How to Choose the Best Mental Health Software for Your Counselling Practice

Mental health, over time, has become as crucial as physical health for a lot of reasons. People now work actively towards improving their mental health and dealing with lifelong traumas to better their lives. With the pandemic and continued emphasis on social distancing, most people haven’t been able to physically visit a mental health counselor or therapist. But the evolving technology has made online counseling much easier. Furthermore, there are many great mental health software available out there for you to choose from. Wondering how to identify which option is best for your online counseling practice? We have got you covered.

What to look for in a mental health software

Like any other business, there’s a specific set of features you need in your mental health software to make your practice work in the online mode. Here’s a look at some of the most crucial ones.

Accessibility everywhere

The location of a client shouldn’t be a factor when it comes to online counseling practice. Ideally, they should be able to access your platform anytime anywhere and book a counseling session without any hassle. With cloud-based mental health software available in both app and website form, your software should be easily accessible on any device. The flexibility offered by a mental health software that’s easily accessible goes both ways. Since both doctors and patients can access the app wherever they are without their location being a constraint.

Client Management

As an online counselling practice, you would require a mental health software that allows you to manage your client seamlessly. From auto accepting new bookings based on your calendar availability to notifying your clients of a change in schedule, there’s a lot the right mental health software can help you accomplish. You can also track every individual patient’s track record and progress using the right mental health software. Another important feature to consider when looking for a mental health software is to send customers push notifications and SMSs. It can be about their upcoming appointments, daily motivational quotes, and anything else that is required for their treatment.

Seamless Billing

When it comes to an online counselling practice, a streamlined billing process isn’t just convenient for the owner but for the patients as well. Often, getting insurance details sent to the healthcare provider becomes a challenge for patients and causes them undue stress. The best mental health software, ideally, should have a robust billing process that displays the due amount to patients after every appointment and gives them plenty of payment methods to choose from. The option of bulk payment at the end of all their required counselling sessions is also something many online practices offer.

Hassle-Free Design

For a mental health software to be considered good, it doesn’t just need to be packed with features appropriate for online counseling software. But also, it should be easy to use with a user-friendly interface. An app featuring unnecessarily difficult design isn’t just a pain for doctors and admins but also for the patient who might have trouble navigating the app to book an appointment. A clean, minimalistic design and intuitive interface are some of the things you should look for in a mental health software.

24/7 Support

When it comes to mental health, round-the-clock availability is a must for any online counselling practice. Even if you’re running your own practice or managing a platform where other doctors offer their services, you need to ensure there’s someone on-call at all times to help patients whenever they require. A good customer support feature is also an added benefit in case prospective patients have questions about how to work the app.

Features you need for your software

Now that you know the importance of a mental health software, let’s discuss the how’s. If you’re looking for the best mental health software for your counseling practice, give Panther a try. Panther is a unique SaaS telemedicine software development platform that allows you to create your own online counseling platform from scratch. And it does so without any massive financial or time-based investment. Here are some features that make Panther a great mental health software for your counselling practice.

Consultation Options

With Panther, you can offer patients you on-board different types of consultations including text, voice, and video. Each patient is different and might be comfortable with different styles of consultations and Panther allows you to cater to them with finesse. The real-time chat feature, in particular, is a blessing for patients who don’t feel comfortable expressing themselves audibly.

Simplified Payments

Make your online counselling practice a success with Panther’s simplified payment options. You decide how you are going to charge your patients, i.e. per session or monthly. Panther also offers secure integration with multiple payment gateways to ensure your customers have plenty of options to choose from.

Easy Communication

Using Panther’s mental health software development platform, you can send appointment reminders, care plan reviews updates, and much straight to patients through SMS, emails, and push notifications.

Appointment Booking

An easy appointment booking process is crucial to the success of online counselling practice and that’s exactly what you get with Panther. The platform offers appointment booking features for both patients and doctors where patients get automated reminders for upcoming appointments and doctors can manage the appointments through the web scheduler or mobile app.

Chatbots

With Panther, you don’t need to invest in a large customer support team. We offer a robust chatbot feature that doesn’t just help patients with basic queries but does a whole lot more. Our advanced chatbot also stores and provides the patient’s medical history along with adding private notes for the doctor’s benefit.

Curious about how Panther can help you take your online counselling practice off the ground? Get in touch with our experts right away.