Therapy clinic employee onboarding checklist by role, with Ontario titles

How to use a therapy clinic employee onboarding checklist

Copy this therapy clinic onboarding checklist for each new hire, give every line an owner and write the date it was completed. Some lines apply to every role. The role sections add what differs for front-desk, clinical, ABA and billing staff.

This page does not cover employment contracts, pay, hours, leave, probation or termination. Ask an employment lawyer, a payroll provider or the provincial employment standards office about those, and check each regulator’s own rules for its profession.

Before the first day: every role

Finish these lines before the person arrives, so the first day is about people and routines rather than missing accounts.

• Confirm the job title and reporting line in the clinic’s own employment documents.
• For a regulated professional, check registration status with the regulator, using its own public register or contact page.
• Confirm which record checks your regulators, funders and the clinic’s own policy ask for.
• Create the staff account with only the access the role needs, and note who approved it.
• Prepare equipment, a workspace or room booking and a first-week schedule.
• Name one person for questions in the first week, and a supervisor where the role needs one.
• Send the new hire the orientation plan and anything to read before day one.

Job titles and registration: an Ontario example

Ontario reserves several health titles for members of the matching college. Onboarding records, email signatures, name badges and client-facing documents should use the title a person is entitled to use. The table lists the restricted titles in each profession’s Act [R1][R2][R3][R4]. It does not cover every title used in a clinic.

Each of the four Acts also bars non-members from holding themselves out as qualified to practise the profession [R1][R2][R3][R4]. Roles that the table does not list, such as assistants and behaviour technicians, need their own title check with the relevant regulator. For unregistered ABA staff, the CPBAO FAQs give examples of less ambiguous titles [R5].

Front-desk and coordination staff

Front-desk staff meet families first and handle the most privacy-sensitive questions. Walk them through real routines with fictional clients before they handle a live one.

• Walk through how enquiries, intake forms and consent forms move through the clinic.
• Practise booking, rescheduling and cancelling on a fictional client.
• Review what may be said to a caller about a client, and who can authorize contact with a family.
• Show how to check a client in, handle pickup and pass a concern about a child’s safety to the named person right away.
• Explain how invoices, receipts and payment questions are handled and who takes over from the front desk.

Regulated clinicians: speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists

Regulated clinicians arrive with their own standards, so onboarding is mostly about how the clinic applies them.

• Confirm the registration class, any conditions and the renewal date with the regulator, and decide how the clinic will track renewals.
• Share the clinic’s documentation policy: session notes, progress reports, plan versions and who reviews them.
• Read the regulator’s own standards on records, fees and advertising together, and note where the clinic’s policy goes further.
• Agree caseload, scheduling blocks, room use and shared-equipment booking.
• Set up supervision for any assistants or students the clinician will work with, following the regulator’s supervision standard.
• Walk through the plan templates, goal wording and the progress report layout the clinic uses.

ABA team: behaviour analysts, psychologists and behaviour technicians

The CPBAO FAQs say that the activities of a behaviour analyst are not controlled or restricted acts, so the question for unregistered staff is how they are titled and described. The College also says that it considers the public better protected when behavioural services are provided or directly supervised by regulated professionals [R5].

• Write the behaviour technician’s job title in the clinic’s own records, and avoid the restricted titles and any credential the person is not entitled to show.
• Name the supervisor for each supervisee, introduce them and agree how often they will meet. The supervision log template gives the clinic a record of those meetings.
• Plan how families will be told who supervises their child’s sessions and how to reach that person.
• Train the team member on the clinic’s data collection methods and note writing, with a practice session on a fictional client.
• Confirm which funder rules apply to who may deliver and supervise services for each funded client.

Billing and administration staff

Billing and administration staff handle financial and client records, so access and approvals matter from the first day.

• Explain the clinic’s invoice and receipt process and who approves each step.
• Review what each funder and insurer asks the clinic to record, using the funder’s own guidance.
• Show how payments, refunds and write-offs are approved and who may approve them.
• Describe how privacy requests and complaints are logged and passed to the clinic’s privacy contact.
• Agree who can see financial and client records, and set access to match.

First week and 30-day review

Spread the learning over the first month rather than one long orientation day.

• Day 1: welcome, tour, accounts working, schedule shared and the named contact introduced.
• Week 1: orientation to privacy, safety and incident procedures complete; shadow a colleague; first supervised tasks agreed.
• Weeks 2 and 3: first documentation reviewed with feedback, and any access that does not fit the role corrected.
• Day 30: a review meeting with the manager or supervisor on what is going well, training gaps, access that should change and goals for the next period.

Accounts and access in TherapyCRM

In TherapyCRM, staff accounts carry a role, and access is role-based and scoped to the practice and branch. The practice sets each person’s responsibilities and needs to review access when a role changes or someone leaves. Create the account with the role the person needs on day one, and revisit it at the 30-day review. TherapyCRM serves English-language practices in Canada outside Quebec.

Frequently asked questions