Are you opening your private practice after years in the NHS? You are definitely not alone: some make the move to offer more preventive and/or holistic care, others to grow in a different way, or to respond faster to patients.
Motivations differ, yet the transition holds a challenge common to everyone: you need to be on top of your game admin-wise, and you need to offer a high-quality service that will lead patients to you.
Here’s a snapshot of the absolute must-dos, admin-wise, and three hacks to overcome admin hurdles.
Your three must-dos
- Register as a self-employed.
You will need to register as a sole trader via the HMRC website. You may want to consider finding an accountant or software that can automate your taxes and accounting.
- Subscribe to Professional Indemnity Insurance
This insurance protects you in case a client or patient makes a legal claim against you.
- Register with the ICO (Information Commissioners Office)
You are responsible for storing safely your clients information. That is why you must register with the ICO, which protects the information rights of the citizens.
Note that GDPR regulations apply to you as well, as a private health practitioner. See here how to deal with them.
💡Always good to know: there are no rules for the job titles used in private practice. You can choose the title that seems best fit to the work you do, as long as it does not mislead patients of course
Once you are all set-up and ready, you want to make sure that your patients enjoy the professional care they deserve. Here are the common pitfalls and how to avoid them:
Hold smooth video sessions
Are you conducting video sessions? It can be a great opportunity to make your services more accessible, and save costs on renting a space. When using video, focus on making it easy and secure for both you and your patients.
- Make sure your clients do not have to download a software to talk with you – you might need to test different alternatives to see which ones are the easiest for your clients. Ideally, they would only have to click on a secure link to join the session, like we do with Isosconnect.
- Do not use the same video link for each session. You do not want clients accidentally bombing each other’s sessions.
- Make sure that yours and your clients’ privacy is not at risk. See here our tips, with a focus on Zoom and their latest AI issue
Protect yourself and your clients against no-shows
No-shows quickly eat at your energy and income: you lose a slot you could have used to support someone else. You might not get paid. No-shows also undermine the consistency of the therapy.
There is not much you can do to avoid them entirely. But there are steps you can take to minimise the risks:
✔️establish a clear payment and cancellation policy at the first contact.
✔️ send a friendly yet clear reminder ahead of any session.
Minimize booking and admin hurdles
Does this sound familiar: someone calls you to book an appointment. You make a quick note of it only to realise once at your desk that the slot overlaps with another one?
If you juggle with different types of sessions, have some recurring or others not, you may end up having diary conflicts.
The quick fix is having your agenda, booking links, and professional emailing (and reminders) all in one same system. You limit the risks of confusion, and even avoid it entirely.
Once you leave the NHS, you inherit the admin job. You don’t want this extra load to undermine the mental space and the care you dedicate to your patients and clients.
We created isosconnect with this goal: to help health and well-being practitioners in the UK empower others – not waste their energy in tech and admin bottlenecks.
