RESOURCES & INFORMATION FOR THE IBCLC

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.

Figuring out how to become an IBCLC is often the most challenging part of the whole process. Unlike other related healthcare fields (such as clinical social work, physical and occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, and counseling), there are only a handful of established university programs that include the education component along with the clinical component in an organized and structured way. In other words, you’re not likely to be able to get a master’s in lactation and have your department chair help you land an internship at an outpatient lactation clinic. 

Because the sources for CERPs are so diverse, and you may be accumulating them piecemeal, it's important to have a solid system in place to keep them organized. 

Secure messaging is so important for private practice. Our Code of Professional Conductrequires that we protect our clients' privacy, and we are also subject to laws like HIPAA (US), PIPEDA (Canada), and the GDPR (EU). I've written here about why you can't use free Gmail to communicate with your clients, but as my guide to secure messaging explains how you can create an environment that allows you to use a G-Suite email to communicate with your clients.

You may not be aware of this, but one important component of HIPAA is that you must post your Notice of Privacy Practices on your website.

The care plan might be the most important document IBCLCs generate in our practices. Sure, our charts are essential for documenting what's going on with a dyad, and those superbills are critical for helping our clients fight for the reimbursement they're entitled to under the ACA. Pediatrician reports remind doctors that we are allied health professionals, part of a team working towards improving health outcomes through coordinated care.

Being HIPAA compliant isn't optional for IBCLCs. Our clients are entitled to insurance reimbursement for our services under the Affordable Care Act. In order for them to be able to submit the appropriate paperwork, we need to have an NPI number, and that number is what transforms us into a HIPAA-covered entity. In order to help you understand your responsibilities under HIPAA, I've created this free guide.