RESOURCES & INFORMATION FOR THE IBCLC

Overwork, compassion fatigue, burnout. It’s a common cycle for anyone in a helping profession, and it feels especially intense for lactation consultants because the stakes are so high—I mean, we’re working with babies who can’t eat! Compassion fatigue is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be the end of you.

Setting up the infrastructure for your lactation consultant private practice involved a lot of decisions, and managing your client files and communications can feel daunting. There are so many options, from paper forms to 100% paperless solutions to somewhere in between.

But just like with raising a baby, there is no one right way to do things. You’ve got to explore your options and figure out what fits your practice size, your practice setting, your budget, and your long term goals.

In this blog post, I’m going to explore the top EHR platforms used by lactation consultants throughout multiple key categories so that you can make the best decision for your private practice.

In this episode, Annie and Leah talk about the tough topic of setting your fees for your private lactation practice. It’s so important to know your worth as a business owner and to represent that fairly within your specific market. Once you’ve set your rate, you can begin working towards long-term goals for your business as a whole.

When you’re just starting out in private practice, you may wonder if you’ll ever get big enough to need a budget. Trust me—it’s never to early to set up good budgeting practices. Here are some tips that will help you get your money organized so you stay on top of the health of your business.

In this episode, Annie and Leah share their insights on what your website needs to have in order to attract your ideal client. Making your website easy to navigate and quickly get the necessary information is essential for a new and tired parent. Leah and Annie share their resources for online scheduling, HIPAA compliance, website design, and more.

When it comes to online scheduling, Acuity is my favorite of the HIPAA-compliant platforms out there, making it easy-peasy for someone to land on my website, learn about my services, and book an appointment all without any texting back-and-forth about time. But Acuity can do so much more for you—and even increase client self-efficacy.

You know you’re supposed to send something to the baby’s pediatrician after a lactation consult, but how do you know what exactly to include when you aren’t even sure if it’ll ever be read?

The world of lactation is constantly changing and evolving which means it’s critical to be up to date on current practices as well as always working to hone and improve your skills. This can be challenging as a solo private practice IBCLC. Today we are going to discuss ways to boost your skills and stay up to date so that you can provide top notch care to the families you serve.

You may not think it’s in your scope of practice to engage with insurance billing and coding—but if there are babies who are not getting human milk because insurance companies are shirking their responsibilities, then you may want to expand your understanding of your ethical duty to your clients.

In this episode of Lactation Business Coaching with Annie & Leah, we’re talking about the ever-present swinging pendulum of busy-ness as the owner of your private practice. We open up about the emotional and financial implications of both the busy and the lean times and how important it is to know that you’re not alone in this struggle. We both share our own perspectives and unique ways of tackling this trend and how to make the most of your downtime so you are continuing to grow your business. 

In this episode of Lactation Business Coaching with Annie and Leah, we discuss the importance of setting clear follow up policies to protect and guard your private practice and your personal life, as well as help your clients reach self-efficacy and get the care they truly need. It can be difficult to say no or to step back when a client is having difficulty, but most times, it’s what you both need to achieve your client’s goals. Catering to a client’s anxiety can lead to even more panic or prevent your client from seeking care they need from a medical professional.

Staying up too late to chart your visits is a problem that so many lactation consultants (and other healthcare providers) struggle with. I’ve got some ideas that may help you reduce the amount of time you’re spending on charting without sacrificing quality or client care.

Starting a business has challenges, especially when you’re coming from a volunteer background. But they’re nothing you can’t handle, with the right guidance and resources. Invest the time and the money now to create a solid foundation—that’s what’s going to bring you financial viability and joy. You can have it all: a business that works and the deep satisfaction that comes from helping families meet their breastfeeding goals.

Here’s a super simple website tip that might make your intake process just a little bit faster and easier.

I’ve been using Spruce for the better part of a year now and I have been extremely pleased with how well it’s performed for me and met my specific practice needs.

Lactation visits are unique in healthcare because most of the time we’re working with a parent and their baby (or babies). That’s why in my book on private practice I compare our work to couples therapy. Our job is to bring two people together, and these two people may have very different times.

You know how people say, "I just leave my work at the office" and all the IBCLCs are like hahahahahaha "if only!" 

Having standardized responses for the various inquiries you'll receive in you private practice means that you won't stumble or struggle to find the right words. And while you're encouraged to develop and think through all kinds of specific scenarios as you create your Policies and Procedures Manual, it can be relatively simple and extremely effective for your productivity to come up with a voicemail greeting or auto-text for vacation.

Since paperless is the name of my game, I want to make sure that you know about MilkNotes, developed by IBCLC Liz Flight to be a cloud-based charting system designed specifically for lactation work.

In the lactation community, Simple Practice doesn't get as much attention as some of the other platforms, so I thought I'd provide you with a brief face off of the key differences between Simple Practice and the two popular platforms it most resembles, ChARM and Jane.

A quick video tutorial to show you how to link charts in ChARM quickly and simply.

Full disclosure: I'm a continuing education junkie and can never say no to a lactation conference. In order to make sure all that education sticks, I want to be able to keep track of my conference handouts.

Managing client privacy and confidentiality is relatively straightforward when you're a solo practitioner. You only have yourself to worry about. But once you start working with other people in your private practice, you're going to need to institute policies and procedures to make sure that everyone connected with your practice is maintaining the same high standards that you have for yourself. Here are some basic steps you can take to insure privacy compliance.

What’s something you wish you were told when starting private practice?

It's no secret that I just love Acuity Scheduling. Once I started taking appointments online instead of scheduling them myself, I freed up a lot of extra time for myself and I never looked back. I've tried several different schedulers and while the ones built into Jane and ChARM also work well, none of them are as robust as Acuity.