Dr. Bruce Bassi saw a need in the mental health industry and started his own practice with the goal of fixing it. Here is how Bruce started Telepsych Health, a fully virtual practice with a more personal touch than most.
Bruce got the motivation to start his own practice through the patients he was seeing during his residency. They wanted to keep seeing him when he started his fellowship, and his director allowed him to do his practice on the side. From there, it grew into a small team, including other physicians, all with the same goal in mind: Making things as easy as possible for their clients.
Bruce recognized a change in the industry that would allow him to grow his private practice faster than it may have years ago. “If you were to ask an older generation physician whether they should be marketing a private practice or opening a business, they would say it’s unethical to do so and not appropriate. They thought it was kind of shameful, but if you are not going to do it, someone else is going to, so why not have something that is physician-driven,” Bruce says.
While his practice continues to grow, Bruce never wants to lose that personal touch. “A patient will be shocked to reach the doctor directly, get a same-day appointment, and get unfettered access to me,” he says. That one-on-one connection is what separates him from other practices. He has created an environment where every patient feels valued and heard, and it has led to continued growth and success.
Like many small business owners, part of what drove Bruce to open his own practice was the freedom and flexibility of running the show. “I distinctly remember my first year of residency being 1 of 100 people entering the hospital in the drove at the beginning of a 12-hour shift,” he says. “I remember dreading the feeling of being a cog in a massive industrialized healthcare system. Now I don’t have that feeling at all.”
Many business owners feel overwhelmed thinking they have to run everything. While that is sometimes the only option when getting started, Bruce notes some advice that has helped him offload specific duties so he can maximize how he runs the business. “Only do the tasks that only you can do,” he says. “You have some sort of role in this business, and other people don’t have that role for a specific reason. Don’t take on their role just because you can. They can’t do your role, so that’s where you need to focus.”
Bruce’s goal is to continue to improve the patient experience in a continuously changing industry. “There are a lot of people out there in a lot of pain and suffering, isolated and alone, and they need a lot of help. They don’t want to focus on the challenges of finding a provider and pay for a session. They just want to get better.”
Whether it’s billing, or filling out paperwork, Bruce and his team continually meet to find ways to eliminate redundancy and make access to a doctor as easy as possible.
Like most successful small businesses, Bruce had to overcome his own challenges to get to where he is today and encourages everyone not to judge by what only meets the eye. “Don’t judge your insides based on somebody else’s outsides,” he says. “They have probably gone through a lot of struggle to get there, and they might seem like they are very happy, but you don’t know what they have fought through to get there.” If you want to learn more about Telepysch Health, you can visit their website at telepsychhealth.com or give them a call at 888-730-5220.
