The Group Practice Operations Manual

Running a behavioral health group practice is an operational challenge that clinical training never addresses. Most group practices that fail do not fail because the clinicians are not skilled. They fail because no one taught the owner how credentialing, supervision compliance, hiring, and financial management actually work from the inside, and how errors in one system cascade through all four at once.

The Group Practice Operations Manual covers the full operational lifecycle of a behavioral health group practice, from the decision to hire your first clinician through multi-state expansion and payer contract negotiation. Written from inside the systems that determine whether group practices survive, this guide gives LCSWs, LPCs, LMHCs, psychologists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and psychiatrists the practical blueprint for building a practice that stays credentialed, stays compliant, and generates consistent revenue.

Inside this guide, you will find step-by-step coverage of Type 2 NPI registration and group billing configuration, CAQH ProView management and the quarterly audit standard that eliminates credentialing delays, W2 versus 1099 classification and the misclassification exposure that destroys group practice cash flow, fee-for-service split models and tiered compensation structures, supervised billing compliance rules by provider type and payer, payer contract negotiation for group rates that solo providers cannot access, audit defense and clawback prevention, multi-state telehealth expansion under interstate compact licensing, and the honest technology assessment of EHR systems, AI credentialing platforms, and the practice management stack that most guides never provide.

This is not a book about clinical work. It is a book about the four operational systems that determine whether a behavioral health group practice gets off the ground, scales past five clinicians, and builds the financial foundation to last. Every chapter includes action checklists built for immediate implementation.

A North Star Practical Guides title from The Practice Blueprint Series, written by professionals with direct operational experience inside payer credentialing systems, network management, and behavioral health compliance functions