Christine Li 00:00:00  I think that technology, and especially AI, has the potential to transform a lot of things, especially for group practice owners. It’s going to touch people’s lives in ways that we probably don’t even expect and can’t even imagine right now. But I think more concretely, definitely a lot of the admin work.

Maureen Werrbach 00:00:18  Welcome to the Group Practice Exchange podcast, where we talk about all things related to group practice ownership. I’m your host, Maureen Werrbach. 

This episode is sponsored by Therapy Notes. Therapy Notes is my favorite EHR, and it’s one that I’ve been using in my own group practice since 2014. They’ve got everything you need to be successful in your group practice, and they’re constantly making updates and have live support. If you want two free months of therapy notes, go to Therapynotes.com/r/thegrouppracticeexchange.com. 

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Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. Today I have Christine Lee. She’s the founder and CEO of Mad Tire. I’ve had her on before, but it’s been probably about a year. Last time we talked about just revolutionizing at a network billing for therapists and group practice owners.

Maureen Werrbach 00:02:28  This time we’re going to be talking about the future of mental health tech. So. Hi, Christine. How are you?

Christine Li 00:02:33  I’m doing well. Thanks for having me on again.

Maureen Werrbach 00:02:35  Yeah, yeah. It’s so fun seeing you on, like, social media because you partner with some other therapy people and you guys always do really fun, like video type, like skits, almost. And I don’t know if it’s called a skit, but you know what I’m talking about. Or they’re like, kind of funny and catchy videos. I of course, I’m so bad at and don’t do. So whenever I see your face, I’m like, oh, this will be a funny, like, fun video. Okay, so we’re going to be talking about what you’re seeing as like coming down the pipeline when it comes to tech. It’s specifically in mental health care. I know people in the group practice exchange are always talking about tech. And it comes from like two ends, like scared space and like fearful space and then like the excitement and the opportunity space.

Maureen Werrbach 00:03:18  So I wanted to get some of your opinions and feedback of what you’re seeing coming down the pipeline. So I guess I’ll start with an easy question, which is like, are there any emerging trends that you are seeing or innovations that you’re seeing in mental health related tech that group practice owners should be keeping an eye out for?

Christine Li 00:03:37  Yeah, I mean, I’m sure everyone’s kind of been saying this, but obviously there’s sort of the AI trend. I actually used to work at Google on Google AI, and so I’ve actually been following the space for a really long time, and we’ve seen stuff like AI notes. I think that’s kind of just the first wave. There are so many things that I think I can help with. With the recent developments in what’s called LMS, these large language models and what they can do. And I think, you know, obviously there are services out there that are starting to do AI notes to help clinicians not have to do notes after their therapy sessions, which I think is one of the things that people hate doing the most.

Christine Li 00:04:19  I can see it also starting to help with like scheduling and just generally a lot of the admin work that no one really enjoys doing that much is going to be able to be automated. And even when it comes to billing and things like that, there are ways to whether that’s something that you know you’ll use directly or you’ll use a service that leverages AI to do it, just to make things simpler and easier so that there’s less manual work involved for everyone.

Maureen Werrbach 00:04:45  I had a podcast episode, I don’t know, a few weeks ago or a month ago with Uriah Guilford, and he was talking about AI for Intaking like literally AI that can communicate with a person in scheduling an appointment and getting them what information they need to get an appointment scheduled. And he’s been sort of testing the different programs out as well that does that. One of the big concerns that practice owners are having with that is related to data. And like obviously, wherever AI is concerned, there’s a concern of who’s collecting the data that is being received.

Maureen Werrbach 00:05:25  And like, what is the impact that that will have on not only clients and their private information, but also on, like what the future of being a group practice owner or what group practices look like in the future. So if someone who is in like the tech space, what are your thoughts? Because you obviously are in tech and specific working in the mental health world. So you kind of are toggling both of those worlds. How do you talk to people, practice owners who have that concern about using AI specifically, not tech? Because tech is, I see differently than AI, but using AI in their group practices?

Christine Li 00:06:04  Yeah, that’s a really good question. I get the question a lot.

Maureen Werrbach 00:06:06  Yeah, I’m.

Christine Li 00:06:06  Sure from people in general. And first of all, I think it’s a valid concern. I think there are ways to, you know, collect data and use data in ways that are not appropriate. But I will say there’s actually if you look at sort of, you know, whether it’s the terms of the privacy policy of services, they generally outline sort of how they’ll use the data.

Christine Li 00:06:29  And I’ll give a very specific example. So I’ve heard random things about media, for example, like, oh, how are they making money. Like are they selling our data. This isn’t even related to AI. Yeah. I’m like, no, we’re not selling your data. Like we have our pricing clearly on our website. That’s how we make money. But I think it’s easy to get into this. Oh my God, what if they have my data and. Are they selling it? What are they doing with it? I think in reality, no one’s really selling the data. That’s like, not really a thing people are doing. People might be using data to try to, you know, train their models and, you know, improve them and things like that. But that will always be or at least that should be outlined in sort of the terms of service and privacy policy agreements that these companies have. And so I think it’s important to look at that. And in a lot of cases, like in our case, if we were ever to do something like that, we would say something like, hey, we’re not going to necessarily use your data.

Christine Li 00:07:26  You know, there are ways to collect data kind of temporarily on the cloud and then just delete it and not save it on any of our servers. So like that’s definitely an option. Or we would be explicit and say, hey, we might use this data to improve things for you, but only for you. And it’s not going to necessarily be shared to anyone else. It’s just to improve your personalized service for yourself, because a lot of the data stuff is to help you personalize more. And I don’t know if you’ve tried using ChatGPT, but the more you talk to it and the more you, you know, ask the questions, it gets to know who you are and it sort of personalizes it to you. And there are these settings that’s like, don’t use my data for broader, you know, research or whatever it is. And so there’s ways around that. So I think it’s a valid concern, but it’s also perhaps not as scary as people may think.

Maureen Werrbach 00:08:14  Yeah, I can understand that.

Maureen Werrbach 00:08:16  Obviously you started in the billing space right? Beyond billing. What are you seeing that like will transform how group practice owners are businesses I guess. So we’re obviously seeing it in things like media that can do a lot of the billing related work for you, taking the human element out of it so you don’t have to spend all this time trying to figure out people’s benefits and all of those fun things. Where are you seeing it? Just in maybe in the next 1 to 3 years going because obviously there’s so much that’s going to happen in the next 5 to 10. But like short term near future, what are you seeing as being like the next bigger things that technology is going to transform in our industry?

Christine Li 00:08:58  Yeah. So right now, I mean, obviously we’re focused on out-of-network billing right now, but our goal isn’t just to be. We’re not just like, oh, we just want to do billing. We want to do it really well. And you know, we want to be the best at it.

Christine Li 00:09:09  And, you know, we really want to help people in that way. And lots of people are getting money back on therapy and therapists are getting paid their full rate, which is great. But I think that technology, and especially AI, has the potential to transform a lot of things, especially for group practice owners. You’re owning like a little bit of a larger business. You have, you know, employees or contractors, and there’s just generally more overhead associated with that. So all of the admin work, I don’t know if, you know, all group practice owners are doing their own marketing. And I think there are so many ways that tech and I can help with that, like whether it’s almost having a like a VA or something that’s helping you create social media posts. You can sort of like talk to AI, and there’s going to be ways where it can help you with sort of your admin work. I also think there are opportunities for AI to help with. I know you can talk to it like it’s not always going to give you, you know, 100% the right answer, but it’s the way that these machine learning models work is that it’s trained on so, so much data.

Christine Li 00:10:11  And so, you know, if you talk to it saying like, hey, I have this client, you know, dealing with this thing and it might be useful to, you know, have someone to or I guess, an AI bot to kind of, you know, talk to in some cases. And as long as, you know, obviously everyone’s gone through the schooling and certification, things like that. So, you know, if they’re saying something back, that just doesn’t make any sense. But sometimes it’s, you know, insightful. And so I think it’s going to touch people’s lives in ways that we probably don’t even expect and can’t even imagine right now. But I think more concretely, definitely a lot of the admin work, hopefully.

Maureen Werrbach 00:10:48  That’s what I’m thinking is like especially I see it on both ends in terms of new worker practice owners who don’t yet have the funds to be able to bring on administrative people. So they’re wearing all the hats and doing all of the admin leadership, being a therapist, being the HR person, where having that sort of support administratively could be helpful to take away their own time.

Maureen Werrbach 00:11:11  But even with larger practices that have full administrative teams, obviously using technologies and automating certain parts and can be helpful in terms of needing less administrative support and having admin that have to do like the human elements, the things that actually need a human touch to it, which obviously from an affordability standpoint could be helpful. Like I think about my practice, I have like six admin all doing different things. Yeah. Like someone who does just benefit checks, someone who does billing, someone who does payroll and making sure the offices have what they need. Someone who’s doing intakes and answering all the calls and scheduling the appointments, and then other person that kind of supports them on that. So I can imagine having more automation. One reduces mistakes in some ways, but also allows the people that are in administrative capacities to be able to do the things that really need that human touch to it.

Christine Li 00:12:14  100%, yes. And I think it’s going to be almost an expansion where I mean, yes, in some cases, maybe you don’t need as much staff, but I think what is going to happen is the staff that you do have, instead of having to hire more people to do all these different things and then have to, you know, have layers of management, managing the different people, you’re going to equip everyone with sort of some basic tech or, you know, AI and stuff.

Christine Li 00:12:40  And so everyone’s going to be leveraging these new tools to be able to do their job so much more efficiently and then sort of scale themselves up so that they can do more, they can do more of the complicated things and the more interesting things. And so that’s sort of how I would think about it.

Maureen Werrbach 00:12:54  So if there’s one piece of advice that you could give practice owners around embracing the future of mental health tech specifically, what would it be? If there’s one thing.

Christine Li 00:13:06  I would say, don’t be afraid to just try it out. I think it’s the best way to learn and make your own informed decision about things is just to try it out, see how you feel about it. I think you hear a lot of different things from different people. Some people are like, this is amazing. Some people are like, oh my gosh, you know, the data is not going to be safe. And you hear all these different things, but you’re not going to know how you really feel about it until you start trying it out in a small capacity.

Christine Li 00:13:32  And then if it’s, you know, really interesting, you can build on top of it. And if you’re like, this is not for me, then at least, you know. So I think the biggest thing is just to try it out.

Maureen Werrbach 00:13:40  So tell us a little bit, because obviously you were on for probably a little over a year. I feel like it’s been since you were on last talking about Montoya. But for those that maybe have started listening to my podcast, you know, under a year ago who may not be going back on old episodes, tell people a little bit about Montoya and how it helps solo and group practices right now. And if there’s anything going on, you know, coming down the pipeline on your end, feel free to share about that too.

Christine Li 00:14:07  Yeah. So Montoya is the core of what we do is we do out-of-network billing. So we sort of automate the super bill process, but we sort of automate the whole thing end to end, where we help clients understand what their benefits are, submit the claim, follow up with the insurance companies, basically do a lot of the billing admin work that no one wants to do.

Christine Li 00:14:27  And the goal really is to support both solo and group practice owners in getting if your private pay or you have some private pay clients supporting and getting paid your full cash rate while helping your clients get as much money back as possible from their insurance on therapy so that they can continue seeing you for longer.

Maureen Werrbach 00:14:47  So what does that look like? Because like hearing that versus I in-network with most insurances. So I don’t need to do a lot of the ad network billing stuff. But I use your.

Christine Li 00:14:59  Benefits.

Maureen Werrbach 00:14:59  Benefits calculator. And I was telling you before we aired that that was something I shared in my Q&A session yesterday when someone was freaking out about, you know, they don’t have admin support and realized at the beginning of the year that so many people’s deductibles reset. And she hadn’t been checking that. And people were, you know, angry because they thought they only had a copay. But obviously with their deductibles resetting, they owed full sessions. And she was like, I can’t afford to like bring on an admin.

Maureen Werrbach 00:15:28  But I also don’t have the time to check all these benefits. And so I had shared that. And so explain I guess so that piece, because I find that that’s something that people who are in network on a network, anyone who accepts insurance or doesn’t accept insurance, like this piece I found to be super helpful and so convenient. But then also talk a little bit about how you actually support people who are doing out-of-network billing to get their full fees.

Christine Li 00:15:53  Yeah. So the benefits calculator that you’re referring to are specifically is for out-of-network benefit. So whether you take insurance or not, you probably have some clients who are private pay and who don’t have one of the insurances that you’re currently taking, or you might be entirely private pay. And what this does is, you know, most people don’t know their, you know, insurance benefits, let alone this concept of out-of-network benefits. And so when clients, especially private pay clients, come to you and you’re like, oh, this is my fee. Whatever it is, let’s say like 250 a session, most people are like, oh, that’s kind of expensive.

Christine Li 00:16:26  And, you know, if you don’t take my insurance, I don’t know if I can afford this. And so what this tool lets you do is your client can just put in their name, date of birth and insurance information, and within three seconds, we’ll send a request to their insurance company, get back some information about what their out-of-network benefits are, and in a lot of cases, they can get up to 80% back on the cost of therapy, even if you don’t take their insurance directly. And so it’s just a very informative and educational tool for both therapists and their clients to just realize, oh, just because I don’t take their insurance doesn’t mean that they can’t use their insurance to potentially get, you know, thousands of dollars back on therapy per year. We’ve had someone, I think, last year get like over $20,000 back from insurance, which is wild.

Maureen Werrbach 00:17:15  Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. And then the other piece.

Christine Li 00:17:18  Yes. So that’s kind of the first part. Let’s say your client has these awesome benefits.

Christine Li 00:17:22  They’re like, okay, great. How do I use them. You have two options. You can be like, oh, I’ll give you a super bill. You figure it out yourself, which is what a lot of therapists choose to do. But the therapists who work with us just offer Montoya as an option. You obviously don’t have to force it on your client. You just tell your client, hey, there’s a service that can take care of all the super bills for you. And you know, there’s a small 5% fee that the client has to pay. But a lot of clients find it worth it because we don’t just submit the claim to insurance. We do all the follow through the paperwork. We call them if it gets denied things like that. And a lot of insurance companies are starting to ask for more information like, oh, can you submit this form in that form? And so we take care of all of that. Yeah. And we guarantee that the out-of-network claim or super bill goes through successfully or we give a full refund of our fees.

Christine Li 00:18:11  So it’s really risk free for clients and providers to just try it out.

Maureen Werrbach 00:18:14  Yeah. And convenient because it’s not easy as a person who has insurance to try to get your documentation, your super bills or whatever in the right hands. And so yeah, I wouldn’t as a client, I would just give up, you know? So it’s nice to have services like that that can literally get your Super Bowl and just do the work for you.

Christine Li 00:18:36  Yeah, yeah. It’s literally we try to make it as simple as possible. Right. Like adopting any sort of new tech or service is always like, oh, that’s, you know, do I want to do this? And so we’re literally like, you click a button or two and that’s it. And then we’ll sort of submit the claim for your client. We make it really easy.

Maureen Werrbach 00:18:52  So if people wanted to learn more about your services or what it looks like, where could they go to find more?

Christine Li 00:18:59  You can just go to our website. It’s mentaya.com.

Christine Li 00:19:06  We have information about our services, our pricing. We’re pretty transparent about how everything works. And you can also just create a free account. It’s free to just sign up and poke around with it. We believe in having allowing people to just sign up and kind of play around and see if it’s helpful for your practice. And if you want to try out our benefits calculator, which is the only thing that the therapist pays for since the client pays for the claims, James, you can, you know, subscribe to a benefits calculator. It’s $29 a month for a yearly subscription or 39 for a monthly subscription. And I think we have a promo code. So I think the promo code is TGP. Yeah. So if you just use that code, you get a month free to just basically try everything out for free. So I’d encourage you, especially since it’s sort of the beginning of the year, to try it, put it on your website, put it on your, I don’t know, Psychology Today profile, your email signatures, use it with all of your private pay clients and see if it helps you, you know, book more sessions with them.

Christine Li 00:20:04  Yeah.

Maureen Werrbach 00:20:05  Well thank you. I appreciate you coming back on again and giving us your insights from, you know, this tech perspective. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing.

Christine Li 00:20:14  Yeah. Of course. Thanks for having me.

Maureen Werrbach 00:20:17  Thanks for listening. Give us five stars on whatever podcast streaming service you use and I’ll see you next week.