Integrative Mental Health: "I Want to Just Practice, Not Run a Practice"
How a rapidly expanding, solo-provider telehealth psychiatry practice handed off its entire administrative operation to one HIPAA-certified virtual assistant, so the founder could grow the practice across states without burning out.
Table of Contents
Snapshot
| Client | Willow & Stone Mental Health |
| Provider | Dr. Forbes, DNP, PMHNP-BC |
| Industry | Integrative & functional psychiatry (mental health) |
| Model | Telehealth-first, trauma-informed, root-cause care for teens (12+) and adults |
| Based in | Dallas–Fort Worth |
| Reach at time of hire | Licensed in Texas, with New Mexico approved and additional states rolling out |
| Practice stage | Founded early 2026; first VA hire |
| Role placed | Healthcare Virtual Assistant |
| Assistant | HIPAA-certified Medical VA based in Kenya |
| Core systems | Tebra, Headway, ZocDoc, Alma, Psych Plus, MD Toolbox, Google Calendar, Psychology Today |
| Engagement | Part time, with plans to increase to full-time as the practice grows |
| Time to shortlist | Two days |
The challenge
Dr. Forbes started Willow & Stone at the beginning of 2026. Within months she was licensed in Texas, approved in New Mexico, and had applications moving in Alaska, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Washington, and Oregon, with California further out. On paper, that is a practice growing fast.
The catch was that she was doing all of it as a solo provider while still working full time elsewhere, and the growth was bottlenecked on her own time. She had held off on opening New Mexico entirely until she could bring on help, because Texas alone had already become a lot to carry.
“I want to just practice. I don’t want to run a practice.”
That line captured the whole problem. Willow & Stone is built on a high-touch, root-cause model: longer appointments, functional lab testing, and trauma-informed care. It is the kind of work Dr. Forbes loves and wants to spend her time on, along with research. Instead, her days were filling up with the operational weight of a growing practice:
- A schedule scattered across too many systems. Availability and appointments lived across Tebra, Headway, ZocDoc, Alma, Psych Plus, Google Calendar, and iCal, layered on top of her contract and W2 commitments elsewhere. Reconciling all of it daily to prevent double-booking was a job in itself.
- A five-minute clock on growth. New-patient inquiries from Psychology Today and the website needed responses within about five minutes to convert. Every slow reply was a potential patient lost.
- Prior authorizations and refills arriving all day. Pharmacy prior authorizations, refill requests, and payer authorizations came in through MD Toolbox and Tebra throughout the day, each one stalling care and revenue when it waited.
- Clinical admin bleeding into clinical time. Patient forms for short-term disability, FMLA, and return-to-work all required EMR access. Messages across Tebra, Headway, and ZocDoc needed timely replies. Charts needed closing out.
- The business behind the practice. Insurance payment tracking, bookkeeping, bill pay, plus scheduling the weekly SEO call and tracking CEUs and fellowships were all landing on the owner.
As she put it, she did not want to lose her mind on the way up. She wanted to enjoy the practice she had built. By her own estimate, it would already have been further along if she had been able to hire support from day one.
What she was actually looking for
This was Dr. Forbes’s first time hiring a virtual assistant for her own practice, and she was clear that she was not looking for someone to hold her hand. She already had a process flowchart underway and knew the platforms had their own tutorials. What she needed was judgment.
“I need someone with enough critical thinking and wherewithal to say, ‘I’m not sure about this, let me call the technical line or find the tutorial,’ instead of calling me back to ask what to do.”
In other words, a resourceful, self-directed operator who could own a problem, troubleshoot it independently, and only escalate what genuinely required the provider. For a founder whose entire reason for hiring was to reclaim time, a VA who only generated new questions would have defeated the purpose.
The search
Dr. Forbes reached out to Ataraxis through our site with a detailed breakdown of exactly what she needed off her plate. That specificity mattered, because this was a real behavioral-health practice with a live EMR stack, HIPAA obligations, and a patient population where tone and discretion are part of the care.
Our recruiting team screens more than 200 candidates a week at roughly a 5% acceptance rate. Every finalist clears a remote-work and communication check, a role-specific take-home assignment that tests technical knowledge and attention to detail, a culture-fit interview, and reference checks. For Willow & Stone we optimized for two things above all: genuine behavioral-health experience in the systems the practice runs on, and the independent problem-solving Dr. Forbes had named as her top priority. We shortlisted four finalist candidates and she chose her hire.
The placement
We placed a HIPAA-certified Medical Virtual Assistant, based in Kenya, with more than three years supporting psychologists, therapists, and sleep-medicine providers in fast-paced clinical settings.
Her background mapped almost point-for-point to what Willow & Stone needed:
- The same core EMR. She works fluently in Tebra, Simple Practice, and Athenahealth. Willow & Stone runs on Tebra, so there was no ramp-up on the primary system, and she already knew Headway.
- Multi-calendar reconciliation. The VA has managed multi-provider calendars across telehealth platforms and reconciled appointments across systems specifically to prevent double-booking, which is exactly the problem Willow & Stone’s multi-platform schedule created.
- Prior authorizations and refills. The VA has hands-on experience obtaining prior authorizations, verifying insurance, and following up on refills while flagging urgent medications and allergies to the provider.
- Revenue-cycle awareness. The VA tracks accounts receivable, verifies mental-health coverage, and documents approvals for billing accuracy, mapping directly to the practice’s payment-tracking and chart-closeout needs.
- Self-directed by default. The VA known for strong follow-through with minimal supervision and consistent daily reporting on task status. That is the single trait Dr. Forbes weighed most heavily, and it is how she already works.
- The right voice. In a trauma-informed practice, patient-facing tone is not a nice-to-have. The VA is known for warm, professional patient communication, which fit the standard the practice is built on.
What she took over
The VA we placed assumed ownership of the workflows that had been fragmenting the founder’s day:
- Schedule reconciliation across all platforms and calendars, plus a daily email lineup of appointments and reminders.
- New-patient response, prioritizing Psychology Today and appointment requests with fast, personalized replies, and directing emergencies to 911.
- Voicemail and inbox triage across business and personal channels.
- Prior authorizations, refills, and pharmacy requests through MD Toolbox and Tebra.
- EMR and platform message management across Tebra, Headway, and ZocDoc.
- Patient forms for short-term disability, FMLA, and return-to-work, completed inside the EMR.
- Revenue and back-office support: insurance payment tracking, chart closeout, bookkeeping, bill pay, and CEU and fellowship scheduling.
The through-line: a single, accountable point of contact now owns the administrative surface of the practice, freeing Dr. Forbes to open new states on her own timeline instead of the admin’s.
The takeaway
For a growing telehealth practice, the constraint on expansion is rarely demand. It is the founder’s time and attention. Dr. Forbes did not need to slow down her multi-state rollout or dilute her high-touch model. She needed the administrative weight carried by someone who already understood behavioral-health workflows, the EMR, and how to solve problems without adding to her plate.
Are you growing a practice where the admin has outgrown the day? That is exactly the handoff we specialize in. Get in touch with our team today!