Building a Multi-Location Therapy Practice: Shannon Hiser's Journey to Billing Independence

Running a successful mental health practice requires a delicate balance between mission and margin. For many clinic owners, administrative roadblocks, specifically billing anomalies, insurance rules, and staff turnover, can cloud the core focus of providing excellent patient care. In Episode 51 of The Claim Game, host Jeremy Zug sits down with Shannon Hiser, founder of The Wellness Counseling Center, to dive deep into her decade-long entrepreneurial journey.

Operating across three physical locations, including rural Harrisonville, MO, Greenwood, MO, and Overland Park, KS, The Wellness Counseling Center manages over 15 clinicians. Today, Shannon's practice runs on a stable, predictable, and fully independent in-house billing infrastructure. However, getting to this point of operational security required surviving a perfect storm of administrative crises.

The Perfect Storm: Turnover and Compliance Traps

A few years ago, Shannon experienced an abrupt mass exodus of her internal administrative team due to personal belief and organizational alignment differences. Left with three billing departures overnight and a rudimentary baseline knowledge of the back-end insurance framework, she fought to keep her business afloat. In the midst of searching for solutions, she accidentally purchased a list of medical billers and connected with an outsourced billing professional who prioritized strict compliance.

Upon reviewing the center's insurer agreements, the new biller uncovered a major compliance issue: the practice had been performing supervisory billing under major commercial insurance plans that explicitly prohibited it. The practice's previous administrative staff had been calling customer service phone representatives for verification instead of validating terms directly via written contracts and manuals. This single operational blind spot forced Shannon to face a devastating reality: transitioning a list of 100 active clients away from the practice or converting them to self-pay. Because of the liability, that compliance-focused biller immediately fired the practice.

The Evolution: From Billing Client to Autonomy

Stressed, managing an inflated caseload of 35 clients a week, and searching for a safe harbor, Shannon connected with Jeremy Zug at the Wise Practice Summit. This encounter marked the beginning of a transformative partnership with Practice Solutions, progressing through three distinct operational phases:

1. Phase 1: The Billing Rescue Client – Practice Solutions stepped into the trenches immediately following the crisis. Their expert billing managers stabilized the center's aging claims accounts, audited credentialing limitations, sorted commercial vs. Medicaid requirements, and brought immediate cash-flow predictability back to the group practice.

2. Phase 2: The Professional Services Partner – Rather than treating the relationship as a rigid, transactional vendor contract, Shannon worked collaboratively with dedicated professionals like Steph and Laura. Practice Solutions became an extended operational arm, helping Shannon implement robust internal tracking workflows, handle tricky contract guidelines, and confidently pay down substantial business debt.

3. Phase 3: Transitioning to In-House Autonomy – Driven by her core desire to centralize operations locally, Shannon approached Jeremy about bringing billing completely in-house. Practice Solutions didn't pull back; instead, their training specialist, Karis, provided an intensive onboarding curriculum for Shannon's husband, Brett. Despite Brett coming from a non-healthcare background with experience in the Social Security Administration and life insurance, the training equipped him with specialized workflow systems, modifier rules, and spreadsheet frameworks needed to take over complete revenue management independently.

"We are going into the future more solidly because of the amount that you all were able to collect consistently for us... Now we have a systematic way of approaching it with confidence." – Shannon Hiser

Is Your Revenue Cycle Vulnerable? Take a Practice Health Check

Shannon's story highlights a critical vulnerability that many group practice owners face: being entirely dependent on a fragile administrative foundation or unverified customer service advice. A single compliance misunderstanding regarding supervisory billing or independent licensure status can put your entire practice at financial and legal risk.

Assess Your Clinical Operations: The Practice Health Check

Don't wait for an administrative departure or an insurance audit to discover the structural gaps in your revenue cycle management. Whether you intend to use an outsourced agency long-term or dream of building a bulletproof in-house billing team like Shannon did, a comprehensive Practice Health Check provides the insight you need.

Our tailored audit evaluates your fee structures, credentialing contracts, clearinghouse workflows, and modifier compliance to ensure your hard work translates into consistent deposits instead of compounding denials.

To hear the full, unfiltered conversation, including Shannon's strategic advice on values-based leadership, the environmental impacts of clinic AI systems, and how to effectively say no to avoid burnout, tune into Episode 51 of The Claim Game on your favorite podcast platform, or visit practicesol.com/podcast.