In 2021, deep in the middle of the COVID pandemic, Jenine Stallings and her colleague, Nicole Holler-Blackmon, worked together at a hospital in the psychiatric department. With personal protective equipment (PPE) in short supply, the necessity of continuing to see clients in person, and the staffing shortages that plagued the healthcare industry during the pandemic, Jenine and Nicole became frustrated with their situation.
Each had a strong sense that their skills and strengths could be put to better use if they branched out on their own.
“That was the catalyst of, you know what?” Jenine remembers, “If we’re cleaning this hospital every day and having to get our own PPE and take care of ourselves, we could do this for ourselves in a space that we can control.”
So that’s exactly what they did. 
Starting in a small suite that contained two offices and a shared space, they built a therapy practice, Realign Your Mind, from the ground up. While they only needed that small suite at first, that quickly changed as their growth exploded. They moved into a second, larger office, which the landlord then expanded for them by joining two suites together to accommodate the new clinicians they brought on board. When that office space still wasn’t enough, they added a third location.
“We’ve grown to over 20 people at this point. We have a mixture of admin team and staff, residents, interns, and licensed professionals,” Jenine explains. “We had no intentions of having a big business. We initially went into this as just me and Nicole, and it turned out to be so much more than what we could have imagined.”
Currently, Realign Your Mind offers individual counseling, group therapy, and even ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. But, as their staff has grown, so too have the types of services they offer. Clients can now also see them for holistic wellness services that include Reiki and sound therapy.
Jenine credits their growth to the relationships they had already established at the time they decided to start their business, as well as their passion for teaching.
“So many schools reach out to send interns to us. And our interns stay and become residents because of our teaching aspect,” Jenine believes. “We teach them so many different areas of what holistic therapy can look like. And so I think that has attributed to the growth as well.”
A Check-In Conundrum
While the team at Realign Your Mind was experiencing its exponential growth, they realized they needed some systems in place to help daily operations run more smoothly.
A common challenge therapy practices face is counselors knowing when their next client has arrived. Without someone in the lobby to check people in, the clinicians often spend their precious few minutes between appointments going back and forth from their office to the waiting room, looking out the window, or even just stationing themselves in the waiting room to greet their client. Those are precious moments where they could be doing other things, such as getting a cup of coffee or using the restroom. Jenine noted this inconvenience for her staff and decided to find a solution.
After some research and narrowing down their options, Jenine and her team decided to implement The Receptionist for iPad at one of their locations, using an iPad they already had. The clinicians in that location called it “amazing,” noting that it gave them back some of their time between clients.
Given how well the therapists responded to it, Jenine and Nicole added The Receptionist for iPad at another one of their locations.
While one of their locations has an administrative team member, she does much more than just check people in; she also answers phones, assists with billing, and performs any other important tasks that need to be done around the office.
In addition to the notifications sent to clinicians when their clients check in, the team benefits from some of the other features as well, like the delivery button.
“We use the delivery button because we’re mostly in sessions when they come,” Jenine says. “We can’t really guarantee someone’s going to be in the hallway for them. So that has helped out a lot, too. Tremendously.”
So what advice does Jenine have for other businesses looking to implement a digital check-in system like The Receptionist for iPad?
“Get it. It’ll make your life easier,” she says. “It’s user-friendly. It won’t disappoint.”
To learn more about Realign Your Mind, visit their website or one of their social media pages. You can find them on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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