Consider the administrative and documentation systems you manage as a music therapist: time, money, and contact management. No doubt, we all feel overwhelmed sometimes just trying to keep our heads above water. When your systems are in place, everything in life is more manageable.
Whether you’re an employee or self-employed, systems are so important to stay organized. In the video below, Allison Hingley, MM, MT-BC, goes over an easy and structural way to think about systems.
Of course, the more organized you become, the more confident you’ll feel as a leader in healthcare! Watch Allison describe her systems by hitting play below:
Allison: So let’s talk about some administrative systems that might be helpful. A pro tip is you have to know your administrative systems inside and out better than anybody else. So when I say administrative systems, I’m talking about time, money and how you keep up with your context, which is for me in private practice a really, really big deal. You need to know who you’ve met, what they do, when you met them, where you met them, and then any notes about their your conversations with them in regards to music therapy. So one thing that I do is whenever I meet somebody, if I’m doing a presentation or anything else where I might run into somebody talking about music therapy, I ask for their business card and I write notes on it. There’s nothing that says you have to keep their business card nice and pretty. I don’t, I will not.
Allison: So most of the business cards that I keep look like a hot mess because I keep notes on them all the time. Sometimes when I’m feeling really electronic, I’ll transfer it over in my Google contacts, but not really. I have a pretty good memory, but if you don’t have a good memory for people transfer everything over and that way you can search. I know in Evernote if you keep your contacts in Evernote, then you can search for like a key phrase and that’ll help you if you’re like, who is that person that I met at that Parkinson’s support group? And you can just search for Parkinson’s and it’ll bring them up. So the T in time is you need to have a scheduling system and you need to have a reporting system. These are different for okay, so scheduling systems are, how do you manage your time and where do you fit your patients?
Allison: In reporting systems, if you’re working for an employer, if you’re working at a facility, you may have one that you already have to deal with, so timecards or something like that. If you’re in private practice, there’s so many different ways that you have to keep track of your time. Sometimes you have to keep track of your time for when you’ve actually had patient contact. When you’ve done presentations, time spent in the car, mileage is another way to keep track of time. So you need to come up with systems for that. If you want to know what I’m using, I’m happy to talk about that later. But mostly just these are things that you’re going to want to sink through when you’re developing your own systems. Money is another thing. You need to have ways to document your rate, mileage, all of your accounts, your budgeting, and having solid systems in place for all of those things are very, very, very important for smooth sailing practice.
Documentation Made Easy CMTE Course
If you’d like to REALLY dig in to documentation systems, then check out Allison Hingley’s Documentation Made Easy CMTE course. ON SALE THRU 1/28 for 5 CMTES!
By taking the course, you will:
- Get the recognition and acknowledgement you deserve from administrators by knowing how to submit meaningful, attention-grabbing reports.
- Feel valued and impactful in your data collection processes and report submissions
- Deeply explore differences among group and individual intake forms, assessments, care plans, and session plans… each for pre-, during-, and post-treatment stages.
