If five years ago, you had told SimplePractice CEO Howard Spector that in 2020 behavioral telehealth would be so common that 98% of American Psychiatric clinicians would offer it, he might have believed you.
Spector doesn’t have a crystal ball. What he does have is a long-standing appreciation for the benefits of therapy and a master’s in psychology from Pacifica Institute, where he graduated from in 2004.
“As I started to think about what I wanted my own practice to look like, I came to see all the other ways therapists were underserved by technology,” Spector said. So instead of continuing on the path toward licensure, in 2012, he set out to build what he felt practitioners were missing.
In 2018, that included telehealth services. Two years ago, the software company’s employees developed the structure necessary for the platform to support HIPAA-compliant video appointments with screen-sharing abilities.
“I personally have called my therapist while on a business trip,” Sector said. “What a gift it would have been if we could have connected face-to-face on video, though.”
Obviously, he wasn’t the only person who felt that way.
In a recent customer survey, 56% of SimplePractice users said they’ll continue to use the telehealth services even after the current pandemic ends. Only 2% of those surveyed said they’re likely to stop using telehealth when in-person visits resume. Sector shared what this trend means for practitioners, their patients and the future of care, below.
Tell me a little about your background. What led you to found SimplePractice?
Looking back, it’s hard not to think of it as a journey I’ve always been on. Honestly, the first seeds of SimplePractice were planted back when I was a teenager and I discovered the works of Carl Jung. For a kid just starting down the road of self-understanding, his work, and later on, the work of other depth psychologists, was truly eye-opening. I recognized myself in it. And that stayed with me. Even as I grew up and spent a few years building startups in Silicon Valley’s dot-com boom of the late ‘90s, I just didn’t feel I’d found work that was aligned with my soul. Eventually, I felt compelled to enroll at the Pacifica Institute to earn a master’s degree in psychology and become a psychotherapist.
As a pre-licensed trainee, I saw the need for a tool that would help me and others like me track the hours we spent training to be eligible to be considered for licensure. So I built one. And as I started to think about what I wanted my own practice to look like, I came to see all the other ways therapists were underserved by technology. I wanted something simple and user-friendly that was also powerful and efficient. And I wanted it to be beautifully designed. I had the vision for an entire digital ecosystem that would optimize so much of the “busy work” required to run a business and a clinical practice. And so, I set aside my eligibility training to build it.
I wanted something simple and user-friendly that was also powerful and efficient.’’
You have provided private practice therapists a virtual platform to connect with patients for the past few years. Why did you feel a remote connection would be profitable back in 2018?
We’ve never made a decision based on profitability at SimplePractice. Everything we do comes down to people: the people we serve and the people they serve. I’m constantly thinking about what comes next. What have we not solved yet? How can we make it easier for our customers to be successful entrepreneurs and wellness professionals? How can we also ensure they have more time to simply connect with the people who matter most? I think that’s actually what has allowed us to be as innovative and visionary in the space as we have to date.
Telehealth just made sense for me as the next phase in the evolution of care. If anything, 2018 feels late looking at the fact that we have been using FaceTime, Skype, and Zoom in non-healthcare settings for far longer. I think a lot of healthcare companies saw telehealth as a nice-to-have. I was thinking of it as a must-have if we ever want to truly give health and wellness professionals, especially those in private practice, the opportunity to care for and connect with their clients in the most advanced way possible.
There are so many reasons a person may not be able to meet with their clinician in person, even before widespread quarantining. I personally have called my therapist while on a business trip. What a gift it would have been if we could have connected face-to-face on video, though. A client moving out of town was probably the biggest use case for it prior to this year.
Making therapy more inclusive and accessible
Have you faced any client issues surrounding trust or security as a result of the nature of the work? How has the team overcome them?
Trust is the driver behind our whole mission. Clients need to be able to trust their practitioners. And those practitioners need to be able to trust that all of the back-of-office business operations tasks are handled. We are wary of the “text a therapist any time” apps, which not only devalue the relationship — the trust — a client has with their therapist but also pose any number of privacy risks that can undermine trust in therapy altogether.
And, of course, the need for trust extends to privacy concerns around our data. To that end, our security teams have worked tirelessly to ensure we’re prepared for any number of “what-ifs.” SimplePractice is HITRUST certified. HITRUST certification is the highest standard of security certification (there is no official HIPAA compliance certification). The process is exhaustive to say the least, and we’re proud to have secured this certification.
Aside from a technical standpoint, how does your team support customers?
We take our relationship with our customers really seriously. We view their calling to help their clients as life-and-death. Our customer success team has helped therapists whose practices were affected by wildfires in California and hurricanes in New Orleans. Sometimes it’s access to high-quality continuing education through our SimplePractice learning program. Sometimes it’s simply hopping on a video screen share to show our customers directly how simple the billing platform works.
The past few months have been difficult for everyone, and compassion fatigue is real. Our employees at every level know this. We see that our customers are actively improving lives, and we’re excited and honored to be a part of that.
Do you find that working with therapists allows you to run the company differently than you might otherwise? In what ways is the work you do reflected in the company culture?
Well, having trained to be a therapist, I think that the particulars of that work and lifestyle inform just about everything I set out to do. So there’s a therapist’s mentality coming from the top down. When I say trust is our primary driver, that isn’t just the trust our clients have in us. It also extends to the trust we have in each other. And behind our work ethic, we’re determined to create a culture that is empathetic and supportive above anything else.
It’s great to have a “cool” startup vibe, but at the end of the day, a culture of care and respect is what is going to best help our customers. I think because we see ourselves as helping the helpers, it’s easier for us to see each other as helpers, too.
It’s great to have a ‘cool’ startup vibe, but at the end of the day, a culture of care and respect is what is going to best help our customers.’’
What are some limitations that physical therapists, occupational therapists, and chiropractors, for example, might experience in a way that behavioral health therapists might not?
Though it may seem like there are glaring constraints, it’s looking more and more like the only real limitation for specialists like OTs and PTs may simply be that they haven’t used telehealth software before. There was a time not that long ago when virtual behavioral health therapy seemed impossible. But COVID-19 demands flexibility when it comes to the physical environment of a therapy session. We’re seeing that physical specialists are rapidly adapting to this new normal by using approaches such as occupation-based coaching, which uses a parent or caregiver’s intervention as a therapeutic tool.
On our end, we have a speciality team uncovering new strategies for this kind of interaction. We’re investing heavily in all kinds of research into ways we can better serve physical therapists, as well nutritionists, acupuncturists, lactation consultants, massage therapists, chiropractors and so many other health and wellness professionals.
What does the future of telehealth look like, in your opinion? How will SimplePractice play a role in that vision?
I think if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that the old rules are out the window, and the future of telehealth is practically limitless. Our product team continues to iterate on our platform, and, as I mentioned, we’re always pursuing specialized features that meet the diverse needs of our customers, particularly when it comes to physical specialists like chiropractors or speech-language pathologists.
Perhaps the future will hold some sort of 3D-imaging component to help physical therapists annotate on bodies. On the behavioral health side of things, we’re looking into how telehealth might be a tool for group therapy. We’re lucky enough to have been ahead of the curve as far as telehealth is concerned, so I do think SimplePractice is in a good position to tackle whatever the future may throw at us with agility and empathy. But that said, it’s important for us to live in the moment and prioritize work that is immediately valuable to our customers.
