The behavioral health workforce is under strain as demand for mental healthcare continues to accelerate. Over one third of the U.S. population lives in a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area as of 2024. Private practice clinicians are central to serving these communities, offering a low-cost model for out client behavioral health care by avoiding the corporate overhead that inflates costs in larger health organizations. Yet rising administrative demands threaten their sustainability.
Recruiting new clinicians won’t solve this. Retention depends on ensuring existing practitioners have the autonomy and support they need to remain in practice, deliver high-quality care, and manage the administrative tasks that increasingly consume their time. As these pressures grow, supporting the day-to-day realities of practice has become just as critical as supporting clinical decision-making.
In addition to enabling several useful tools in the provision of care, thoughtful use of AI and technology can preserve what makes private practice work by reducing the administrative load, maintaining clinician autonomy, and creating more time for deep client relationships this model is defined by. These tools create the stability clinicians need to remain in practice, protecting access to care, and supporting the long-term strength of the behavioral health workforce.
The Private Practice Trade-Off
Most behavioral health professionals operate solo or small group practices. Unlike practitioners in large systems, they handle every business task themselves. Working independently allows them to control their schedule, make their own clinical decisions, and build long-standing therapeutic relationships within their communities. These relationships often deepen over years, giving clients consistency and trust that can be harder to achieve within more consolidated care environments. This model is powerful, but it comes with a trade-off.
Administrative responsibilities required to maintain a private practice continue to grow verifying insurance eligibility, following up on claim denials, completing credentialing requirements, managing scheduling and cancellations, and keeping up with documentation. These non-clinical burdens chip away at the advantages of private practice and create tension between spending time with clients and running a practice. This in turn drives burnout and can push clinicians to leave private practice entirely.
The Cost of Attrition
When a private practice clinician closes their practice or is less available, the impact is immediate. Clients wait months for new care. Therapeutic relationships built over years vanish overnight. Communities lose trusted providers they can’t replace. This is particularly true in private practice, where sustained therapeutic connection is often central to a client’s progress. Losing that connection can set clients back, derail momentum, and make care reengagement more challenging.
Keeping private practice clinicians in practice is not only a staffing concern, but a core access-to-care issue. Retaining experienced practitioners preserves client access and helps maintain the stability of practices that have built deep relationships in their communities. Private practice clinicians enter this field because they want to provide meaningful care and supporting them in that work is essential for long-term, systemwide sustainability. AI offers critical support by shifting time away from routine tasks and back to client care, creating space for what matters most: the therapeutic relationship.
The Role of AI in Workforce Sustainability
AI returns time to clinicians by streamlining non-clinical workflows. A JMIR Mental Health study from 2024 found that 43 percent of behavioral health professionals surveyed reported using AI in practice, primarily for research and report writing. Some examples of effective use of AI in clinical practice include:
- Documentation: Instead of generating full notes from scratch, many clinicians use AI to expand brief session notes into structured clinical documentation. This keeps the clinician’s insights at the center while saving time on formatting and compliance.
- Template customization: AI tools can help clinicians build documentation templates that reflect their therapeutic approach or insurance requirements, then refine them over time as workflows evolve.
- Language refinement: AI can strengthen clinical language and improve clarity while maintaining the practitioner’s voice. This is especially helpful for early career clinicians who are still developing their documentation style.
The purpose of AI tools is not to replace clinicians but to amplify their expertise. The right tools give clinicians more time for the work they can do. In private practice, each hour reclaimed directly increases time available for client care, allowing clinicians to stay present and effective in their work.
Technology That Supports, Not Replaces
Autonomy keeps private practice clinicians in practice. It allows clinicians to control how they practice, who they see, and how much time they spend with clients. Technology should support, not override, these decisions.
The best AI tools are designed with clinicians at the center. For example, a clinician should always review AI-drafted notes before submitting them, preserving their therapeutic framing and clinical judgment while still saving meaningful time. Technology adapts to the clinician’s practice—not the other way around.
But technology alone isn’t enough. Systemic changes are needed to truly support independent practice.
Building Systems That Support Independence
The 2024 State of the Behavioral Health Workforce report projects significant shortages of counselors and psychologists by 2037. Workforce development must focus on more than recruitment. Retention, operational support, and sustainable practice models are essential to keeping clinicians in practice.
Training programs and continuing education must prepare clinicians for emerging tools and workflows, such as AI-assisted documentation, telehealth, and hybrid practice models. Reimbursement and credentialing systems must also evolve so that private practice clinicians are not at a disadvantage compared to large organizations with extensive administrative resources. Improving these systems reduces friction and helps clinicians focus more on care.
Private practice clinicians must also have a voice in the broader innovative conversation so that new policies, training standards, and technologies reflect their real-world needs. Supporting the sustainability of independent practice through smart technology, training, and autonomy strengthens the entire behavioral health care system.
Redefining Workforce Innovation Around Clinician Sustainability
The future of behavioral health care depends on supporting the clinicians already in practice today. Workforce innovation should begin with the clinician experience, reducing administrative burden, restoring purposeful work, preserving independence, and making private practice sustainable.
Clinician sustainability must become a shared priority among industry leaders, educators, policymakers and technology partners. Without it, we lose the independent practitioners who deliver accessible, affordable care to millions of Americans.
Jonathan Seltzer is CEO of SimplePractice. To get in touch or learn more, you can connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn or visit the SimplePractice website.
