dylan O'Hare
52:18 - 52:19
It's a good one.
Jonathan S.
52:19 - 52:23
yeah. I do not know the answer.
Dylan O'Hare
52:23 - 53:22
I I'll help you out here, Jonathan S. No.
Absolutely not. So if it's not going through SimplePractice systems passing through the clearinghouse, then you're not gonna generate a fee for that.
So that is a really great question. And one of the benefits and and least painful parts about working with Medicare, I would say, is when you have that automatic crossover, you could create and download and leave a claim on file if you just want a facsimile of that claim.
And then I would also just add on that if you are submitting Medicare secondaries, it might be worth checking to see if these are already crossing over. The main trigger for that is going to be when the client has made sure that Medicare is aware of who their secondary is, and then you can take yourself out of the loop entirely in that regard.
And just make sure you have yourself set up for ERAs for that secondary payer so that when that payment comes in, you're not running to a portal or waiting for the mail to go and manually post that.
Jonathan S.
53:22 - 54:17
Fantastic. Oh, Carrie, this one pains me.
We're well aware of it. If a minor's client chart has their parent's email as a contact and their parent becomes a client, the same email cannot be used or both pro for both profiles.
Is this something that can be fixed? Jordan, what's the active solution for this? And I I would just say, Carrie, this is something that, the product and data team, continue to look into. I hope we will have some prioritization here given, you know, many of you now with more than 275,000 clinicians.
There's oftentimes shared providers, clients seeing multiple clinicians that happen to be on SimplePractice. So this is an area that we we need to fix the underlying mapping.
Jordan?
Jordan DeSimone
54:17 - 55:22
Yeah. Currently, the guidance that we give, is one of two things.
You can use modifiers if the email address allows for that. So for example, with Gmail, at the end of the beginning of the address, you can do a plus sign and then do a modifier.
So you can say, jordan. d+1@simplepractice.
com, and that will our system will recognize that as a different unique email address. So you can give, the parents their main email on their profile, and then on the client profile, you can add a modifier, to the email to make them unique.
If for some reason, you know, that doesn't make sense, the other option is and, actually, this is kind of the primary guidance we give, is instead of putting the parent's email as the email for the client, make sure you add the parent as a contact, and then you can add the the parent's client profile as a contact to the child's profile. And then you can mark the parent as kind of responsible for receiving documentation and billing and everything.
And so if you do it that way, that will also prevent any of those errors that folks run into.
Jonathan S.
55:22 - 55:39
Good good question from from Jessica here around verification of benefits on secondary insurance. How how should customers, Dylan or Jordan, think about leveraging the functionality for secondary insurance as part of VOB?
Dylan O'Hare
55:39 - 55:54
Yep. The usually, what I do in this case, is just flip them real quick.
So I'll I'll flip the secondary to primary and and then be able to check the eligibility that way real quick and then flip them back.
Jonathan S.
55:54 - 01:03:01
Thank you. Thank you.
Here we've got a a a question from doctor Garcia. Thanks for for being with us today.
I got a notification that the annual fee will be charged to my account for use of insurance codes, etcetera. I only see cash pay patients.
Will I still be charged this fee? This is a a good question, doctor Garcia. Thanks thanks for clarifying.
The use of CPT codes is across, our entire platform as, as in terms of the functionality itself. So this is a licensing fee that is applied to every user across SimplePractice that is billing, regardless if that is cash pay, or not.
And this is something that, as you saw in the messaging that a one time annual fee that we we pass along with a dollar 50 processing charge to each of our users on SimplePractice. Let's go to Kelly here.
As a large multidisciplinary practice, we frequently have clients, who see multiple providers such as a therapist, PMHNT, nutritionists, and those providers may appropriately use different diagnoses. Currently, we understand that the options to create separate client profiles for the same person or manually change the diagnosis before an appointment.
Both create concerns around fragmented records, administrative burden, and potential human error. Is SimplePractice considering a way to keep one client profile while allowing the diagnosis to be tied to the specific provider, service, or appointment.
This would allow the appropriate diagnosis to flow that encounter without duplicating the client or manually changing diagnoses between visits. Kelly, this is, this is this is both a feature suggestion and, is, I guess, close to my my passion around how do we integrate mental health into one's overall sort of, whole person care.
We do not currently have anything on the road map specifically for, you know, call it multiple client profiles, unless Jordan or Dylan tell me tell me otherwise, but I I don't see that top of mind. But I, it is something that I would tell you is, is very close to how we're thinking about continued evolution, both in terms of we are seeing, a large number of independent group practices continue to, collaborate with other providers across other specialties and create multidisciplinary practices, both on SimplePractice and also very encouraged when I see independent primary care groups bringing on psychiatrists and psychologists and dietitians, etcetera.
And so it's it's an area that we need to continue to evolve within the platform. But then the other piece of it that the reason that I'm I'm so passionate here is that mental health just often is such a key part of one's overall health care that often gets lost.
And so we need to continue to make that ways where we can make it easy for independent clinicians to collaborate both as part of a practice specifically, but also in a way, that they don't necessarily need to be employed, or, or, you know, specifically part of a teammate on that practice and can do that digitally, within SimplePractice. The other dimension to this, again, is that, the way that insurance is billed needs to evolve with that structure.
Right now, mental health is standalone, largely standalone, fee for service, and mental health clinicians that are participating in aspects of collaborative care, either formally or informally, need to be able to, do that in a way and then charge for the value that they're providing as part of improving one's overall health care. So great question, and something that we is top of mind as we continue to evolve the platform.
Let's try to fit in, another question or two. Jordan, active day.
Thank you so much. Let me read this as quickly as possible.
Will it be possible to allow us to revise a treatment plan, load last plan, and then also make changes to a diagnosis on that loaded plan without the system the diagnosis while also keeping the same targeted goals, objectives, interventions. Currently, a whole new treatment plan has to be created, and then I have to copy and paste each field, of the old treatment plan into the new one.
Sometimes diagnosis changes from an adjustment related diagnosis or something unspecified to something more specific, and this may not require specific changes to the goals objectives. Is there something I'm missing that allows this? I apologize and would love to know where to learn more about how to do it.
I don't think you're missing anything is my immediate reaction. I love the feature requests, because as we just think about, you know, improving treatment planning and treatment planning suggestions through care aide to integrating other third party sources in terms of surfacing, different diagnosis or why someone may or may not be improving as part of your course of treatment.
We have to make the plan more dynamic. So future noted, we are, that was a long you you you wrote a lot there, and so I I just want to acknowledge thank you for that and something that we will we will be tracking, as well.
So with that, we're a minute past the hour. Thank you.
Thank you, for spending time with me on this on this Friday. For those of you live, for those of you hopefully listening as well, Please don't hesitate to reach out.
We really value your feedback here and your time and all the care that you're providing for so many in your communities. Be well.
Please provide feedback as well. Did you find this valuable? Did you not? Areas that we can continue to improve.
At the end of the day, I just wanna let you know that I personally am here for you, both to listen, but continue to advocate on your behalf as well. So, with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and look forward to seeing you at the October livestream.
Take care and be well.
