Managing calendars, banking authorizations, document sharing permissions, client databases, internal correspondence, and numerous other operational intricacies—these are the hidden facets that quietly consume hours each week when overseeing an organization with multiple providers!

Healthie’s group practice and organization practice management system was designed to help our providers, as well as the administrative professionals within the organization, manage all office and facilities needs – our organization features extend to scheduling, billing, payment processing and client paperwork/forms, and also enable internal team communication that is HIPAA-compliant. Providers, assistants, and other administrators each have their own accounts for secure management. Healthie offers an internal platform for sharing calendars, billing, group intake forms, and much, much more.

In this deep-dive tutorial, we’re walking through best practices for using Healthie as a multi-provider group practice.

Whether you’re in the beginning stages of expansion, or an established group practice, learn how the Healthie platform supports multi-provider practices with shared calendars, documents, billing, clients and other important settings.

Establishing a multi-provider group wellness practice

If you’re a solo practice looking to expand, there are several best practices to keep in mind as you establish a group wellness practice. Keeping these guidelines in mind will ensure a smooth transition, with the right communication, tools and support for your new team.

Here are some best practices for multi-provider practices to keep in mind as your business expands.

• Establish a system of internal communication: you’ll want a way to quickly connect with your team in real-time. Using text messages, phone calls and emails can quickly become tedious, and important messages may be lost along the way. It’s also important to choose a HIPAA-compliant way of communicating, as you’ll like be sharing information about your clients. Email is not-secure, and puts your clients’ personal health information at risk.
• Create an onboarding process: when you hire a new provider, you’ll need to onboard them into your business. This means walking them through how to schedule clients, send appointment reminders, new client forms/paperwork, how to chart on a client and collect billing information or payments. Having a consistent and easy process will save you time and ensure that your new provider gets quickly situated to your business processes. When you use multiple tools for scheduling, billing, charting, and more, it can be time-consuming to grant permissions/access to these tools and give a tutorial on how to use them. An all-in-one practice management platform such as Healthie, puts all of your business tools in one, convenient platform, for you and your team to access.
• Create and share practice forms and documents: as a group practice, you’ll want to distribute the same paperwork for all of your providers to provide clients. As you likely will be working different shifts and/or locations, making sure that all of your providers and clients have easy access to the right paperwork is essential. Collecting the right client information is crucial for your business process and billing. You’ll want to have an easy way for providers to collect new client forms, insurance information and credit card or payment info.
• Customize your platform and materials to be consistent with your brand: as your business grows, so does your brand. Having consistent images, logos and materials across the board, despite which provider is using or distributing them, will ensure consistency in your image.
• Provide team support: one of the best ways to support your team, is by making sure they have access to helpful resources and the ability to connect with your team. Quickly build up your team’s library of resources and important information (ie. recipes, meal plans, templates, research papers, best practices) will ensure that your team members are up-to-date and the most qualified professionals to work with your clients.

How Healthie supports group wellness practices

Healthie works with group practices and organizations of all sizes, around the country. Accordingly, providers that work together can subscribe to a Healthie group practice account, which affords great permissions and customizations to promote cross-collaboration.

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1. Maintain control of permissions when adding new providers

Each new provider on your team will be able to create their own account within your organization. For every new provider account, you’ll also gain a free administrator account, for members of your team that provide support (versus client care).

As you add new providers to your team, you will likely want to maintain certain privaleges and oversight. You are able to add/remove permissions for every account added to your Healthie organization, regardless of their role. You might want to limit or expand what members of your team can see or do in Healthie. These changes can be made by an admin account, by clicking the Organization tab within the Healthie platform and navigating to the “manage memberships,” setting.

Some reasons you may want to control permissions:

• Keep irrelevant information hidden from some providers (ie. an office assistant may not need to see or access billing information)
• Control which providers can edit settings (determine if this provider can affect appointment settings, custom emails, and brands system-wide)
• Client visibility permissions (determine which provider accounts can view/access client information)
• Calendar and appointment permissions (determine which provider accounts can alter calendar and appointment reminder settings or minimize appointment notifications from being sent to all of your providers)
• Billing permissions (maintain billing control for your organization, or choose select providers to give permissions)

2. Create a seamless onboarding experience for new providers

Onboarding a new providers to your team is a crucial step in the growth of your group practicing. Save time, ensure consistency in standards and maintain oversight of your team through the Healthie platform. As an all-in-one practice management platform, your new hire will have all of the tools, resources and present forms, documents and templates, ready for them.

“Healthie has made the growth process truly seamless. I simply don’t have time to onboard someone onto 7 different electronic platforms. The dietitians navigate Healthie really well, and it allows me to keep eyes on everyone as a manager. It’s actually the easiest part of the practice with its “one stop shopping” appeal for all things including intake, billing, scheduling, charting, video, educating and logging.” – Monica Auslander, MS, RD, LD/N and founder of Essence Nutrition

3. Share calendar access for your team  

Managing multiple schedules for a group practices is tasking, time consuming and opens up the door for miscommunication. Through the Healthie platform, you’ll be able to view calendars for all providers across an organization and schedule appointments on behalf of your colleagues. An administrator can set permissions for a shared calendar, and can keep schedules private from other team members.

Each provider in your group will be able to set their own availability, as well as availability by location for group practices with multiple offices.

4. Automated scheduling and appointment reminders

Missed appointments and late cancellations are a common hindrance to any wellness practice. It is often a full-time job in itself to schedule appointments, confirm with clients that they will be attending and send out appointment reminders. Healthie minimizes the time group practices and administrators need to spend on scheduling.

Embed your calendar directly into your website, to allow clients to schedule appointments (or maintain control of bookings). For clients to book with an individual provider, each provider has their own unique link that can be shared on your site or via email. If a client or prospective client uses this link they will be booked and associated with that specific provider.

A good use case for this is if you have a bio page outlining each member’s services and putting their link here letting clients book with a provider of their choosing.

When a client books, they will automatically receive an email confirmation, as well as automatic appointment reminders. As an administrator, you can choose how many appointment reminders are sent and how to send them (via emails and/or text message). Your providers will be able to see on their schedule that appointments have been confirmed.

5. Universal billing platform for your group practice

Within the Healthie platform, you’ll be able to keep your client’s billing information easily accessible regardless of the provider. With the ability to share one common bank account (or create multiple accounts) you can streamline how your clients are billed, without tasking your team. For insurance-based practices, quickly generate CMS-1500 claims to submit for reimbursement.

To best support our group practices, Healthie provides support for advanced reporting and data analysis. Use reports to understand individual and aggregate provider performance, track CMS 1500 claims and status by provider, organize accounting by provider and more.

6. Customized intake forms and charting templates

In your group practice, you’ll create a universal set of intake forms for clients to fill out. Within the Healthie platform, when any provider in your group adds a new client to the platform, the client will automatically receive your organization’s e-paperwork. Clients can fill out forms and e-sign  paperwork. These forms will be automatically uploaded to a client’s Healthie profile and accessible for anyone in the organization with permissions to view.

Even more, Healthie includes a charting (EHR) platform, accessible to all of your providers. The platform hosts charting templates including SOAP and ADIME for dietitians, but you can also create your own charting template that you’d like each provider to use. This will create a consistent flow of how your team conducts and documents their sessions with clients.

7. Easily share documents across your team

Creating a quick-access library of resources for your providers (and clients) will help create a uniform approach to care. Ensure that your team is receiving up-to-date documents and resources to use to educate themselves and their clients. Through the Healthie platform, your can share your documents with providers across your organization. Automatically distribute content, resources, meal plans, recipes, and more to others on your team.

Once you have uploaded a document or created a folder in the Healthie Documents area, you can select who you would like to share that content with.

8. Share client access to allow for coordinated care

As part of a group practice, you may want to share access to client information to coordinate care with multiple providers. Within the Healthie platform, allow for client’s to be shared, while maintaining HIPAA compliance.

9. Internal team communication via community chat feature

Connect with other members of your organization by creating a private community chat. Adjust your notifications to receive updates when you have a new message on the team community chat. Streamline how your team communicates, to make sure your team stays up-to-date.

Example Team Chat: “Hi Team! Remember, our next team meeting is tonight at 6pm. Bring your questions and a chart note on one client that you’d like some team input on.”

10. Consistent branding across the Healthie platform and client communication

Healthie’s out-of-the-box solution is semi white-labeled, with brand logos, colors, and names appearing throughout the platform. You brand name and logo is shown when clients get any automated email from Healthie in the subject line of the email. Select your brand colors and more, so that all communication from each provider in your group is on-brand.

“Hiring other dietitians was a big leap for me because I had built my brand and reputation so the community (doctors, other health professionals, parents, etc.) trusted me. I had to be very careful about who would be added to my brand so that they carried the same mission and vision. That is still what I do to this day. It’s not about filling a spot; it’s about expanding the care you think the community needs and deserves.” – Angela Lemond, RDN, CSP, LD of Lemond Nutrition

For Healthie members: here’s our list of resources to support your group wellness practice on the Healthie platform:

Lessons on Growing Your Group Practice

Starting Your Group Nutrition Practice: a Step-by-Step Guide

Overview of Healthie’s Group Practice and Organization Features

Integrate Healthie with Your Website

Using Group Practice Integration Links