Probably within 6 months realistically at the fastest. There's a lot more to starting a PP than just doing intakes that takes some time to learn. I do know some solo psychiatrists in large metros area in CA who take 1-2 insurances and not full yet after a year or two but others who are solo and are full within a few months. "Full" means different things to different people. You only need 1 to fill.
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Let's do the math. 20 hours a week of clinical work equates to forty 30 minute visits a week eventually when you're full. If you are seeing patients once a month, that means you need about a little more than 160 patients to fill (a little over 4 weeks a month).
If you're doing 5 intakes a day, that means you need 160/5 = 32 days to fill. But wait, isn't 5 intakes (if you do hourly intakes) 5 hours a day x 5 days a week = 25 hours per week? If you want to stick to 20 hours a week, then you'll do 4 intakes a day at the most which means 160/4 = 40 days to fill.
If you are working 5 days a week (uncommon as private practice psychiatrists work 3-4 days a week on average), that means you need at least 8 weeks (2 months) to fill at the fastest after subtracting days off/weekends and if you are working 4 days a week, then 10 weeks (2.5 months). This is not accounting for hours you need to do follow-up appointments nor does it account for any time off or holidays that you want.
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More realistically, you'd be doing 2-3 intakes per day and having 2-3 hours for follow-ups per day. At this rate, you'd need to do 160/2 = 80 days to fill. At 4 days a week of work, that means it would be 20 weeks = 5 months to fill at this pace if you don't take any days off (such as for holidays).
In both of these models, here some of the assumptions:
- Every intake you will accept as a patient. This is not common in private practice as you will do one time consultations or after the intake, you or they won't think it's a good fit. Whittling out those who aren't a good fit for you and vice versa is a way to build up a great PP panel that fits your practice style.
- You will be optimized from the get go and have reasonable processes in place to do at least 2 intakes a day.
- You're not doing any one hour follow-up visits (such as in psychotherapy). If you are, you would need to cut down the number of patients you need to fill by 4 each month per weekly psychotherapy patient. Unfortunately with insurance, you may have to prove that it is "medically necessary" for them to see you and not an alternative, like a cheaper therapist (if other people have thoughts on this, would love for you to chime in). Convenience for the patient or for you to have therapy+meds in one place doesn't count as "medical necessity" by insurance.
- You will work outside those 20 patient-facing hours a week doing admin work, such as doing notes and learning how to documenting in compliance with insurance, getting collateral, doing phone screens, working on your website, filling out forms, doing refills, networking with therapists and other psychiatrists, sorting out claims and working with ApexEDI, figuring out how to do your own bookkeeping and taxes, trying to get an office and furniture set up if you want to do in person appointments, etc.
- You won't get burnt out from the speed of the huge learning curve.
Also, one of the biggest reasons why people don't fill is because of obscurity: takes a long time to get on the insurance directory of listed providers, don't have a referral network yet, SEO isn't optimized, and other reasons why people can't find you. You're open for business and can help people, but they don't even know you exist!
