178 Spring 2026 Paperwork Shape Up

Spring cleaning is not just for closets. It is for your paperwork.

In this episode, I walk you through a Spring 2026 paperwork shape up and show you exactly what to fix, what to update, and what to stop ignoring. This is not about panic. It is about systems. When your documentation is clean and current, compliance becomes steady instead of stressful.

We start with the core clinical paperwork every counselor should review. Informed consent. Practice policies. Release of information. HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices. Then we move into the newer pressure points, including House Bill 4224 website posting requirements and the No Surprises Act Good Faith Estimate.

I also address the pieces that are not always spelled out clearly in the rules but still matter, like social media policies, AI consent, and supervision disclosures. Technology moves fast. Legislation moves differently. Your paperwork has to account for both.

This conversation is about transparency. Clients deserve to understand what they are agreeing to. And you deserve documentation that protects your license and reflects the way you actually practice.

In this episode, we cover:

• What must be included in your informed consent and client file under Texas rules
• How to comply with House Bill 4224 website and facility posting requirements
• How to implement the No Surprises Act Good Faith Estimate clearly and correctly
• Why technology, AI use, and Releases of Information require explicit, structured consent

If you have been telling yourself you will update your paperwork “when things slow down,” hear this clearly: things rarely slow down on their own. Compliance is not about fear. It is about alignment. When your forms match your practice and your practice matches the rules, you reduce risk and increase clarity.

Want to learn more? Check out this month's free resource from Kate Walker Training. 

If this episode raised questions about documentation, supervision requirements, or how to build systems that support ethical growth, you do not have to figure that out alone. Those are the exact conversations we have inside the Step It Up Membership, where we walk through the rules, clean up the forms, and build practices that are sustainable, compliant, and steady.

Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit. 

Transcript

Why Paperwork Creates Risk

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We already know when clients are filling out paperwork, they're in an anxious state, right? Anxiety goes up, cognition goes down. They're not digesting this the way we think they are. And so having multiple pieces of paper or multiple things that they've got to keep up with. And was it part of the informed consent? Was it a separate thing? It's really, really nice if you can keep as much of it as you can in the one document.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Welcome to the last therapist. Building practices. And here's your host.

Episode Goals And CE Options

Core Documents You Must Review

Ethics, Rules, And Checklists

Building A Strong Service Agreement

Fees, Good Faith Estimates, And Receipts

Late Cancels, No‑Shows, And Contact Rules

Social Media Boundaries Inside Consent

Limits Of Confidentiality And State Law

Tech, Telehealth, And AI Consent

Records, Security Links, And Transparency

Death, Incapacity, And Record Custody

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Happy spring. And you know what that means. It's time to clean up the paperwork that's been sitting in the aisle deal with that later pile since January. I know, I know. Paperwork is nobody's favorite topic. But here's why this matters. Messy paperwork doesn't just create stress for you, it creates risk. Outdated informed consents, supervision contracts that don't match current board rules, missing clauses in your policies. These are the things that come back to bite you during audits, complaints, or when a supervised relationship goes sideways. So today we're doing a paperwork shapeup. I'm walking you through what to review, what to update, and what to stop ignoring. This episode is right at an hour, so settle in. And if you're thinking, ah, I wish I could get CE credit for this, well, step it up, members do. We'll talk about that at the end, so hang in there. Now, let's get to work. The spring 2026 paperwork shapeup. So the core clinical paperwork that we'll talk about are the informed consent for treatment and practice policies. I call this a service agreement sometimes, but this is called for in the rules. We'll talk about an ROI, stands for release of information. We'll talk about HIPAA notice of privacy practices. Go ahead and pop that link open. And we'll talk about, of course, BHEC and the House Bill 4224 requirements and the No Surprises Act good faith estimate. You remember that? That was a long time ago. Remember when we were all freaking out about that? Now, you know, it's just a new day, new freak out. So, and that turned out to be pretty easy. That turned out to be a pretty easy thing to abide by. I'm also going to talk about uh some additional paperwork. Uh, for example, a sliding fee schedule if you want to include federal poverty standards with that. Uh, I put an asterisk or a star by supervision documentation because it's additional. You know, we're not all supervisees or under supervision, so we're not all gonna have this. But if you are under supervision, it goes under the required paperwork. And you might have a client satisfaction survey or a feedback survey. I've talked about that before, an ethical way to get client feedback so that you can use it in your marketing. No, I'm not gonna tell you how to get testimonials and I'm not gonna tell you how to hold up a the QR code and say, hey, give me a good Google review. But this is a really good way to get client feedback. And then a consent for technology. We've talked about this uh in the past two years. You, if you use any type of AI, you must get consent, just like when you were a grad student and you wanted to videotape your clients because your professor said so. You have to have a separate consent. There has to be something that they understand. If they don't consent, you can't use that software. And then the revocation of consent, and we'll talk more about that. And I say that a lot. We'll talk more about that. We'll talk more about that. And I really hope that I circle back around. So please hold me accountable. All right, let's hit the rules. So if you're a social work or LMFT, I'm not leaving you out necessarily. Uh, it's just that the rules have become so streamlined and they align so nicely now. I I'm using our LPC rules as sort of the backdrop. There's really not a whole lot of difference when you get to the other licenses. If you're watching me from another state, of course, go check your state's documentation requirements. But I answered this question once in a thread on uh one of the traveling therapists things on Facebook. And somebody was asking, okay, so how do I know from state to state to state what the rules of are? And you know, it all goes back to the ACA Code of Ethics or even the APA Code of Ethics, right? So we are bound by our rules. That's where our licenses are held accountable, but all of our rules come from the ACA-APA code of ethics. So informed consent checklist. This is what you must have in your informed consent. And I'll I promise I'll go over it, but I want you to know that we also have a paperwork checklist. So I can actually reverse that. So with the paperwork, this is what has to be in the client file, right? So this is the paperwork you have to collect and the informed consent, which is a different document, that is everything that needs to be in your informed consent. And we will go through that step by step. You know, additional things if you do walk talk therapy, if you do a particular modality that requires a different kind of consent. For example, if you're going to be doing yoga or laying your hands on your client or something like that, of course, you're going to want to have additional consents, but that's something you need to discuss with your malpractice insurance and your attorney. This is just what's required by our rules. Now, the B heck thing, uh, I will give you an example of how I have put it on my website. The fun thing about these rules, when they roll out, there is no example, right? Nobody really can tell you that's right and that's wrong. And I know that makes you guys very, very nervous. Nobody likes that answer. We want to know that we're doing it right. And all we know until someone gets in trouble and they say, ah, that's wrong. Okay, right. All we can do is do our very, very best to follow the letter of what it's telling us to do. So this is the letter everybody got. If you sign up for notifications from BHEC, which you should, and if you don't, do that today. And it is letting us know, much like the good faith estimate, like good faith was a federal law. And that's why we were a lot of us were kind of irritated because BHEC wasn't talking about it. And they're like, it's not our rule. We didn't come out with that. That was federal. Well, this is a House bill, so it's not coming from BHEC, but BHEC's in charge of enforcing it. So this didn't go to rules committee. This didn't go to our 30-day comment period or anything like that. This is from this is for all licensed professionals. It's kind of like when they come out with uh, you know, everybody's got to have a background check or everybody has to get fingerprinted or everybody has to take the sex trafficking course. You know, that is a statewide mandate for all licensed professionals. BHEC, LPC, LMFT, social work and psychology, they'll enforce that and they'll say something to the effect of, hey, you know what? If you take a sex trafficking course, we'll allow that to count as a CE. But that doesn't come from them. They're just enforcing it. And this is much the same thing. All right, so everybody hold me accountable for what I'm talking about because I'm going to go out of the PowerPoint and into an example of an informed consent for treatment. And I believe this is actually available, as I mentioned before, in the Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses Facebook group, but it is also in your Kate Walker training profile. So you do have this as a PDF. So the service agreement is going to start off with a description of what is inside, right? We're going to tell you what is going to be there, then we're going to give you the thing, and then we're going to tell you what you just got. So we're going to start with the welcome and their rights to revoke the agreement at any time. The revocation will be binding unless we have taken action in reliance on this agreement. Now, this is in red because I'm not going to answer this question tonight. Folks want to know what to do. Well, what if they owe me money? Well, what if, you know, I'm going to send them to collections and things like that? That does involve HIPAA and it does involve breaking confidentiality. So I'm just speaking to this agreement. This agreement is uh it's like an MOU, right? A memorandum of understanding. This is saying you and I have an agreement until we don't. And that's okay, right? It's not like a legal thing and we're gonna go sue each other. All right. So that's in red, just to understand that could be an exception of when we would not hold up our end. This is a description of counseling services. And we're gonna give them the good, the bad, and the ugly. And if you're a grad student, you did something like this in your internship where you had to come up with some kind of a disclosure to help clients understand the commitment that it can not always make you feel better, or you'll feel worse before you feel better. Uh, this also includes information about meetings. So the initial assessment piece will last from one to four sessions. Well, that's my theory. You may have a different theory. You may have an assessment that goes for weeks. So you would plug in according to your theory about the assessment and how meetings will work and the attendance and things like that. Now, that's again very high level because we're going to dive into it deeper here when it comes to professional fees. Now, I am a huge stickler for making sure people understand the uh late cancel no show policies. So the good faith estimate rules stipulate that everybody gets it. What's included are all reasonably expected costs. It has to have client information, service descriptions, itemized list with codes, expected charges, NPI tax ID, etc. Sounds like a receipt, doesn't it? We all have that, right? So it's not a big deal if you're already using some sort of a form or receipt with those things. It has to be paper or electronic, and printable is the verbiage that I've seen most often. It has to be something that the client can print out and it informs them of their rights. And so that is under fees for my clients. So uh I only do self-pay, I don't do insurance. And so for me, it's like, okay, you pay and then you leave and you may come back or you may not. So your understanding is this is the current fee per session, and I could I fill this in. And an example, if you attend three sessions, the estimated total would be three times that number. Okay, so there's your estimate, and they're entitled to a copy of this good faith estimate. And again, this I didn't get this from an attorney. This is just something that I've used and I've used, I've gotten from other people. And so it follows the rule from for what the good faith estimate is. But remember, it's a federal thing, not an LPC LMFT social work psychology thing. And so they can't tell you the right way to do it. And I've seen it all kinds of different ways, and I'm sure you have too. I will show you uh one of the things that we do is we include it in our confirmation email. So this is just an automated email that we send out once our clients schedule. So here's all the information, here's your Zoom link, clients, payments, no surprises act right here. And so this is not printable necessarily, though. I mean, I guess they could. So we make sure we do have it in two places. We have it in that confirmation email, and we have it in the form that they sign and they acknowledge, right? So, in my opinion, more is better. And so if you have it in more than one place, at least you can talk about it. And then this also goes into this is how we comply with the No Surprises Act. Everything is a hot link, even in our intake paperwork. So they can click that link and they can go to the No Surprises Act and verify for themselves, okay, this, you know, Kate's following the rules here, this practice is following the rules. And we talk about the receipt as their proof of payment and how we explain that every receipt says exactly what services were rendered, and that we'll never submit claims to insurance on their behalf. So no surprises. We're never going to come to them and say, Well, your insurance didn't pay, so I don't even know if you can do that. Okay. So let's go back to our example of a service agreement. Changes and cancellations. Uh, we understand there are unforeseeable circumstances, and then I go through in detail how I charge them, why I charge them. Uh, this actually showed up in one of those Facebook threads the other day. Like, how do you do this if your client shows up 15 minutes into a session? You know, do you build them for 45 minutes? And I was interested to see people's responses. I mean, my opinion is I've sold the time the morning of your appointment, right? I can't book another appointment. That hour is gone. It's yours. If you want to show up, great. If you don't want to show up, well, it's still something you've purchased and you'll be charged for the entire 60 minutes. And I make that very, very, very transparent. There's a note here about clients who have prepaid. I put that there because I know some of you guys do that. And so uh I'm not for it or against it. Just be aware that you need to have something called escrow, right? You need to have money set aside. So if they don't show, you've got their money. Like you've got to give it back, right? That's not just a donation to your, you know, new tires fund. So if you are doing some sort of a deal where they prepay for three sessions and they get a discount or something like that, be sure you're very, very clear about how that fits into your late cancel no show policy. I explained how to contact us, how and why we answer the way we do. We talk about how we don't, and this is my practice. You guys, you know, you do your your own way, but we don't text, we don't email with clients. Everything that is delivered electronically to our clients is automated from a HIPAA compliance scheduling platform. Right. As I mentioned before, if I've sold your session, I don't really care if you're running late. It's your time. I mean, I'll sit here and read a book till you show up, right? I mean, I'll work on my marketing or something. So I don't want back and forth, you know. I of course I'm concerned. I had a client recently who had a heart attack, and you know, she'd called and she'd let us know. And of course I'm concerned, and I'm called and you know, saw how she was doing. But that going back and forth, number one, I don't want to be the barrier between them and 911, right? I don't want them to call me and say, should I call 911? My I'm having chest pains. I don't call me, go, you know, call the emergency room. So I'm very, very clear about how and why I have my contact policies. Now, here's the thing: Facebook and social media policies, this is still not in the rules. So, in fact, if you go back and you see we have our informed consent, because that's what we're diving into right now is the informed consent. There's nothing here about a social media policy. But all of the boards have one. If you go to BHEC and you go to the individual member boards, you will see that they have a social media policy. Okay, I suspect they don't put it in the rules because the technology moves so fast. I'm not really sure. Um, it's not in our paperwork checklist from our rules, but it is absolutely 100% best practices. The reason I didn't do it, I know because it's in your informed consent. That's where I'm advocating for you to put it. That's where I would put it if I were you. I have met with lots of you folks who have lots of different pieces of paper, like here's the piece of paper for your social media, here's the piece of paper for AI, here's the piece. I want you to put it all into an informed consent. It's like when you go to the doctor and you sit down with the iPad and you're going through everything, right? It's all one train of thought. And we already know when clients are filling out paperwork, they're in an anxious state, right? Anxiety goes up, cognition goes down. They're not digesting this the way we think they are. And so having multiple pieces of paper or multiple things that they've got to keep up with. And was it part of the informed consent? Was it a separate thing? It's really, really nice if you can keep as much of it as you can in the one document. So, going back to our service agreement, here's just a simple Facebook and social media policy. Uh, social media including, but not limited to, and you, you know, you could fill all the things in. It's not a secure form of communication. We don't provide therapy there. We won't acknowledge you or return DMs. We will not acknowledge you or respond to emergencies. Again, if you have an emergency, I really want them to know how and what to do if there's an emergency. This is important. If you may use social media to reveal your own identity as a client of a cheat balance, but you may not reveal the identity of another client, doing so would be a breach of confidentiality, and a cheat balance would take all available steps to protect the revealed client's rights, including blocking the offending client from accessing our social media, contacting legal authorities, and referring the offending client to another practice. Hey, quick heads up. This month's free bonus is something I wish every supervisor had before their first supervisee inquiry. It's called From Inquiry to First Session, the Supervision Interview Guide. This is a step-by-step checklist that walks you through the entire onboarding process from initial contact to first paid session. And it includes the exact strategies to protect yourself from supervisee shoppers. You know, the people who schedule consultations, ask for documents, maybe even sign a contract or state paperwork, and then ghost you because they went with someone else. The guide includes screening questions, red flags to watch for, email templates, and a reference release form you can use right away. It also covers a new thing boards are looking really closely at about documenting dollar value in work exchange supervision arrangements. Grab it at KateWalkerTraining.com slash bonus. Whether you're supervising now or thinking about it for later, this will save you time and frustration. Do you have a lot of recourse there? I don't know. I honestly don't know if you've got someone in the public who reveals the identity of another person in the public. But you can certainly do everything you possibly can. And I've asked me how I know. I don't know if this has ever happened to y'all. And then, of course, we all know this from grad school, or you should the limits of confidentiality. So if you are listening to me or watching this from another state, just know that this might be different for your state. Texas is uh a lot of times a permission to warn rather than a duty to warn state. And so it's really important that you are aware. We ours is located in uh chapter 611, but it's also located. In our handy dandy PDFs, which is on the BHEC website. So this is just a copy paste of what's on the BHEC website and what is in the rules. So this is the latest rule PDF, and you can get this on the BHEC website. And when you scroll all the way to the end, you see lots and lots of other codes besides ours, other relevant laws. And this is extremely important because it parallels HIPAA, it refers to HIPAA. But this 611 at the beginning, that details the limits of confidentiality. So if you ever want to know where people get this, where they get that for their consent for treatment, it's so easy to find now because it's in at the very same rule book that our rules live in. And I wanted you to see that. So you go through that at your leisure, and that's a whole other webinar that we can do on that. But it must be in your consent for treatment because that's part of our informed consent checklist. You must have the limits of confidentiality. This next bullet I just wanted to talk about really quickly intent to use another individual for counseling, treatment, intervention. That never applied to me. So I didn't ever address it. But you may work in an office where one person does the assessment, then another person delivers the services, then another person does their outtake paperwork or something like that. Here's a section for us about technology. Now, I do not mention AI because we as Abyss did not use AI. So if you are using a platform that has AI, you would need to really draw your client's attention to this. And I'm not familiar with it enough. But if you're on a platform that's utilizing AI for notes and your client says no, you've got to hit the stop button or you can't use it for their information. So counseling via technology always gets us into distance counseling. And Texas got out of the distance counseling arena. They just said, nope, we don't have any jurisdiction here. If you're in Texas, that's counseling. Okay. If your client's in Texas, that's counseling. If your client goes to Rhode Island and you decide that you want to talk to them on the phone in a way that reminds the world of therapy, we don't call that counseling. But Rhode Island might. And if they think it's counseling and they want to go after you, well, you know, best of luck. So it's we do address this here a bit. And so the client understands, especially if they're on a military base, those have a little bit different rules. Forward operating base, a fob. So if you have a clientele that does is in the military and they are on a forward operating base, so they do they do their sessions on a military base, there might be some exceptions to that. Okay, the other thing that must be in your service agreement is how you handle professional records. And that takes us to the B heck thing in a second, right? So there are a couple of things that we do. Apparently, didn't make it into this example. So everybody, I mean, almost everybody I know sends paperwork to their client electronically. I'm sure there are a few of you out there still doing it with paper and pen, and that's great. But you can embed hot links into your informed consent when you do it electronically. And so just saying, hey, we use a HIPAA compliant records system, that's great. But what if you could give them the link to where they can see how secure your system is? Right? What if they could click the link and actually see the BAA, right? So I encourage you wherever you can to use those hot links to give folks who are interested. Okay, well, I want to know how they store their records. I want to know just how HIPAA compliant everything is. So, for example, you may have seen in our confirmation letter, at your appointment time, your therapist will admit you to the HIPAA compliant Zoom room for information about how Zoom is HIPAA compliant. And remember, this was right after COVID. And I think, you know, and most of us were kind of a little crazy about HIPAA compliance when it came to these platforms. Well, now our clients can click the link and see for themselves, right? And that adds, I love transparency. Transparency is the best. Then your termination, death, or incapacity, making sure that you have that information filled out. I actually, I'm not gonna tell you, I'm gonna show you. Because this is what the board does. I copied and pasted this sentence from the rule. You have to have an established plan for custody and control of the client's mental health records in event of death, incapacity, or termination of practice. It doesn't say professional will. It doesn't say that person has to be a licensed professional. It doesn't say that they have to have the password hidden below a bookcase under two locks with a key that's you know only accessible from a you know a rock in your front yard. So you have a lot of leeway here, but if you're using our transparency rule, as much information, more information is better, right? So helping your and uh Don Brunkenhofer, Dr. Don Brunkenhofer did a great presentation on this for us. And the transparency, the ideas that she had about what folks in your circle can do to help your clients. Everything from putting a notice on your office to these are the clients I want you to call, these are the clients I don't want you to call, helping right, being as transparent and directive as you possibly can. So fill that out. Always have a person. For me, it's my husband. You know, he's trained in HIPAA, he knows HIPAA better than I do. And he's got my credit cards. So I use a company, right, that has to be paid. And I'm responsible for these records for seven years for adults or seven years past the age of majority for kiddos, right? So we need we need that credit card to keep working. And so for me, the best option was my husband. Information about minors and parents and the understanding that the law may or may not allow parents to examine their child's treatment records. That is not a hall pass to keep records from parents. Again, that's another presentation, but that's one of the things that we're going to talk about as we go into the BHEC stuff. All right, so that is, oh, and of course, we've got our notice for clients with the new new, it's not new, it's about four or five years old. You should have this in your consent for treatment. How to contact BHEC. And this is just a little graphic that I grabbed off of their website. You can also, you know, you have this now, so you can copy that verbiage and the contact information as well. All right, so that is our consent for treatment. So let's see where that puts us. We had fees and arrangement for payment. We had counseling purposes, goals, and techniques, any restrictions placed on the license by the council. This also appears, BTW, when clients do an online search for you. There's now, if you have any kind of restriction or an adjudication against you, there's a PDF that shows up in your profile and they can click on it and see all the details. So make sure that that's in your informed consent as well. If you are under supervision, this information has to be there. I have begged the board to not put our address and our contact information because I think that's a barrier. Like if a client has a problem with my supervisee, this is the soapbox moment. I'm sorry. I want them to complain to the board, then call me. Right. So yes, it's good that it's there, but I definitely want to empower clients to go to the board first. So name of the supervisor, address of the supervisor, supervisor's contact information. Yes, that can be your office. It does not have to be your home, and your qualifications. That means the alphabet soup after your name, right? All the letters. And then the name and address and telephone number of the council, which we had, and the established plan for custody. So there's really nothing new here. But if you're brand new, now you know. Now you know what exactly has to be in your informed consent. All right. Let us go then to our B heck. So we are required to prominently post on our website and at and, so not or, because some things are or. This is an and. And at any facility, detailed instructions for a consumer to. So if you do have a brick and mortar office, this has to be on a on a piece of paper somewhere. So detailed instructions for a consumer to request their uh records, contact the counsel, and file a complaint. So my practice is achieve balance.org. And I'm in the process of transitioning. I'm not seeing clients, so please accept, you know, my apologies here. We kind of we're in we're a work in progress right now. But I want you to notice this is where I have chosen to put the information about House Bill 4224. That does not mean it's the right thing to do. It doesn't mean that's what somebody told me to do. I am simply following the directive to post it prominently on my website. So they can click that and they can get the information about house bell. I didn't know where else to send them. Like this is the only thing I could find. Okay, here's the information about the house bill. If they want to contact BHEC, that link takes them to BHEC to the contact us page, not just random, a random page on the website. If they want to request records, then this is on our contact form, our about us form. So we're virtual practice. If you need to send information or request to records, please let us know by going to KateWalkerTraining.com forward slash support, send written requests to, and this is our PO box. Then if they want to file a complaint with the attorney general's office, that link takes them here. Now here's my problem with all of this. If you don't know how to get into your back office, and I went into my menus because I'm a WordPress user, and then I knew how to get in here and add these things. I can I knew how to add a link, I knew how to add sublinks. Not everybody knows how to do that. So displaying this prominently on your website may take you some time if you're not aware of how to do it. So if you if you're a WordPress user and you want to know how I did it, I went into appearance, menus, and then you have a primary navigation or a primary menu. Make sure you select that. And then if you want to add something to the menu, custom link, which is what I did. So I had a custom link. I go here to the consumer, copy, paste, and then I called it contact the AG's office. Now I'm not gonna do it twice because I've already done it, but that's how I added this to file a complaint. So if I click and show you there we go. That's just a link I copy pasted and then I click save, and then the menu appears on my website. So that's how I chose to do it. But I have that's still to be, and I know in some of our groups, some other folks posted how they did it. So if you're a virtual counselor and don't have a website, contact BHEC. You know, um, contact your your malpractice because I it's almost like they're telling us you have to have one or the other, right? You have to have a website or you have to have a brick and mortar. Maybe you you'd put it on your psychology today. That's kind of a website. I know for me, I'll go back to remember my confirmation email. So this email goes out, and we also have a confirmation email with the to click to go to the new client paperwork. Maybe you put a hot link there. So it doesn't say, then this is what worries me. It doesn't say to put it in the consent form, right? There's nothing about this that is in our rules yet. Maybe it's coming. So nothing in here says this is where the BHEC information goes. That's a question for BHEC. I'd contact them and just let them know hey, look, I don't know how to comply with this rule. Okay, so let's see if we're covering everything. We've got our informed consent. Let's see, ROI. We haven't talked about that yet. An ROI is when you are seeing a client who is also seeing another therapist, or they have seen another therapist and you want to coordinate treatment. Remember, for all of our licenses for the most part, they want us to make an effort to contact and coordinate care. That means you have to have a HIPAA-compliant authorization for the release of client information. So this is in your profile, it's as a PDF. And it's not just information because this is one thing, you know, your client can choose to exclude information as well. All right. So if you're not familiar with an ROI, just know it does have the ability to exclude and it does have an expiration date. So your client can put an expiration date, or it will expire one year from when it's created. So feel free to use that. And let's see what else. HIPAA, notice of privacy practices. This kind of escapes us a little bit. And um yes, we are putting information about HIPAA in our informed consent when we have all that chapter 611, right? All the chapter 611 absolutely mirrors HIPAA in so many ways. But one thing you can do, and there are pamphlets in lots of different languages. So when you go to these websites, you the either the hhs.gov or the hippha.gov, you can get PDFs. So something as simple as just this is pretty extensive. I know, but it's only one page long. I thought it was a PowerPoint. I had one that I gave to clients. I had one in Spanish and one in English. So do a little digging around. And this is something that you can have. Remember, I said not too many pieces of paper? Well, this is something that would be good to have as an additional form or additional pamphlet that you give to your clients. And then the sliding fee schedule, I'm not gonna show you guys that. You can Google federal poverty standards if you are offering a sliding fee scale. That's a great way to make sure you're doing that fairly. Supervision documentation, client satisfaction fee. Oh, yeah, I told you how I was gonna do that. So here's how you can do that. If you send out a survey in a follow-up email and you say, we'd love to know how we're doing, and you ask questions about your wait time, how satisfied are you that your issues are being listened to, that your client, your counselors ending the session, starting the session on time, you get enough data from that, then you can post something on your website. Like four out of five of our clients think we are outstanding at starting and ending sessions on time. Four out of five of our clients think that they are feel that they are listened to and that their therapist is empathetic. So you can do surveys. In fact, your doctor does it all the time. I mean, I know every time I leave the doctor or the dentist, I'm getting some kind of a survey to fill out. Well, they don't say, hey, Kate Walker said we're great. It says, you know, four out of five people think we're amazing. Uh, it's interesting though, I did get a QR code from my doctor the other day. And he was like, or his PA was like, hey, can you give us a Google review? And I'm like, hmm, we don't do that. You know, we're counseling, we're a different type of profession. Our clients aren't just wanting to reveal who they are and shout our kudos from the rooftop. So please be careful if you are asking or soliciting feedback that you're going to post publicly. We talked about technology, revocation of consent. We covered that when we talked about the release of information, and we talked about that when the consent form, when we explained to the client, hey, you have all the power here. If you don't want to do this anymore, totally fine. Going back through the paperwork checklist, if you're not sure what should go into your client file, this is it. LPC and LMFT and social work, they're all they're not much different. So your signed informed consent, the intake assessment, the dates of counseling, treatment, intervention, well, that's also on your soap notes. It's also on the receipts that you get. Those dates are documented there. Principal treatment methods that goes into your notes, progress notes, which to me that's redundant, but that's okay. A treatment plan and billing information. And if you don't know what a soap note is, there it is. And not everybody gets taught that in grad school, so I want to be sure and throw that in there. So S subjective client says I'm sad. Objective. I noticed they were crying. Assessment client appears to be suffering due to a recent breakup. The plan is to do cognitive behavioral therapy interventions. And when they come back to see me, I'll check their homework. Other things that you can put into the packet that you give clients. One of the things I loved to give my clients or potential clients or new clients was an FAQ. Like, what's the difference between counseling and social work and psychology? You know, I thought that was kind of neat. So I gave them that. Another thing I gave them was how to get the most out of therapy. And that was a fun thing. I made just, you know, the, you know, week one, you're coming to therapy, start cutting back on caffeine and get a journal. Cut simple sugars from your diet, take a walk outdoors, make an appointment for a physical. So this was just me giving folks pointers. If they'd never been to therapy before, this would be how we together had the best shot at having some really amazing outcomes. So get creative. This is, you know, it doesn't have to all be according to what the board says we have to have. All right. So that's it. Thanks for listening. If you haven't grabbed this month's free bonus yet, head to KateWalkerTraining.com slash bonus and get the supervision interview guide. It's the exact process I've used to qualify serious supervisees and avoid wasting time on shoppers. And if you're already supervising and want ongoing support with situations like this, plus templates, live coaching, expert webinars, and CE credits, check out the Step It Up membership at KateWalker Training.comslash Step It Up. And I'll see you next week. If you loved today's episode, be sure to leave a five star review. It helps other BMS therapists find the show and build practices that come up. Big thanks to Rigidly Walker for our original fun comments and public heads. intro and to Carl Guyanella for editing this episode and making us sound amazing. See you next week.