What am I worth? (6 CMTEs)

Setting Rates and Pricing Your Music Therapy Services

presented by Stephen Betz Ph.D, CCAP

When we start a business, how do we conduct an honest valuation of our services? When asked about our hourly charge, how can we defend it ethically? This course teaches participants (Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists, Art Therapists, Behavioral Health Therapists, Music Therapists, and ABA Therapists) how to understand a therapy valuation system based on healthcare standards, design a business plan, and distill it into a short presentation for potential payers. Knowing your self-worth (in dollars) puts you in a position of veracity and credibility in negotiations over reimbursement. A business plan will outline how to use your earnings to expand your business and reduce tax exposure.

The course will teach you how to make your business metrics come to life and how to find ways to reduce your taxes as a business owner.

Course participants will learn these standards to calculate the actual comparable cost that they must ethically charge for their services (lecture). Through group work chat, they will design a personalized business plan that accurately reflects realistic earnings potential, including start-up costs, and calculate the risk of earnings losses due to market fluctuations, creating a business framework based on self-ethics.

Participants will then match their business plan to tax calculations to choose the corporate model that best fits and is ethically sound.

Participants engage in a short chat discussion explaining the reasoning behind their choice. Participants then learn to forecast their business earnings (lecture) and create a monitoring system for their earnings (group chat). The end result is a balance sheet of profits and losses for the upcoming financial year. This P&L statement will serve to ethically defend the music therapist business owner's hourly charges during payer negotiations.

Outline of Class:

Video 1: 88 minutes

Video 2: 66 minutes

Video 3: 59 minutes

Assignment: 90 Minutes

Learning Objectives:

Participants identify three standard RVUs to valuate their services
Participants design and execute a customized business plan
Participants set three hourly rates for their services based on valuation
Participants learn three behavioral economics principles to retain their earnings.

CBMT Domain Areas:

5B-1, 5B-2, 5B-4, 5B-6

5B-1, 5B-2, 5B-4, 5B-6, 5B-10

5B-1, 5B-2, 5B-4, 5B-6, 5B-7

5B-1, 5B-2, 5B-4, 5B-6, 5B-8

What am I worth? is approved by the Certification Board for Music Therapists (CBMT) for 6 CMTEs-Continuing Music Therapy Education credits. The Spiegel Academy, CBMT Approved Provider #P-106, maintains responsibility for program quality and adherence to CBMT policies and criteria.

Class Description