(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to Ask Allison. Y'all ask the questions about having a fun and thriving practice and I answer them. We have a worksheet for you today so you can bring this answer into your life. You can access that at abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links where you'll also be able to ask any questions you have for Ask Allison. If you want more support, we've got some free trainings in there too.
If you can't get enough Ask Allison, check out our YouTube channel for our entire Ask Allison library. Welcome back to Ask Allison. Here's today's question. I'm planning to transition out of my group practice. I'm considering using one of the companies where you're paneled with insurance through them like Alma, since the payout seemed to be very good for this area. Are there pitfalls I should be aware of? Thank you so much for all that you do.
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All right, so let's get into it. These companies can be a really good option for people that want to take insurance in their practices. They can also be a good option for people who eventually want to be private pay, but circumstances require that they leave an agency job quickly.
I haven't ever worked with these companies personally, but I will see the pitfall that I see over and over again with the people that I'm working with is that they get in with these companies, they end up full at some point. Sounds good, right? But then they realize they didn't build the private practice that they meant to build. This is especially if they wanted to be private pay. They become complacent. They don't learn or implement marketing because they've got that covered with referrals.
And this isn't everywhere in the United States. They don't get full everywhere with these companies, but the people that do end up coming to me later because they realize they don't want to be reliant on these companies for their income. They then, while maintaining this full practice, have to learn and implement marketing to build their private pay practice and extract themselves from the company.
Another pitfall I've seen, and I can't remember whether it was Alma or another one, is that they say that they protect against clawbacks, but they haven't. Now, clawbacks are when an insurance company audits your notes and decides that you didn't establish medical necessity enough or otherwise document a session that they should pay for, so you end up having to pay them back, sometimes thousands of dollars.
And this can happen to you if you take insurance in your own practice, but there you didn't have this guise of safety where a company said we'll take care of clawbacks for you. If you want a private pay practice and you get in with this company, I strongly suggest you concurrently learn how to build the private pay practice that you want and set a marker by which you'll go fully private pay and off these companies.
So maybe you limit the number of referrals from the company, and when you have 10 weekly private pay clients, you stop working with the company, that kind of thing. And I made up the number 10. You need to do the math for your life and your practice just to see what cutoff makes sense. Marketing is a really good idea for your practice, whether you take insurance, you take insurance through a company like this, or you're fully private pay.
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