The Practice Owner's Guide to Technology & AI in Mental Health
What's Changing, What's Available, & How to Make Smart Decisions for Your Practice's Future
Table Of Contents
Overview of Technology & AI
in Mental Health Practices
The technology landscape for mental health practices is shifting faster than most practice owners realize, and the gap between practices that are paying attention and practices that aren't is widening.
This isn't about chasing trends.
It's about understanding that the foundational systems your practice relies on, how patients find you, how your team documents sessions, how your intake process works, how your data is protected, and how you make operational decisions, are all being reshaped by technology changes that are already underway. Some of these changes are immediate and practical. Others are still emerging. All of them require practice owners to make decisions, and making those decisions well requires knowing what's actually happening versus what's being marketed.
"The challenge I see with most practice owners is they're getting pulled in two directions," says Jennifer Guidry, CEO of Solomon Advising. "On one side, there's pressure to adopt every new tool that hits the market, AI notetakers, new platforms, automation software. On the other side, there's a very real instinct to stay focused on what's working and not disrupt clinical operations with unproven technology. The right answer is almost always somewhere in the middle, but finding that middle requires a strategic framework, not a gut reaction."
That framework is what this guide is designed to provide. Across five major themes- patient discovery, clinical AI tools, operations and data, cybersecurity, and strategic positioning- we've built a comprehensive resource grounded in Solomon Advising's direct experience working with group practices across the country. Every section links to in-depth articles that go deeper on specific topics, and every recommendation reflects what we're actually seeing work in real practices, not theoretical best practices from outside the industry.
This guide is a living resource. As the technology landscape evolves, and it will, we'll continue updating these articles and adding new ones to reflect what practice owners need to know.
What We See Across Practices
Before diving into specific technology topics, it's worth establishing what the current
landscape actually looks like inside mental health practices.
Because the gap between how practice owners think their technology infrastructure is performing and how it's actually performing is one of the most consistent findings in Solomon Advising's work.
"Almost never have I seen a practice come to us with their technology and digital presence fully dialed in," Guidry says.
"Even our largest, most successful practices, practices doing $2M, $3M, $4M in revenue, have significant gaps. It's not because they're not smart or capable. It's because nobody in this industry has given them a clear picture of what 'good' looks like across all of these systems, and so they don't have a benchmark to measure against."
The pattern is remarkably consistent regardless of practice size, geography, or payment model. Google Business Profiles are incomplete or unmaintained. Therapist bios haven't been updated since onboarding. Directory listings are contradictory. EHR systems are being used at a fraction of their capability. Intake processes are stitched together across three or four platforms that don't communicate. Critical operational data lives in spreadsheets that one person maintains and nobody audits. Cybersecurity practices are minimal or nonexistent. And technology purchasing decisions are reactive, driven by a sales pitch or a peer recommendation rather than a strategic assessment of what the practice actually needs.
None of this is unique to mental health. Small and mid-size businesses across every industry struggle with technology infrastructure. But mental health practices face a compounding challenge: the tools available to them are fragmented, expensive relative to practice revenue, and built for individual providers rather than group practice operations. The result is that most practices are simultaneously under-invested in the technology that would help them and over-spending on tools that aren't delivering value.
This guide is designed to cut through that, to give you a clear, prioritized understanding of where technology matters most for your practice and where it's safe to wait.
How Patients Find Therapists Is Changing
The patient acquisition playbook that has worked for mental health practices over the past decade, invest in SEO, maintain your directory listings, build referral relationships, is still relevant. But the landscape underneath it is shifting in ways that require attention.
AI-powered search tools are increasingly answering patient questions directly rather than sending them to a list of websites.
Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and similar platforms are synthesizing information from across the web and providing patients with answers, recommendations, and even provider suggestions before they ever visit a practice website. For practices that depend on organic search traffic to generate inquiries, this changes the math on what kind of content drives actual patient volume versus what drives traffic that looks impressive but doesn't convert.
At the same time, venture-backed platforms like BetterHelp, Alma, Headway, and Rula are reshaping the competitive landscape, not primarily by stealing patients, but by changing clinician compensation expectations and making recruitment harder for independent practices. The threat these platforms pose is real, but it's not the threat most practice owners assume.
Meanwhile, the fundamentals haven't disappeared. Insurance directories remain a primary discovery channel for insurance-based practices. Referral networks remain the most reliable patient source for private pay, med management, and assessment practices. And the relationship between patient and clinician remains the single most important factor in treatment outcomes, something no platform or algorithm can replicate.
The practices that will thrive are the ones that maintain their existing strengths while adapting their digital presence and content strategy for how patients are beginning to search.
→ Deep-Dive Articles in This Section
The End of "Therapist Near Me", How AI Is Changing the Way Patients Find You: How AI search tools are reshaping patient discovery, why blog traffic growth doesn't always mean patient growth, and how to restructure your content strategy for the AI era.
Your Digital Presence Is Your New Front Door, Data Hygiene for the AI Era: What a fully optimized digital presence looks like, why therapist bios are the most underperforming asset on your website, and the four-priority triage list for getting your foundation right.
BetterHelp, Alma, Headway, Rula, What Private Practices Actually Need to Know: The real competitive dynamics between platforms and private practices, why the biggest threat is recruitment rather than patient acquisition, and how to protect your practice's position.
The Referral Network as a Moat, Why Relationships Still Beat Algorithms: How to build and maintain a systematic referral infrastructure, why AI disruption makes referral relationships more valuable rather than less, and what data you should be tracking.
AI Tools Entering the Clinical Workflow
AI tools are no longer theoretical for mental health practices.
They're arriving in clinical workflows right now, and practice owners are being forced to make purchasing decisions with incomplete information.
The most visible example is AI clinical notetakers, which promise to reduce documentation time from 20-40 minutes per session to under 10 minutes by recording sessions and generating draft notes.
The pitch is compelling, and the time savings are real in many cases.
But the landscape is fragmented, tools range from $25 to $200+ per clinician per month, integration with EHR systems varies dramatically, accuracy with specialized therapeutic modalities is inconsistent, and the compliance questions around session recording and data handling are still being worked out across licensing boards and regulatory bodies.
Beyond notetakers, the broader technology infrastructure problem is arguably more significant. The tools mental health practices rely on, EHRs, billing platforms, scheduling systems, CRMs, and telehealth platforms, were largely built as standalone products. They don't share data. They don't integrate cleanly. And the result is that practice staff spend enormous amounts of time on manual data entry, workarounds, and reconciliation that technology should have eliminated years ago.
"The single biggest technology problem in mental health practices isn't any one tool," Guidry explains. "It's that nothing talks to each other. Your EHR doesn't connect to your CRM. Your CRM doesn't connect to your billing system. Your billing system doesn't connect to your scheduling tool. And so you've got administrative staff manually moving data between four or five platforms, and every manual handoff is an opportunity for error, delay, or something falling through the cracks."
This cluster of articles walks through what's actually available, what it costs, what works, and what to watch out for, with the goal of helping practice owners make informed decisions rather than reactive ones.
→ Deep-Dive Articles in This Section
AI Clinical Notetakers, The Real Cost, the Real Limitations, and When They Make Sense: A comprehensive evaluation of the AI notetaker landscape, pricing, accuracy, integration, compliance, and a decision framework for whether your practice should adopt one.
The Integration Crisis, Why Nothing in Your Tech Stack Talks to Each Other: The systemic technology problem facing group practices, what a typical day looks like when systems don't communicate, and what practice owners should be demanding from vendors.
Your EHR Is Holding You Back, What Practice Owners Need to Know: Common EHR limitations, the per-clinician pricing problem at scale, the API problem that prevents data from flowing where it needs to go, and what to evaluate when shopping for a new system.
The Google Sheets Trap, Why Your Practice Has Outgrown Spreadsheets: Why practices end up tracking critical operations in spreadsheets, where that approach breaks, and what realistic alternatives look like at different practice sizes and budgets.
Operations, Automation & Data
If there's one area where the gap between what's possible and what's actually happening in mental health practices is widest, it's in how practices use data to make operational decisions.
Most practice owners can tell you how many sessions happened last month. Very few can tell you their conversion rate by referral source, their retention rate by clinician, their average time from inquiry to first appointment, or why patients who contacted the practice didn't end up scheduling. This isn't because practice owners don't care about these metrics; it's because the systems they're working with make this data extraordinarily difficult to capture, organize, and analyze.
The intake process is the clearest example. For most group practices, intake is a fragmented, manual process that spans multiple platforms, relies on individual staff judgment, and has virtually no tracking infrastructure around it. Patients fall out at predictable points, slow response times, insurance mismatches, availability gaps, specialty mismatches, and most practices have no way to quantify how much revenue that leakage represents or what's causing it.
Automation is part of the solution, but the conversation around automation in healthcare tends to swing between two extremes: either everything should be automated immediately, or automation is dehumanizing and inappropriate for mental health. The reality is more nuanced. Some parts of practice operations, appointment reminders, insurance verification, and initial inquiry routing can be automated today with significant time and cost savings. Other parts, the clinical conversation during intake, the judgment call about clinician-patient fit, and the follow-up with a patient who didn't show, require human involvement and probably always will.
The articles in this section focus on where data and automation can make the biggest practical difference for group practices right now, without overpromising on technology that isn't ready.
→ Deep-Dive Articles in This Section
Your Intake Process Is Leaking Revenue, A Data-Driven Approach to Fixing It: The systemic reasons intake processes break in group practices, where patients fall out, what conversion benchmarks to measure against, and where automation fits without losing the human touch.
What Every Practice Owner Should Be Tracking, A Data Playbook for 2026: The operational and clinical data points that unlock better decisions, why there's such a gap between what should be tracked and what actually gets tracked, and the five metrics to start with if you can only track five things.
Automating the Administrative Burden, What's Realistic and What's Hype: What can actually be automated today, where practice owners over-invest in automation that doesn't deliver, the difference between automating tasks and automating judgment, and realistic predictions for the next 2-3 years.
Cybersecurity & Compliance
Cybersecurity is the topic that almost every practice owner knows
matters, and almost none are adequately addressing.
The reasons are understandable; cybersecurity feels technical, abstract, and expensive. It doesn't generate revenue. It doesn't help you see more patients.
And until something goes wrong, the risk feels theoretical.
It's not theoretical. Mental health data is among the most sensitive and most valuable data on the black market. A patient's therapy records contain information that can be used for identity theft, insurance fraud, blackmail, and more. And the practices that hold this data are, by and large, operating with minimal security infrastructure: shared passwords, unencrypted devices, home networks used for telehealth sessions, and no incident response plan.
The compliance landscape is also becoming more complex as practices adopt more tools. Every AI notetaker, CRM, billing platform, and telehealth system creates another surface area for potential breaches and another BAA that needs to be managed. Most practices are adding these tools without a systematic approach to evaluating their security posture or understanding where their data is being processed and stored.
"I've presented cybersecurity training to rooms full of mental health practitioners," Guidry says. "The level of awareness is low, not because people don't care, but because nobody has explained the risk in terms that feel concrete and actionable. When you tell a practice owner that a clearinghouse breach could disrupt their reimbursements for two months and potentially bankrupt them, that gets their attention in a way that abstract warnings about HIPAA fines don't."
These articles are designed to make cybersecurity concrete, actionable, and proportionate, focused on the highest-impact, most realistic steps practices can take given their resources.
→ Deep-Dive Articles in This Section
Why Mental Health Practices Are Prime Targets for Cybercriminals: Why mental health data is uniquely valuable, the most common security vulnerabilities in practice environments, and where to spend first if you have a limited budget.
HIPAA Compliance When Adopting AI Tools, What You Need to Ask Before You Buy: The HIPAA evaluation checklist for new tools, how to navigate the BAA landscape, what to understand about data handling that most vendors aren't transparent about, and the regulatory trajectory.
Your Telehealth Setup Has Security Gaps You Don't Know About: The most common vulnerabilities in telehealth infrastructure, what a compliant home setup looks like, how to evaluate telehealth platforms, and a security checklist every practice can implement in a week.
Strategic Positioning &
Future-Proofing
Everything in this guide, patient discovery, clinical tools, operations, security, connects to a larger strategic question: how should practice owners be thinking about the next three to five years, and what decisions made today will determine whether they're well-positioned or playing catch-up?
The honest answer is that the pace of change makes precise predictions difficult. What is clear is that the practices best positioned for whatever comes next share common characteristics: they have clean, well-structured digital infrastructure. They make technology decisions based on strategic assessment rather than sales pitches. They track enough operational data to make informed decisions. They've invested in the security and compliance foundations that protect them as they adopt new tools. And they have advisory relationships that give them access to what's working across the industry, not just what's happening inside their own four walls.
"What I tell every practice owner is the same thing," Guidry says. "You don't need to be on the bleeding edge. You don't need to adopt every tool. But you need to be intentional about the decisions you're making, you need to understand what's coming, and you need to have your foundation solid enough that when it's time to move, you can move from a position of strength rather than scrambling."
Solomon Advising's position in this landscape is unique. With more than a decade of experience across practices of all sizes nationwide, and active engagement with both the consulting and technology sides of the industry, we're able to translate what we're seeing across our entire client base into strategic guidance for each individual practice. That collective intelligence, knowing what's been tried, what's worked, what's failed, and what's emerging, is the most valuable resource a practice owner can access in a rapidly changing environment.
→ Deep-Dive Articles in This Section
The Technology Your Practice Actually Needs, A 2026 Buyer's Guide: How to assess what your practice needs versus what vendors are selling, the right tech stack at different practice sizes, and which investments will look smart in three years.
What a $1.5M Practice Needs to Know That a $500K Practice Doesn't: What breaks when practices cross growth thresholds, the complexity cliff that hits group practices at scale, and when it makes sense to bring in outside support.
How Solomon Advising Uses AI to Deliver Better Results for Our Clients: How we balance efficiency and authenticity, how our own AI adoption informs our client conversations, and how we're evolving our services as the technology landscape changes.
Why We're Building Custom Technology for Mental Health Practices: The market failure in mental health practice technology, what we're building, and why our consulting experience positions us to solve problems that pure technology companies can't.
We've Spent 10+ Years in Mental Health Practice Consulting, Here's What's Changed and What Hasn't: The constants that no technology will replace, what's changed most in the last five years, and what separates practices that adapt from those that don't.
"The thing about technology is it moves fast, and it's hard to know what's worth paying attention to. Solomon doesn't just tell us what tools to buy; they help us understand what's actually changing in the industry and what we need to do about it. That kind of strategic foresight is one of the many reasons why we stay with them,"
- Dr. Ronit Farzam, Owner of Center for Healing & Personal Growth
Our process
How Solomon Advising Approaches Technology Assessment
When a practice engages Solomon Advising for technology and digital strategy support,
the process is built around understanding your specific situation, not applying a generic checklist.
Phase 1
→ Comprehensive Technology & Digital Audit
We assess the full landscape of your practice's technology environment: EHR configuration and utilization, digital presence (Google Business Profile, website, directory listings, therapist bios), intake systems and workflow, data tracking and reporting capabilities, cybersecurity posture, and current tool spend. The goal is to establish a clear baseline of where you are, identify the gaps that are costing you the most, and understand which systems are working and which are creating friction.
Phase 2
→ Strategic Prioritization
Not everything needs to happen at once. Based on the audit findings, we develop a prioritized roadmap that accounts for your practice's size, revenue, growth goals, and operational capacity. This roadmap distinguishes between foundational fixes that need to happen immediately, strategic investments that will pay off over the next 12-18 months, and emerging opportunities that are worth monitoring but not yet worth spending on.
Phase 3
→ Implementation & Ongoing Management
For the practices we support on an ongoing basis, we don't just advise, we execute. We manage digital presence, produce content, optimize listings, evaluate and implement tools, build reporting frameworks, and provide the ongoing strategic oversight that ensures technology decisions continue to align with practice goals as both the practice and the landscape evolve.
Phase 4
→ Continuous Intelligence
Because we work with practices across the country, different sizes, different payment models, different stages of growth, we have visibility into what's working that no individual practice could develop on its own. That collective intelligence informs every recommendation we make, and it's what allows us to tell a practice owner not just what tools exist but which ones are actually delivering results in practices like theirs.
Common challenges & solutions
The challenges practice owners raise most often, and how we approach them.
"I don't know what I don't know about our technology."
This is the most common starting point, and it's not a weakness; it's an acknowledgment that technology assessment isn't what you were trained to do. That's exactly what the audit process is designed to surface. Most practice owners are surprised not by the number of issues we find, but by which issues are costing them the most. The ones that feel urgent (a slow website, a tool that's frustrating staff) are often less impactful than the ones that are invisible (intake leakage, inconsistent listings, security gaps).
"We're spending money on tools that I'm not sure are delivering value."
This is extremely common, especially for practices that have grown quickly. Tools get added reactively, someone recommends a platform, a vendor gives a compelling demo, a problem needs a quick fix, and over time, the practice is paying for five or six tools that overlap in function, don't integrate, and collectively cost more than a single, well-chosen solution would. We conduct a full tool audit as part of our assessment, evaluating every platform against what the practice actually needs and what alternatives exist.
"I'm worried about AI, but I don't know what to do about it."
The worry is valid, but the response shouldn't be either panic or paralysis. AI is already impacting patient discovery, clinical documentation, and administrative efficiency, but the timeline for these impacts varies, and not every AI tool on the market is ready for clinical adoption. Our approach is to help practices adopt where adoption makes sense today, prepare for changes that are clearly coming, and avoid spending money on tools that are still too immature to deliver consistent value.
"What sets Solomon apart is the breadth of their experience. They're not learning on our practice; they're bringing insights from every practice they've worked with across the country. When they say 'this is what's working,' it's because they've seen it work. That kind of collective knowledge is something we couldn't build on our own,"
- Laura Slagle, Owner of Olive Leaf Family Therapy
key takeaways
1. The Foundation Comes First
Before investing in AI tools, automation, or new platforms, ensure your foundational digital infrastructure is solid, clean listings, strong bios, optimized Google Business Profile, functional intake systems, and adequate cybersecurity. Every advanced strategy builds on this foundation, and most practices have more foundational work to do than they realize.
2. Be Strategic, Not Reactive, About Technology Adoption
The market is flooded with tools marketed to mental health practices. Many are premature, overpriced, or poorly suited to group practice workflows. Make technology decisions based on a clear assessment of your practice's actual needs, not vendor demonstrations or peer pressure. The practices that adopt thoughtfully outperform the ones that adopt quickly.
3. The Practices That Will Thrive Are the Ones That Combine Strong Fundamentals with Strategic Adaptation
SEO still matters. Referral networks still matter. Clinical quality still matters. The therapeutic relationship still matters. What's changing is the infrastructure around those fundamentals, how patients discover you, how clinicians document sessions, how your team manages data, and how you protect your practice. Strengthening both sides of that equation is the path forward.
Related Articles & Resources
To explore specific technology and AI topics in depth, start with any of the articles linked throughout this guide. Below are additional
resources from Solomon Advising that connect to the themes covered here.
frequently asked questions
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Most practice owners don't have a clear benchmark for what "adequate" looks like, which is why a comprehensive audit is the best starting point. At a minimum, your practice should have a fully optimized Google Business Profile, current and specific therapist bios, consistent directory listings, a functional intake tracking system, basic cybersecurity protocols, and an EHR that's being used to its full capability. If any of those elements are missing, outdated, or inconsistent, there's foundational work to do before investing in more advanced tools.
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It depends on the tool and the use case. AI clinical notetakers have reached a level of maturity where they make sense for many practices, but the decision should be based on a careful evaluation of cost, integration with your EHR, accuracy with your clinical modalities, and compliance requirements. Other AI tools, particularly those related to patient matching, clinical decision support, or automated therapy, are still early-stage and not yet reliable enough for most practice settings. The general principle is to adopt where the evidence supports it and wait where it doesn't, rather than being either first or last.
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There's no single right answer, but most group practices are either under-spending on the tools that matter most (digital presence, intake systems, cybersecurity) or over-spending on tools that aren't delivering proportionate value. A reasonable technology budget for a group practice, beyond EHR costs, ranges from $500 to $2,000+ per month, depending on practice size and growth stage, allocated across digital presence management, content creation, security tools, and operational software. The key is ensuring every dollar spent connects to a measurable outcome, patient acquisition, clinician time savings, revenue recovery, or risk reduction.
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Start with the highest-impact, lowest-cost actions: fully complete your Google Business Profile, rewrite your therapist bios to lead with patient problems rather than therapist philosophy, ensure your insurance credential listings are accurate and current, and implement basic cybersecurity hygiene (unique passwords, two-factor authentication, encrypted devices). These cost little or nothing beyond time and attention, and they address the gaps that are most likely to be costing you patients and creating risk right now. More advanced investments can come as revenue and capacity grow.