Welcome, my name is Cristina Smugala, and I am a therapist and private practice owner. It is my passion to support you and the incredible work that you do. I created The Revitalized therapist after experiencing increased profits and a massive drop in my stress levels after I decided to add a virtual assistant to my practice. Adding support services created space to do more of what I love, improved the quality of my work, increased my productivity and my passive income stream potential. The virtual assistants at The Revitalized Therapist are HIPAA trained and possess unique training specific to the needs of therapists and their clients.

To learn more about my private practice, go to Restoring Clarity Counseling and Coaching.


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Our therapists love that our virtual assistants give their clients the personal attention they deserve. We specialize in taking care of the business side of your private psychotherapy practice.  

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Reality Check

As my psychotherapy practice became more successful than ever, and my waitlist continued to grow, I realized it was time to hire an assistant. I had so many fears and worries when I first began my exploration into finding help with daily administrative task and marketing. It was a big step to trust someone else to manage intakes, scheduling, and billing. How was I going to know that they would be as warm, friendly, and accommodating as I strive to be? How would I know that my assistant would know how to assess emergencies and contact me immediately when necessary? How would it be for my clients? Was it too impersonal? I began to realize that all of the self-care in the world could not shake the constant state of being overwhelmed. I seemed stuck in a cycle, by spending time on one task, an insurmountable amount of others were beginning to pile up. I tried various efficiency strategies, took training, got coaching, and still, I never really felt entirely on top of it all. Something unexpected always came up. New clients were calling and needing referrals or to be waitlisted, records were requested, and claims were getting denied, taking days and sometimes weeks to get someone on the phone in the short amount of "free time" I had during business hours. Not to mention, the increased need for my time, strength, and energy, if a client was, is in crisis or I needed to coordinate care with other clinical team members. I wanted to increase opportunities for passive income streams but couldn't create space and time in my day to make it happen. 

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​Beliefs I Had To Let Go Of

To be honest, I was a stressed-out mess; all the coping skills, therapists, and yoga in the world barely relieved the distress I was in or impacted my to-do list for that matter. Mostly, I was holding on to the false belief that I could self-care my way through it all. I started decreasing my caseload as well, thinking this was the best way to get through it, which was hard because these relationships mattered deeply to me. I started to feel alone, really burnt out, not looking forward to the day and sometimes dare I say even burdened by my work. These experiences struck me. After all, I did love being a therapist. I dreamt of being in private practice, and I used to feel energized by my work. After, trying so many other strategies, and none of them working, I had to examine what was getting in my way of accepting that it was just too much for one person to manage. First, I had to let go of comparing myself to other therapists who I mistakenly assumed were able to handle it all with ease. Next, I had stop convincing myself that I somehow was the problem.
Additionally, I had to stop fighting against spending additional money on hiring help. I had to decide that my mental and emotional health was worth the investment. I rested in the insight that space and freedom to be was the antidote, and my right, as a human being. I started taking an inventory of all the stress-induced maladaptive coping strategies that were getting activated as a result of feeling overwhelmed. I realized I was probably spending more money on feel-good-now and pay-later types of strategies than I ever would on a virtual assistant (VA). I finally took the step to hire a virtual assistant.

Revitalized Strength With Support ​

My life and my practice became tremendously less complicated than ever before. I couldn't believe how much more reinvigorated I felt about my work and with my clients. It was so comfortable assigning the time-consuming task to my VA. I started feeling accomplished and productive, noticing that my VA was meeting all my goals each day and quickly crossing items off my list. To my surprise, my clients rapidly fell in love with my new VA, knew her by name, and were happy that they had someone to reach that could respond quicker than I could.

​When clients needed an invoice or to reschedule a session or needed that referral for a family member or friend, or changed insurance companies, my VA was there. To my clients, my assistant became a vital asset of their therapeutic team. My VA was tracking cancellations and following up until the scheduling was complete, all while documenting each interaction effectively. I immediately felt less stressed. I was kicking myself a little for how far I let things get behind before I realized that I needed support and that my workload was legitimately too much! If an insurance claim got denied, I could hand over the task of spending hours on the phone to reach the insurance company. If I wanted to set a marketing or social media campaign in motion, all I had to do was send the task, and it was done.


​I found I had more time for joy and for spending time getting other aspects of my business going that I always dreamt of but felt hopeless that I'd ever find the time to complete. If I needed content research and references for a blog post, it got done. Billing was done at the end of the day every day, and my VA was finding where I was making mistakes that were costing me money. If I wanted to have, my referral sources tracked to see which referral sources became paying clients, done. If I wished to have my VA to triage and screen potential new clients to meet my niche criteria, done. If I asked my VA to find a psychiatrist in the area that took Blue Cross and specialized in PTSD and identify which one had the quickest availability for a client in crisis, my VA could handle that. Not only did my VA assist me by completing the task I assigned she also taught me a ton about different programs and apps to keep me organized, how to make emailing and other forms of communication easier, marketing strategies I never even considered, how to create a content plan for my blog posts, how to use excel and G-Suite more effectively and countless other things that made my practice run more efficiently and with ease. I could now take a vacation and know that my VA would maintain communication with my clients and alert me of any emergencies needing my attention. Having this work done allowed me to rest, relax, and feel revitalized by my time away from the practice. I am still impressed with how supported in my practice, I felt.

The other comical thing about this whole adventure is I saw my income increase as a result of the new marketing strategies my new business partner/administrative assistant put in place due to her amazing skills with securing my ideal and private pay clients. My time was freed up to focus on what mattered most to me, my clients, and my precious, valuable energy. ​

Courage

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You can release fear. You can lean into acceptance, and you can let go of the comparisons that keep you stuck. You can ask for the help and support you need and deserve. After all, you do provide high-quality attuned care to many individuals inside and outside of your practice. You deserve to have more energy and your clients' deserve to have the best version of you available to them. You won't regret it; I know I didn't.

​Your VA is equipped with incredible knowledge and experience and specializes in running practices just like yours. You also get to train your VA however you like so you are in complete control of the whole process. Your VA can use your call scripts, assessments, your EHR, your pre-screening questionnaires, and your preferred referrals list or their own. Whatever you need, your VA will honor your wishes. It's entirely up to you. All services are entirely customizable and will be individualized to meet your unique needs. ​

​A Lasting Relationship: Say Goodbye To The Loneliness Of Private Practice

 Your clients will talk to the same person each time, which, sets our services apart from larger call center companies where calls are shared between multiple individuals. You will receive one call and intake virtual administrative assistant, and you have access to our full team to help you will special projects that require web marketing or content writing specialties. This way, your clients develop a trusted relationship with your assistant making them a vital asset, assuring a positive experience for you and your clients. 

​My assistant and I quickly bonded. I never felt alone again with the pressures and demands of private practice. I had the highest amount of gratitude for my assistant's attention to detail and the warmth she provided to my clients. I could rest easy knowing that everything was being taken care of in an ethically sound manner.
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It's the Little Things

I remembered the day I had the flu and knew I couldn't hold the sessions I had scheduled for the day. Knowing that I could request that my new amazing team member call my clients, apologize to them for the inconvenience of the cancellation and quickly get them rescheduled gave me peace and more permission to rest and heal. I now look back and can see how my practice evolved, for example, the fact that I could add personal touches to how I provided care such as sending handwritten cards to clients who just suffered a loss or written thank you letters to referring clinicians. I loved how grabbing a cup of coffee or lunch with a colleague became so much more doable. I could now attend that consultation group, free of worry or stress about the time in the office I was losing. I could go on vacation, knowing the adequate referral sources are being provided, and my clients were being rescheduled as needed. ​
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