From group practice to solo — a Canberra-based psychiatrist's journey

The decision to go it alone

After years in a group practice, our client — a Canberra-based psychiatrist — wanted the things solo practice promises: control over their calendar, continuity with patients, and a practice shaped around their own clinical judgement rather than a roster. What held them back wasn't the medicine. It was everything around it.

In a group setting, the phones, bookings, referrals and billing were someone else's problem. Going solo meant those became theirs overnight — and every hour spent on admin is an hour not spent with patients, or an hour taken from the evening.

The real cost of a missed call

For a solo psychiatrist, a missed call is rarely just a missed call. It's a GP trying to place an urgent referral, a patient in a difficult moment, or a new enquiry that quietly goes to the next name on the list. Voicemail doesn't solve this — most callers simply hang up and try someone else.

The goal was simple to state and harder to deliver: every call answered, warmly and professionally, under the practice's own name — without the practitioner sitting by the phone between sessions.

What we put in place

Rather than a call centre, the practice was matched with a small, consistent team who learned its tone, its referral pathways and its billing setup. In practice that meant:

• Live call answering during clinic hours, with messages captured accurately and triaged
• Appointment booking and reminders managed directly in the practice's software
• Referral intake logged and followed up, with GP correspondence kept moving
• Billing across Medicare and private fees reconciled, so nothing slipped through

The outcome

The practitioner kept the parts of solo practice they wanted — autonomy, continuity, a calmer calendar — without the parts they dreaded. Patients and referrers experienced a responsive, professional front desk. The practice ran quietly in the background, and the clinical day stayed clinical.

Solo practice doesn't have to mean doing everything alone. With the right support in place, it can mean doing your best work with fewer distractions — which was the point all along.