Healing Through Forgiveness

Features You Want In Counseling Management Software

22 March 2017 by Kurt Garrett

Upgrading your counseling private practice's management software is an opportunity to take your practice to the next level. Each year brings excellent improvements that help make your practice easier to run. If you haven't upgraded in a long time, try to find these features because they will make it a lot easier for you and your staff to handle day-to-day operations in the office.

Continuing Education

You need to get your continuing education credits each year, but getting those can be disruptive to your practice -- unless you enlist the help of your management software. Rather than taking time off to attend far-away conferences, or waiting to pounce on a local event, find software that enables you to take online courses that qualify for continuing education in your state. You can earn your credits on your own time, saving time away from the office for conferences you're actually interested in, as well as for bona fide vacation time.

Streamlined Calendar Notifications

Ensure the software you get offers streamlined notification processes so that when something changes on the calendar everyone knows immediately. Don't settle for calendar programs that require people to jump through any hoops -- even easy ones, like having to remember to double-check the calendar themselves to see if anything has changed -- to get word of schedule changes. Find software that automatically sends notifications to people instead.

Encryption

If you have any sort of electronic communication between staff, you need encryption. Rather than delving into learning encryption techniques yourself, let the software do it. Look for secure messaging and intra-office email features.

Chat and Text Counseling Options

If you're branching out into allowing text and chat counseling with people who can't come into the office for whatever reason, you can find software that offers secure (at least on your end) communication systems that your patients can access from their homes. This eliminates the need to find outside apps that you have to hope are compatible with your software. Your patients will still need to have secure connections of their own, but their browser programs should have sufficient security.

You can find these and many more features in newer software packages, so start looking through what's available and seeing how it could apply to your practice. As counseling moves ever closer to the online world, keeping up with management software upgrades is one of the better things you can do.

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