Meet Maria Szandrach

[00:00:00] Maria: If you take care of yourself and make sure that your priorities are right and you’re there to help providing therapy and not just stressing out about notes being submitted on time, then just basically the therapy quality goes up, and it’s more fulfilling also, I

[00:00:15] I think we can use AI and use technology actually as a way to maximize on this time with clients, to maximize on our presence in sessions.And yeah, just focus on this human element AI cannot do.

[00:00:26] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money, shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today’s guest is Maria Szandrach. She is the founder of Mentalyc. And today we are talking about her tool that she’s developed, which helps therapists with note keeping through AI. We talk about AI in general when it comes to mental health and the world. You will hear in this episode that I am not a total adopter of AI.

[00:01:13] I have my fears and concerns. And I bring those to my conversation with Maria today. And we get into discussing tools for therapists. return on investment, how to think through when a tool is worth investing for you. And, just the solution that she’s come up with for a pain point that I know was huge for me in private practice, which was clinical notes.

[00:01:32] Here is my conversation with Maria Szandrach.

[00:01:50] Linzy: So Maria welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:52] Maria: I am very happy to be here, very excited about this conversation given that I actually studied finance and it’s a topic close to my heart as well. 

[00:01:59] Linzy: Yes, So finance is where you’re coming from, and we chatted about that just a little bit off mic. You’ve come kind of through that world and now you’re supporting therapists. And you’ve entered into the therapy space. Can you tell folks who are listening a little bit about what you do?

[00:02:12] Maria: Yeah, sure. So I studied finance, as I mentioned, and I was always very interested in businesses, how they operate. So already as a child, I was running some businesses. My first one was to breed hamsters, and I was trading violins. So it has always been a big hobby of mine. And also as I was… Actually when I was a teenager, I went to therapy myself for an eating disorder.

[00:02:35] So I went to five different therapists and two psychiatrists in that process, until I recovered. So, it was a very confusing and painful time for me and my family. So that’s basically, brought me at some point later in life, after having different business experiences, to this point where I decided that helping therapists is something that I want to invest my time and my skills into.

[00:03:00] So currently I’m running a company called Mentalyc, which writes notes for psychotherapists, so they don’t have to.

[00:03:06] Linzy: I’m sure people’s ears are perking up right now because I know for myself, when I was in private practice, notes were one of my biggest pain points as a therapist, right? So they love doing the clinical work, but writing a note afterwards, I noticed, can be a huge barrier for a lot of therapists.

[00:03:24] I hear this come up again and again as a part of our jobs that we do not like, and can really pile up. I was just talking to somebody the other day about how at one point I fell behind on like literally hundreds of notes in my practice and like just the emotional weight of that and knowing that I had this massive mountain of work…

[00:03:41] I think that’s a little bit extreme, but I don’t think that’s an unusual experience to really fall behind on notes. I think that happens to a lot of therapists.

[00:03:49] Maria: That is something that we also see that some notes are basically on the to do list since like weeks or even months in some cases, right? And then it’s impossible for anyone to remember exactly what happened.And also insurance is never happy with notes that look all the same, right?

[00:04:05] Copied and pasted from the previous note. So those are the problems that we are solving. And given that there is so much amazing progress, technological progress, in the field of AI, it just makes sense to use all this technology in a safe and ethical manner to help therapists focus on where they bring the most value, which is spending time with their clients, right?

[00:04:29] Being really like present in the session and, really like close to their emotional state rather than being like pulled away from this, trying to jot something down on the side, lose the eye contact and then be stressed in the basically the whole evening and weekend are blocked with note taking.

[00:04:48] That’s not what we want for therapists. Or for anyone!

[00:04:51] Linzy: No, I have a friend who I went to my social work master’s with, who’s still a very good friend, and she works at a university in a clinical setting. And she has now her system that she’s kind of worked out after, the 15 years that she’s been practicing is she writes notes on Saturday mornings, like it’s actually part of her weekend.

[00:05:07] That’s the only way that she can actually make it happen is like Saturday morning, she goes to a cafe and she stays there until she writes all of her notes, which is a solution to a problem. But it’s also that she is literally having to give up part of her weekend in order to do the thing that she’s being paid to do during the week.

[00:05:23] She’s not being paid to do that on the weekend. So it, yeah, it can, definitely just add up and become quite a burden for folks.

[00:05:30] Maria: We did survey therapists extensively, like in our early days, because Mentalyc is about three years old right now, but, uh, when we were starting, we did an extensive research on when therapists take notes, how long it takes, and so on. And it really takes usually between 10 to 20 minutes per session.

[00:05:47] And usually there’s no time to do this between sessions, right? So everyone wants to have this pee break and not complete the notes. So that’s exactly like it piles up for the weekend or for one day when there are no sessions. That we also have seen frequently, right? Then like on Friday, for example, the therapist is not meeting anyone and just writing notes the whole day.

[00:06:07] Linzy: Yeah. It can eat a lot of time. So, Okay. So I’m going to go back to the word that you mentioned a little earlier, which I’m sure people’s ears perked up because I feel like it’s a divisive word, which is AI, right? So part of your solution, or I guess the core of your solution, is using AI technology.

[00:06:21] I know for myself, like I live in a household where I feel like we’re a little bit split about AI. My partner loves AI. He does AI art as a hobby in the evenings. And I find myself, there’s like certain elements of AI that I appreciate, but I also am nervous about it.

[00:06:37] My joke to my partner is that he’s just ready to greet our robot overlords. Like he’s welcome. And I’m like, I don’t know if this is good. So, you know, I’m curious about your response to that in terms of concerns about safety, privacy. Tell me more about what you say to people like myself who are not totally all in on AI being an amazing thing.

[00:06:58] Maria: AI is also like a very broad term, which can mean really a lot of things. So.AI is there, for example, in our browser, where we do a Google search, right? And it suggests the terms that you might want to use. Or it does this like auto completion of sentences. Or it fixes your grammar in the text, right?

[00:07:14] Or it helps you find the right movie on Netflix. So, it does a lot of things where you don’t even realize that it’s AI. And recently there’s, like a lot of attention goes to this direction of general AI that will replace humans, and that’s what all the movies are about. So such AI is not there yet.

[00:07:33] And there’s a lot of speculation around when it’s going to happen. But so far there is no proof that it’s anywhere very close. That is a common question also from therapists, whether it’s going to replace them. And that’s actually a very hard question. I would like to say that no, but I would rather say that I don’t know because it depends a bit on the timeline.

[00:07:54] And a surprising discovery, I would say of the last year is that actually a lot of people like to talk to AI, maybe like your partner, right? So not everyone, but there’s definitely a group that likes to chat with an AI bot and finds this helpful for kind of, I don’t know, like brainstorming with themselves and helping them resolve some conflicts and problems, right?

[00:08:14] So, I believe in some form, it might be replacing parts of the work, but I believe it would be ideal if there is still the therapist who is like leading the process, right? So that’s what we want to ensure. That AI is kind of like all around the therapist if needed, but the therapist is still there as a captain of this ship and this process.

[00:08:36] So AI can be great for things like note taking, for example, because it doesn’t actually require any therapeutic qualities to it, right? It’s just like basically a cold analysis of data, of patterns. And that’s where I believe it can be very helpful to therapists because it saves a lot of time. It writes notes in a way that insurance wants to see it.

[00:08:55] So, it also saves a lot of worries, right, about, is my note correct or compliant? It can be trained to write them the medical necessity is well described.

[00:09:06] That’s where AI is great. I guess over time, maybe it will also take some other parts, right? Maybe it will help you organize your calendar or maybe it will facilitate the intake, like for example, sending some questionnaires, right, to the client. There’s a lot of things that can be done, but we should keep it there, not to replace therapy altogether.

[00:09:29] Linzy: We’re not talking about some… The ideal scenario is not that there’s a robot that somebody walks into the room and has a conversation with a robot, but what I’m hearing is like this is a tool, right? And like you can use the tool to support you in being in your zone of genius and doing that therapeutic work with your client.

[00:09:44] And then use this tool to take care of the parts of your business that are not your zones of genius, don’t take like all of your talents and skills, but can pile up and be a pain point, which is, using a tool that’s going to help you to increase your note writing.

[00:09:58] Maria: Because AI has this capability that no human has of being able to process a lot of data and find patterns, right? In our lifetime, we will see like a number of clients, but AI can basically be kind of fed with data from millions of sessions, and identify something that could be basically brought to the attention of therapists, right?

[00:10:19] Say, for example, that for a similar client, I’ve seen somewhere this intervention worked better. So the therapist can decide and potentially implement that in their session, right? But especially if you have a diverse population, so they would have different diagnosis, different problems, different backgrounds,

[00:10:36] That could be helpful to have AI suggest something that you could do as an idea. Or maybe have you noticed that your clients said this, right? And we all have some like blind spots, so that might be helpful as well. So in general, AI can be very helpful, not just to therapists, but to any professional.

[00:10:52] And what we also see is that professionals in other domains use AI way more since a long time. So…

[00:11:00] Linzy: Yeah. It is true. There is something about therapists, I kind of count myself in this, although I have moved into the online space, so certainly I’m a lot more like Internet-y than I used to be, but there is something kind of old school about the profession, right? which I think people are also looking for a need, right?

[00:11:15] Which part of what therapy is providing people is profound human connection, right? And a lot of people are just missing that in their life period, right? Like we are isolated from community. That’s going to feed all sorts of trauma, mental health issues, relationship issues. Everything gets worse I think when we are isolated as people, so as therapists, in some ways, we’re kind of almost filling this gap of being a person who’s deeply present with somebody, just being with them in a room, or maybe over Zoom, but it’s like you’re just with that person, and you’re using all of your own intelligence and your, relational gifts to help that person to move and shift and, you know, heal, right?

[00:11:53] And so I’m not surprised, you know, that you say that we are,as a group, slower to adapt to AI, because I almost wonder if it is a bit of an old school profession in some ways where we’re like, but the people… And I can kind of, imagine, you know, some listeners having that, but yeah, but I like that it’s simple and direct.

[00:12:10] And I’ve even worked with folks who don’t want to use clinic management software. Like they don’t even want to use the EHR because there’s a distrust of that. So they’re keeping paper notes or paper ledgers. That’s not most people, but I think that can even show up in our profession where it’s like the good old days.

[00:12:25] We prefer the good old days instead. I’m curious, what is your response to that in terms of being afraid of this kind of technology or like why it’s worth it for us to think about maybe stretching ourselves a little bit?

[00:12:38] Maria: We actually have a lot of users who have not used any EHR before they came across Mentalyc, and now Mentalyc is the only tool they use. So what I have learned from them is that you can look at it very differently. Like actually in order to preserve this human element, we can eliminate those other destructive elements, such as writing notes for the whole day, and spend more time actually on building that human connection that AI cannot build in the same way.

[00:13:05] And that is actually very needed. Looking at the bigger numbers, kind of like the market trends, there’s a big shortage of therapists, right? And therapists are also getting burned out. They consider changing careers. We also have a lot of such users who were telling us that Mentalyc made them change their minds, and actually,they stayed being a therapist because now they can actually exactly take care of just providing therapy, right? 

[00:13:29] Which is the reason why they even chose this career. You look at it from this perspective, and you consider this being the most valuable element of therapy, I would say it even makes more sense to outsource the other parts, right? Like accounting, or note taking, all those elements, just so that you have more energy, more like presence in the session.

[00:13:52] Because you, of course, if the therapist is getting burned out, the quality of therapy might also decrease, right? So if you take care of yourself and make sure that your priorities are right, and you’re there to help provide therapy and not just stress out about notes being submitted on time, then just basically the therapy quality goes up, and it’s more fulfilling also, I believe, right?

[00:14:14] Because then we actually help. And this is visible also on the, on the receiving end, right? There are more grateful clients, and so on. So I think we can use AI and use technology actually as a way to basically maximize on this time with clients, to maximize on our presence in sessions.And yeah, just focus on this human, human element AI cannot do.

[00:14:38] Linzy: Yes. Yeah. What I’m hearing is, it’s a tool that, by taking off this kind of energy burn, this thing that’s sucking your energy, that’s not why you’re here to do the work, you have energy left to do your best work, right? And show up in the way that you really want to show up with your clients.

[00:14:54] So I’m curious as we’re talking, Maria, I’m having a hard time picturing… What does the tool look like? How does it work? Is it actually sitting with you in session, listening to the conversation? What is Mentalyc?

[00:15:08] Maria: There are multiple ways it can be used. The most popular version is that it can record sessions. Record on audio, and then it transcribes it, and writes a note based on the transcript. So we don’t store audio files, right? We only use them for the transcription process. We anonymize the transcripts.

[00:15:26] So all the addresses, names, locations, all of the PHIs are removed. And, that is done by one AI algorithm. And then a couple of other algorithms basically break this down to understand what were the symptoms, like what was happening, what was like the chief complaint, right? We actually really use a lot of this language that insurance prefers.

[00:15:45] So the note is very well structured, has sections, subsections, bullet points, diagnosis symptoms. It shows actually how the symptoms build out, to the diagnosis, right? What are the impairments? Well, what are the interventions from which modalities they come, right?

[00:16:02] So it’s really, I would say, like a summary of a session, but very specialized that it creates, in a form of an intake or progress note in a lot of different templates. Therapists can create their templates or adjust them. They can write notes for EMDR, for even prescribers can write notes, right?

[00:16:18] Like child therapy, play therapy, couples, families, individuals. So there’s a lot of things that can be adjusted in the tool, but the most unique, I would say, part of it is that you can just hit record at the end of the session, just upload this thread, and then the note is there.

[00:16:36] So all this conceptualizing, seeing how to put it in this note, right? How to organize it… It’s not needed. The only thing the therapist has to do is to review this draft, maybe make some small tweaks, if they disapprove of some interpretation of it or so, and just save it. And if, we don’t have a recording of the session for any reason, like the client didn’t consent.

[00:16:56] It’s very important, right, to ask for consent. Or the therapist forgot to click record or any other reason, then the note can also be created from a recap of that session. So the therapist can just dictate or also type in what happened in that session in a very unstructured, like fluffy language.

[00:17:14] And this would organize it. And again, write the note matching the same template that was used for other recordings.

[00:17:23] Linzy: I’m thinking about Loom, the video software, which I use quite a bit in my business to communicate with my students and, you know, folks who I’m coaching or within my own team. And Loom has recently developed technology, which is very similar to what you’re talking about, same kind of thing, where it’s like I record a video, and like literally within seconds,

[00:17:42] There’s a summary of that video, like a little summary paragraph. There’s chapters that have been created. And it blows my mind. But I will say, you know, as somebody who’s, as I said, has some skepticism or misgiving or yeah, maybe fear, straight up fear about AI. I love that tool. It saves me so much of that processing time to even explain to somebody what I’ve just talked about and,I’m assuming kind of like it’s similar to what Mentalyc is doing, it’s right most of the time.

[00:18:09] It’s amazing how that technology does understand what I was saying and can contextualize it and can pull out the important parts. It’s mind blowing.

[00:18:17] Maria: That’s all I mean… This technology is being used in other contexts, right? Because the difference between let’s say Loom and what we do is this, it’s first of all, a lot of like settings around, like, how do we want to refer to the client, right? Is it the client or a member or a patient or something else, right?

[00:18:33] Who provides the therapy? A provider? I don’t know, counselor, healer, right? There’s a lot of things that you can tell the software how it should do it, that are specifically useful for this therapy context, and this whole summary, like what you described to have chapters could be interesting, maybe for a supervision session or so, right?

[00:18:48] Linzy: Like, analyze what happened. But if we need a progress note that is compliant, then those generic tools just don’t write it that way. And also, obviously, like all the security HIPAA compliance, all of those things Definitely not HIPAA compliant.

[00:19:01] Maria: Yeah. no, it’s not. Yes.

[00:19:03] Linzy: Right. Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting you use Loom to write your clinical notes. I was just, yeah… it really did bring up that experience of yeah, it is really nice to just be able to talk. I’m also a talker, like I’m a verbal processor.

[00:19:14] So for me, writing is actually very difficult, and it’s something that’s taken me quite a while to really realize and own in our business. Like I could talk for literally an hour straight, and I will say things out loud that I’m like, oh I didn’t even realize that thought was there, but that is what I meant. It’s like my thoughts form in the air. If I sit down and try to write that on paper, it takes me five times more energy.

[00:19:35] Like it takes me so much longer, so much more effort. So what I’m hearing, too, is for folks who are verbal processors, even if you don’t record in session, you can just sit down and record your recap out loud. And it’s going to do that organizing, putting it in the right language, making it, you know, insurance compliant to make sure you’re pulling out all of those right pieces.

[00:19:53] It’s going to do that structuring for you.

[00:19:57] Maria: It will, exactly, reframe it. Because yeah, if you, if we’re just talkers, right, we will just say whatever, like something from the beginning of the note, like the client had this issue, but I did this and then they said this and then that happened, I don’t know. It could be like anything, right? And in the note, it’s very important that it’s written in a way that it’s very easy for like an auditor or maybe a referral, right? 

[00:20:16] Or like a supervisor or whoever to read and follow and that it’s well structured. So definitely AI can do that part well.

[00:20:25] Linzy: So this podcast, as you know, we focus on finances. So I’m curious from your perspective, Maria, how would a tool like Mentalyc be of any financial benefit to therapists in private practice?

[00:20:39] Maria: The benefits are, I would say twofold, at least when it comes to solo practitioners or just the therapists. One is the time saved. And that is a really a lot of time if you think about it, because therapists usually spend 10 to 20 minutes per session writing notes, right? So if we see six clients a day, that’s like one to two hours every day, which would be like five to 10 a week, right?

[00:21:03] And 20 to 40 a month, that’s a lot of clients we could see additionally. Usually when we ask clinicians, before they use Mentalyc, what they would do with that time, and they say they, the last thing they would do is to see more clients because they feel so overworked.

[00:21:19] Linzy: Yes.

[00:21:20] Maria: As they use it for, for some time, they actually changed their minds, and we see that they started growing their practices.

[00:21:25] So what usually happens is either they see more clients or they start ideating towards hiring more therapists. So that’s definitely a big financial benefit. Definitely also if you actually grow your practice or have multiple clinicians, all those hours keep adding up plus their extra benefit is that, like no one likes writing notes, right?

[00:21:45] So if we are hiring clinicians to our group practice and we can tell them, we actually don’t have to write notes, that usually leads to just higher work satisfaction, right? And this actually can contribute to them staying longer in our group practice. And actually finding and hiring a therapist is also extra expensive.

[00:22:04] Linzy: So this is an extra benefit because we don’t need to train them, right? all of those things actually consume a lot of money and time. Yes,

[00:22:11] Maria: There’s this part of insurance compliance, even though, practically, audits don’t happen that often. It’s always the second thing that might happen, right?

[00:22:22] That we all fear. So actually not having that worry is a big deal. And actually we have some clients who did have an audit,before using Mentalyc and the way they described it, this is quite terrifying, right? Because then the sample of your notes is reviewed. And, basically we spoke with a group practitioner who told us that he had to pay his debts for two years after this audit.

[00:22:46] Linzy: Whoa, yeah. Yeah, it can be thousands and thousands of dollars if you’re determined not to be in compliance.

[00:22:54] Maria: And the sessions were actually, I believe, very high quality, right? All conditions from this group seemed very qualified. I believe just that… and that’s also what we very often hear that the skill of actually like scribing, especially in a specific way that insurance wants, is a very different skill from providing care.

[00:23:13] And it’s also not well taught in the education process, right? Like usually it depends heavily on whether we’re lucky to have a supervisor who knows well how to write notes.

[00:23:25] Linzy: Yes. Yeah, I think my own note writing style probably changed a few times over time, where it’s like I had, you know, kind of the template I learned from one of my supervisors, who was actually like a marriage and family therapist, and I became a trauma therapist, so like that kind of worked for a bit, but it didn’t quite fit, and then I like saw how another colleague was writing notes, and I was like, oh that’s really nice, so I used that for a bit, but then I didn’t use a certain section.

[00:23:47] Yeah, I would say if I look back on my own note writing, I never felt super solid that I was actually capturing what I needed to capture. That being said, I’m Canadian. I didn’t have concerns about insurance doing clawbacks because it was all out of pocket. But still, it’s a bit of a drain to know that you might not be doing something as well as you could or that there might be deficits later when you go back to try to get information.

[00:24:09] Yeah, what I’m hearing with this is it’s just going to alleviate that concern. You’re just, you just know that it’s being done

[00:24:15] Maria: And that is very common, actually. I would say that the majority of clinicians are somewhat insecure about their notes, right? That’s like what I’ve been doing since forever, but I’m not sure how others do it. There’s a lot of actual training that you can pay for, right? Where someone is supposed to teach you how to do this.

[00:24:31] So all those things are elements that we can save money on, right? So not only it just writes the notes, but also it writes them in a compliant way and it incorporates all those validities into that note. We’re still keeping it insurance compliant, or keeping insurance happy, right?

[00:24:47] So it will include both medical necessity, but also elements that are specific to that modality. We have a lot of EMDR therapists, for example.So we have sections for them inside of the note. So all the notes are optimized for kind of like having this high clinical value in case you want to use this notes to refer someone, right,

[00:25:06] or to discuss as a supervisor, but also insurance value. So there’s a lot of research that goes into it. All those notes are standardized. They try to marry all those requirements, and we follow all the changes in what insurance requires. And that is also a lot of reading of very boring documents.

[00:25:23] So all that time, basically… The note taking time, the research, training… It would still be good, obviously, if the therapist does some training and knows how the notes should be, but the extent of it, right, can be much different. So those are all hours, and every hour, as we know, can be just a billable hour instead of note taking and research.

[00:25:44] Yeah. And something that I find sometimes, therapists in private practice struggle to kind of think through is return on investment, right? Like sometimes the strategy that they want to use for technology is to have as little as possible. Don’t pay for anything that you don’t actually have to, like do the work yourself.

[00:26:01] Linzy: What do you say to somebody who’s like, I do not want to pay for another tool. I want to keep my overhead expenses low. What is your thought on like the return on investment, specifically for Mentalyc?

[00:26:13] Maria: The easiest approach to this would be to just calculate the time you spent on notes. Right. If you don’t know it, you can just put the timer on the whole week, every time you write notes and see how much it takes. And this is basically, something that you then can compare into how much you would pay for a monthly subscription to Mentalyc. 

[00:26:35] And subscriptions are actually starting from $39.99, and the most expensive subscription that we have, that is not even required by most clinicians, costs $119.99, right? And the one that is very common is like $69.99. So this is like less than one session for most clinicians, right? So if you save more time than one session in a month, then it already has a positive ROI.

[00:26:58] And of course you will save a lot more sessions. So basically seeing likehalf a client more a month would already pay for the tool.

[00:27:08] Linzy: And that is a good denomination to use, like client sessions. I think that’s something that we can all wrap our heads around is okay, one hour of my work. How much do I get paid for one hour of my work? And then by making this investment, how many hours am I getting back? Which, as you mentioned earlier, you might end up using to see more clients.

[00:27:22] You might end up using it to expand your practice. And I do find that a lot with therapists is it might just be the folks that I attract, but I do find lots of therapists who I support, You know, with a different problem, like getting their financial. pieces in order, and making peace with their money, and getting their system set up.

[00:27:38] What I often find is once that pain is gone, once it’s not eating their bandwidth anymore, there are all these other things they want to do. They do have these like great ideas, right, for a group practice, or a course that they want to teach, or moving into consulting, or even starting like a totally different type of side business that energy is opening up.

[00:27:55] So yeah, what I’m hearing is like for, you know, if you’re an out of pocket therapist and you’re charging $130 a session, it’s like for half an hour probably, you would be getting back all of these hours, but also like bandwidth and concern. So that’s a decent return on investment, I would say.

[00:28:14] Maria: Exactly. So I think really the easiest would be to see how much time a month you spent on notes. And then how much one session brings you. And then you already have the baseline, right? And then there are all these benefits on top. So those are maybe a bit harder to calculate because if you want to calculate the likelihood of a clawback, right, we would need to actually calculate the risk of this happening.

[00:28:35] So it would be like a more complex financial model, But this small exercise gives you a baseline and then the rest of the benefits are just on top.

[00:28:43] Linzy: Yeah, I totally want to pull out my calculator and do the math, but I don’t need to do that. But folks listening, you could always pull out the calculator and do the math. And this kind of thinking is helpful when you’re thinking about a tool like Mentalyc, if this is something that, you know, would fix a pain point for listeners, but also this applies to so many other things in our businesses of just being able to zoom out and think okay, if I put in this, what am I getting back?

[00:29:04] And as you’re saying, Maria, financially, there’s going to be a return on investment, but then there’s also these other positive intangibles that might be hard to put a dollar amount on, but sometimes can be even more valuable, right? Like the lack of stress or more time for connection or hobbies… like those are things that make life so much better and don’t have a specific dollar amount, but are definitely worth a lot.

[00:29:25] Maria: Yes, it is also you might find out that you spend this time on something else than seeing clients, right? And maybe this actually pays you a different rate per hour. So there’s other things you can find out after you implement the change. And as I was mentioning, a lot of our users were saying they would not see more clients and then they changed their mind.

[00:29:42] But we also found out that they do a lot of other things. We, for example, have a blog, which has hundreds of blog posts written by clinicians. So we basically hire freelancers, clinicians who have experience with writing blogs that are optimized from the marketing perspective, right? So, there are clinicians that basically enjoy writing, right?

[00:30:07] Do we also have clinicians that actually create some posts or videos on our social media because they want to try something else and they want to do something creative, right? And we have a lot of like memes or some a lot of humor in those… so I also highly recommend checking out our social media.

[00:30:25] They’re entertaining, even for me, even though I’m not a therapist.

[00:30:29] Linzy: So, one last piece that’s kind of in my mind is… You did mention earlier, but let’s speak more directly to HIPAA compliance, data storage. Tell me about those pieces of your tool.

[00:30:43] Maria: So We follow the highest possible industry standard of security. So it’s all the same technology that banks use. And encryption and anything you can imagine that makes the product basically almost unhackable. I always say almost because every system can be hacked.

[00:31:00] Our system is actually built in a way that pretty much no one can really hack, like all the databases. So the biggest risk is if someone actually hacks individual therapist accounts. And that’s usually what has happened, actually, is user negligence, right? So if a therapist would leave a laptop somewhere without the password to go away, someone comes and clicks, right?

[00:31:21] So, for this to actually protect such a scenario, we actually have all those like extra security measurements, like for example, not storing audio files, and only storing anonymized transcripts, right? So that if someone would actually leave their computer unattended and these transcripts are somehow leaking anywhere, no one can say whose therapy that was.

[00:31:43] So we even go kind of like an extra mile. We always spend a lot of time brainstorming on the team how to not just kind of like checkmark, you know, like the HIPAA and what we have to have, but to like really make it as safe as possible.And for example, those audio files, we’re like, we don’t need to start them to be able to create a note.

[00:32:00] So then we decided to just not store them. So we definitely are HIPAA compliant. We have a template for client consent. You can download the BAA, all of that stuff is there plus more. We also consult, like clinical lawyers, ethics committees, and we also basically coach ethics committees on how to evaluate tools and technologies and how to build helpful guidelines.

[00:32:25] So we are very involved in all of that, because we definitely believe it’s very important, right? And as I went to therapy myself, I would definitely not want someone to randomly read my notes.

[00:32:36] Linzy: No, none of us want our own therapy notes getting out in the world. What I’m hearing is , they’re anonymous. and then also their, the recordings are gone as soon as they are kind of analyzed by your tool.

[00:32:46] Maria: In general, someone getting access to this data is insanely unlikely, right? But we still like to basically make sure that in this very rare case that would happen, that is the least damage possible. And our client consent also talks about benefits for the client, right?

[00:33:03] How it actually helps therapists to be focused and like all those things, but also talks about risks in detail. So we even have a whole page on our website that talks about security and transparency, where we even draw how the system works and where this data is removed. And we really try to, basically make it very accessible to everyone to understand what is happening. Great. Well, Maria, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. If folks are curious about Mentalyc, want to learn more about it, where can they find Mentalyc on the internet? Yeah. You just need to look for Mentalyc.Com, and the Mentalyc is spelled like mental YC.

[00:33:42] Linzy: Wonderful. Thank you so much for this conversation today, Maria.

[00:34:00] Linzy: My conversation with Maria definitely got me thinking about my own hesitancy around certain tools and what are the tools that we don’t even question and that we just, you know, use. Like she said, you know, there’s AI built into Google to make suggestions. And there has been for like a decade, at least, I’m sure.

[00:34:17] Where is it that I feel nervous about bringing in technology? And I have to say, I was skeptical, at first when reading about the tool, but, I think that, you know, they figured out something that certainly solves a pain point for a lot of us. And it sounds like there’s been lots of thinking that they’ve done in terms of

[00:34:35] the compliance, and making sure that data isn’t stored that doesn’t have to be. And like I said, I’m a big fan myself of using Loom videos, and sending those, and the summaries that those create are incredibly accurate and very useful. And so Mentalyc doing this in the mental health space, I can see that saving therapists lots and lots of time.

[00:34:54] So check out Mentalyc if you’re curious about it. And I appreciate Maria coming on the podcast today. You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. You can talk about your favorite episode or what you appreciate about the podcast.

[00:35:14] It is the best way for other therapists and health practitioners to find us and be part of these conversations. Thanks for listening today.