Therapy intake process: a new client inquiry follow-up workflow for pediatric clinics

What a family needs from the first reply

A family usually writes to a clinic after a worrying stretch, and often to more than one clinic. The first reply does not have to answer every question, but it should tell them four things: that the message arrived, who will follow up, what happens next, and what the clinic can honestly say about availability.

Ask for the minimum at first contact. A name, a way to reach the family, the child’s first name and age band, and the service they are asking about are enough to start. Keep clinical detail for intake forms, which a clinic can send through a secured channel once the family decides to go ahead, rather than asking for it in an open email thread.

A seven-step therapy intake process, from inquiry to intake

The steps below work for ABA, speech, occupational therapy and physiotherapy clinics. Name one owner for each step so no inquiry waits because everyone assumed someone else had it.

What to capture at first contact

A short, consistent set of fields makes later follow-up faster and keeps the inquiry list searchable. Collect only what your clinic uses.

• Contact person, relationship to the child, preferred contact method and convenient times to reach them
• Child’s first name and age band; full details can wait for intake
• Services asked about (speech, occupational therapy, physiotherapy or ABA) and the main concern in the family’s own words
• Funding source if the family knows it, such as private benefits or the Ontario Autism Program, recorded without promising coverage
• Schedule preferences and preferred location
• How the family heard about the clinic, and the name of any referrer
• Date of inquiry, the staff member who owns it and the next follow-up date
• Any urgent concern and the step your clinic takes when one is mentioned

Follow-up timing: a cadence you can adapt

There is no single correct interval. The cadence below is an example to adapt to your clinic’s capacity and to what you promise families in the first reply. Whatever you choose, give every open inquiry a next follow-up date so none depends on memory.

Second-reply email example

The second reply is where many inquiries are lost, because the first message felt complete to the clinic and unanswered to the family. Keep it short, make replying easy and offer a clear way to say no. This fictional example uses placeholders only.

Send forms and book the intake visit

Once the family agrees to go ahead, send the intake and consent forms and book the first visit. Send forms early enough that the family can complete them before the visit, and say who to contact if they are stuck. The intake and consent guide shows fictional form fields for ABA, occupational therapy and speech therapy clinics.

Treat the intake visit as part of the same workflow: the booked visit should appear on the schedule with the right clinician and room, and the inquiry record should show that it converted.

When the answer is waitlist, referral or no

Not every inquiry becomes a client, and a clear answer is better for the family than silence.

• Give an honest estimate of availability and say what would change it, such as a particular clinician’s days.
• Offer to keep the inquiry open, say when you will next check in, and avoid promising a start date you cannot keep.
• If the clinic is not the right fit for the service, age, location or funder, say so and point the family to a next step in line with your clinic’s policy.
• Record the reason an inquiry closed. A list of closed reasons shows which services or locations families ask for that you do not yet offer.
• If a family asks about funding, explain what your clinic can document and send them to the funder for decisions about eligibility.

Run the workflow in TherapyCRM

TherapyCRM tracks an inquiry as a lead. Staff enter the lead with the contact person, preferred contact method, lead source, assigned staff member, date of inquiry, next follow-up date and notes, along with interested therapies, funding source, schedule preference and requested hours per week. Each practice defines its own lead statuses, and a pipeline view groups leads by status.

Each lead has a communication log for phone calls, emails, texts, meetings and notes. Staff can email a lead from a template or a custom message from the lead record, and the sent email is logged as an outbound message. Follow-up tasks carry due dates and show as overdue after the date, and a practice can define task templates that create tasks when a lead is created, after the last contact or when the status changes.

To convert a lead, staff open it in the client edit wizard, which requires a confirmed birth date. On conversion, TherapyCRM attempts a welcome email if the client has an email address and notices are not suppressed, and, if the practice has therapy types set up, it attempts to create a one-hour “Initial Intake Appointment” about a week later at 10:00 a.m. branch time. That placeholder is an ordinary scheduled appointment, so move it to the real slot, or cancel it, the same day; otherwise reminders follow the placeholder time. After conversion, staff assign intake and consent forms, and guardians complete them in the family portal, where documents can also be signed remotely.

TherapyCRM has no website inquiry form and no instant booking. Families who are already clients request visits in the family portal, and a coordinator reviews each request. Its waitlist is for active clients, so a family still at the inquiry stage stays a lead with a next follow-up date. TherapyCRM serves English-language practices in Canada outside Quebec. It is practice management software with a clinical record, not a physician EMR, and has no EMR certification. It has no telehealth or video visits and does not submit insurance or government claims, including Ontario Autism Program claims.

Frequently asked questions