How Virtual Clinical Supervision is Changing the Field: An Interview with Rachel Ledbetter, LMFT
Curt and Katie chat with Rachel Ledbetter, LMFT, CEO and Co-Founder of Motivo, about how clinical supervision is evolving with the rise of virtual platforms. Rachel shares her journey from rural Georgia therapist to tech startup founder, tackling supervision access, equity, and innovation. We dig into the differences between administrative and restorative supervision, what therapists need to know about licensure and mentorship, and how AI may impact the field.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)
About Our Guest: Rachel Ledbetter, LMFT
Rachel Ledbetter is the CEO and Co-Founder of Motivo Health, a pioneering platform dedicated to transforming the landscape of mental health care by facilitating virtual clinical supervision for behavioral health professionals. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), Rachel’s personal experiences navigating the licensure process have profoundly influenced her mission to remove barriers for aspiring therapists.
To achieve licensure as an LMFT, Rachel was required to complete extensive clinical supervision hours. Residing in a rural area, she faced a weekly two-hour commute to meet with her clinical supervisor, a commitment she maintained for two years. This arduous process illuminated the significant geographic and logistical barriers many pre-licensed therapists encounter, especially those in rural or underserved regions.
Motivated by these challenges, Rachel envisioned a solution that leveraged technology to remotely connect pre-licensed therapists with qualified clinical supervisors. In 2018, she founded Motivo Health, the nation’s first HIPAA-compliant video platform designed to bridge the gap between therapists and supervisors. Motivo enables therapists to complete their supervision hours through secure video conferencing, eliminating the need for extensive travel and providing access to a diverse network of supervisors across various specialties.
Rachel’s journey from a therapist facing licensure hurdles to a visionary entrepreneur exemplifies her dedication to improving mental health care. Through Motivo, she continues to make a lasting impact by supporting the next generation of therapists and ensuring that quality mental health services are accessible to all.
In this podcast episode: How Virtual Supervision Platforms Are Supporting Therapist Growth and Systemic Change
We invited Rachel on to talk about the clinical supervision crisis and the technology she helped develop to address it. As one of our early supporters at Therapy Reimagined, she brings both insight and innovation to a topic that deeply affects the therapist pipeline and professional development.
Key Takeaways for Therapists on Supervision, Career Development, and Virtual Innovation
“Supervision should help you become the kind of clinician that you’re meant to be, not just a mini-me of your supervisor.” – Rachel Ledbetter, LMFT
- Many early-career therapists are left on their own after graduation to find supervision and navigate licensure.
- Motivo was created to solve access issues for rural and underserved prelicensed clinicians, offering virtual supervision through vetted professionals.
- Virtual supervision offers more freedom and continuity, allowing clinicians to find supervision that aligns with their clinical focus and identity.
- Supervisors can better support supervisees by focusing on mentorship, not just case documentation or admin oversight.
- AI can support therapists (e.g., with note-writing or fidelity to treatment models), but shouldn’t be used to push higher productivity.
- Motivo actively monitors supervision rules across states and ensures all supervisors meet board qualifications.
- Supervision models should include “restorative” elements, not just administrative compliance.
- Funding and timing were crucial in Motivo’s startup success—luck and persistence matter in innovation.
“Being a therapist, especially in a community-based setting, is hard enough. Let’s make it easier on them—just for the sake of making it easier.” – Rachel Ledbetter, LMFT
Resources on Virtual Supervision and Technology in Mental Health
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
- Motivo Health
- Email Rachel: rachel@motivohealth.com
- LinkedIn: Rachel Ledbetter
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
How Do Therapists Get Paid?
A Living Wage for Prelicensees
What If You Hate Private Practice?
Topic: Supervision episodes
AI Therapy is Already Here: An interview with Dr. Ben Caldwell
The Advances in Artificial Intelligence for Mental Health: An interview with Dr. Alyssa Dietz
How Can Therapists Accept (and Impact) Technology?: An interview with Dr. David Cooper
Meet the Hosts: Curt Widhalm & Katie Vernoy
Curt Widhalm, LMFT
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
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Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/
Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).
… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)
Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:13
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our profession, the ways that we get to being professionals. And this is a topic that we haven’t really returned to in quite a while, about clinical supervision and about ways that it can be better. I know that there’s a lot of people, especially in pre license years, that have a lot of things to say about how difficult the supervision process is and how unfair it is sometimes, and there’s a lot of us on the supervision side that agree with you. And I am so happy to have Rachel Ledbetter from Motivo. She was one of the first people who reached out to us and supported us way back when, when we had the Therapy Reimagined Conference and wanted to get involved with us. So I’m very glad that she’s here to come back and talk with us about clinical supervision and about all of the wonderful stuff that she’s doing. So thank you so much for joining us.
Rachel Ledbetter 1:17
Love that. So happy to be here. Yes, and I remember that conference so well, it was like, so fun, and we haven’t done those since the pandemic, right?
Katie Vernoy 1:24
Yeah, yeah. That went away, unfortunately. But yeah, it was. It was something where we were just getting started, and it was great having a conversation with you, and I think you were just getting started too.
Rachel Ledbetter 1:35
Totally. Can you believe we’re still in business?
Katie Vernoy 1:37
I know.
Rachel Ledbetter 1:39
There’s so many startups that struggle, especially in the mental health field, and I’m like, oh my god, I can’t believe we’ve made it. So.
Katie Vernoy 1:46
We did. We did. So, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you the question that we ask all of our guests, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?
Rachel Ledbetter 1:56
Yes. Rachel Ledbetter, you know, the CEO and co founder of Motivo. I’m also a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. So raised in the south in North Georgia, and went to school, actually in California, and came across the problem of clinical supervision, really through my own journey of getting licensed and then becoming a clinical supervisor myself. I can talk a little bit more about that, but I created a platform Motivo to provide virtual clinical supervision to people who need it. So about 20% of the people who use Motivo for clinical supervision are paying out of pocket for supervision. Maybe their employer doesn’t provide it or doesn’t have the right kind of supervision, but about 80% of the supervision on Motivo, an organization is paying for it, so we work with a lot of community mental health systems, health hospitals, federally qualified health care centers to be their supervision provider. That’s most of what we do, and we’ve helped about 6000 therapists get licensed over the last few years.
Curt Widhalm 3:05
Usually things like this get started because there’s a problem. What was the problem that you were noticing and trying to address when you started Motivo?
Rachel Ledbetter 3:15
Yeah. Well, you know, every state has a different set of rules for what it takes to get licensed, right? You guys know this. So I went to school in Southern California at Azusa Pacific University, got my LMFT degree. I don’t know if you guys know this. You probably do that there’s more lmfts in California than there is the rest of the country combined. So when I moved home to rural North Georgia, the idea of having an LMFT supervisor was difficult, you know, and and you had to have, based on Georgia’s licensure rules, you had to be supervised for at least half of your hours by an AAMFT approved supervisor. So there weren’t any in my rural North Georgia town, and supervision had to be face to face. So I found one in Atlanta, and I was driving, you know, to meet with her two hours there and two hours back each week in order to get my supervision hours. The Community Mental Health Organization I worked for didn’t have an LMFT. I was the only one at the organization, and so I was on my own for paying for my supervision. It was about $90 an hour, you know, you need about 200 hours in the state of Georgia to get licensed. So supervision was just expensive. It was arduous. I felt privileged that I was even able to pay for it during that time in my life. But I know a lot of people who wouldn’t have been able to, and so I stuck with it. I got licensed, and then I became an AAMFT approved supervisor myself, just to help with that rural supervision problem. I noticed a few years later that states started changing their rules. Georgia changed theirs in 2015 to allow all supervision to occur remotely. And that’s what gave me the idea for Motivo. Do not have a business background or a tech background, or, like, my undergrad is actually in Bible, which is not a super marketable skill. So I, you know, was like, Well, I just have an idea. I think if I created a platform, you know, there’s all these platforms getting clients connected to therapists. What if I created a platform that was getting supervisees connected with supervisors? And so I just gave that a shot. I created a little, you know, test site on Shopify, just to see if it would work. And it and it started taking off.
Katie Vernoy 5:30
And it’s really taken off. There’s a lot of I see you everywhere. I follow you on LinkedIn, and so I see you really engaging in the tech space and the mental health space. And so one of the questions I like to ask is, what do therapists need to know? You know, we’ve, we’ve got iterations of that. Sometimes it’s what a therapist get wrong. But what do therapists need to know about clinical supervision and the advancements of technology and mental health? Because you’ve, you’re in it like they are in it.
Rachel Ledbetter 5:59
You know, I don’t think that grad programs do a great job. That sounds awful to say that to any grad programs that are listed, but I think it’s hard for them. They’re focusing on teaching and training the clinical skills that they think that students are going to need as they enter the workforce, but especially with the rise of like online education. You know, years ago, online education people kind of turned their nose down to it a little bit. After COVID, it became almost every program has some sort of online function, and the idea that every graduate school is going to know how you’re going to get licensed in your particular state that you come from is difficult. So a lot of clinicians, when they go to school, don’t realize that they’re kind of on their own after grad school. You know, there is not a lot of help given. There is for your placement site and maybe for the supervision you need while in school, but once you graduate, you know you’re on your own for finding a job. Oftentimes, you know, I say this a lot, that the greenest clinicians are serving the most vulnerable populations, just the way that payer reimbursement works. You know that you can, you know, reimburse for Medicaid, but you can’t reimburse for commercial insurance. As a pre licensed therapist, you know, it means that most of the people that we are able to see in the early years of our profession are people with a high acuity needs, you know, and you’re just out there, you know, you kind of throw them in the deep end a little bit. So, you know, my MFT program taught me about Bowen’s, you know, theory of differentiation and family therapy and Genograms, and things that were have been great for me, but not things, you know, when I graduated, I started working in Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, family therapy was not something that I was using all that much as I was working with just how to get people from one day to the next, you know. So I think that’s something that clinicians don’t realize, is that it’s not just sitting in a private practice office right from the beginning, there’s a lot to get through first.
Curt Widhalm 8:04
Not only with the way that you’re talking about clinicians, but also the process of being able to talk about delivering supervision online. That here in California, we were scrambling after the COVID pandemic and stay at home orders. We didn’t have anything in place to do online supervision. I was meeting supervisees in parking lots so we could meet the face to face requirements while we talked on the phone to each other. But the last few years, we were catching up to places like Georgia when it comes to online supervision. And Motivo was kind of doing some of the research into the efficacy of how online supervision could work. What have you seen over the last several years in that process, also, as it drags us into the 21st Century, as far as the effectiveness of it?
Rachel Ledbetter 8:54
Well, as with many things in healthcare, the pandemic changed everything right? So in California, prior to the pandemic, the rule that was that you could do virtual supervision if you worked in community mental health an education setting or a government setting. You couldn’t do it if you were in private practice or for profit. So that’s the rule that changed. And it was, you know, kind of extended order, extended order several times. You guys were probably very frustrated in California because they would do it at kind of like, it at kind of like the last minute, and, you know, people were scrambling and that sort of stuff. But what we saw was just this total change in it. You know, New York didn’t allow it at all. Now they allow it 100%. There’s only one state to my knowledge that has rolled back their virtual supervision rules, and that was New Jersey here recently, but most other states have kept this intact. And what they basically say is, like, there’s not much lost from moving the supervision process online. In fact, there’s, like, a lot gained. You know, I don’t know if this was the same for some of you, but when I worked in community mental health, the person who supervised me was whoever’s available, you know, whoever is available and meets the requirements. And so the idea that I could choose someone that fit within my clinical specialty, within my identities, within all of those things that were maybe important to me and the populations that I serve was a nice to have and not a have to have, you know. And so I think the idea of virtual supervision helped allow supervision to be like more more of your own choice. Who do you want to work with? Who is the right supervisor for you, not just who’s the closest, who’s in the next office. So I’ve seen that really change, and I think it’s to the benefit of the profession, honestly.
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Katie Vernoy 10:39
The continuity that you’re describing is also really critical, because working in community mental health, I saw a lot of folks who would have to, you know, they’re in crisis, they have to do a whole case presentation to get to the question of, then, what do I do in this particular situation? Because their supervisor may not have been available, and I needed to catch up so that I could give them informed feedback. And so being able to have a phone call or a zoom call or whatever, to be able to meet directly with your own supervisor who knows your cases, and can continue to grow that skill set for you, I think, is amazing.
Rachel Ledbetter 11:21
Absolutely, yeah. And I think you know on that as well, when supervision is done internally, which there’s great benefit to having supervision done internally, but there’s also drawbacks to it as well. And some of the drawbacks can be that, you know, you might be meeting with the person who’s also your boss who signs your paycheck, and you know you might not want to tell them about some of the career things that you’re thinking about. Or I know, for me, working in Skid Row, you know, my supervisor was very burnt out, not just on the profession, but also on the organization that we served. And it became a bit of a complaining session about productivity, productivity based pay, no shows, things like that. It was not about clinical skill development and the things that would really help me become a better clinician. So sometimes, when you think about this idea of, like, picking the right supervisor for you, you can also have more freedom in like, what’s discussed and what matters to the development of a clinician, I think as well.
Katie Vernoy 12:18
Yeah, I hadn’t even thought about that with the administrative supervision that a lot of my supervisors were directed to give about productivity, about whatever documentation requirements, or what’s the evidence based practice requiring of us, and did you get that paperwork done? Unless you do extra supervision, you don’t get to the clinical stuff, except for high level crisis. And so I like that, this idea of having someone who’s a little bit removed can focus on clinical and or mentorship. I love that idea. It makes it a lot cleaner and it makes it a lot more effective for growing clinicians from the beginning.
Rachel Ledbetter 12:55
Yeah, I don’t remember who coined the term, but I’ve heard it for years of administrative supervision versus restorative supervision, and that idea of like you’re learning, and also these are the people who need that kind of learning and support the most. You know they’re just getting out there into the field. So, so I think it’s a great use of the supervision hour.
Curt Widhalm 13:17
Katie used the word mentorship, and that’s really kind of the through line that I’m hearing you talk about, and being able to provide the consistency there, as far as being able to give professional advice and to develop the supervisee, beyond just what is happening with the clinical case that can happen in the community mental health that you’re talking about. What other ways can supervisors better support early career therapists on their pathway towards licensure and independent practice?
Rachel Ledbetter 13:46
Great question. I mean, I think there’s a number of different things, roles that supervisors play. You know, I can remember always hearing that supervisors were the gatekeeper of the profession. I think that’s a very important role of let me make sure that you’re not going to do harm out there, that you’re ready, all of that sort of stuff. But I think it expands much more beyond that of just helping them navigate the field in terms of licensure rules and regulations, helping them understand what might be expected on, you know, the licensure exam, helping them understand like, the different levels of the profession, the different types of clinical settings, and how reimbursement works in those, teaching and training skills. Of course. I would say definitely, like self of the therapist and countertransference work is a huge one. You know, I think that, you know, research shows that the most important indicator of client success is their relationship with the therapist. And I think, beyond any kind of special models that you can use, like your ability to build a, you know, safe and good relationship with your patients is huge, and that doesn’t happen easily. You know, that only happens by the clinician doing a lot of their own work in their own therapy, paying attention to that sort of stuff, to know how to be able to do that. I would say, the other thing that supervisors, I’d say, sometimes get wrong, at least I did when I was an early supervisor, is that my job wasn’t to make this clinician into a mini me. You know, my job was to help them become the kind of clinician that they were meant to be, you know, and that might be very different from what I would do in a particular situation. So I really tried not to say here’s what I would have said, you know, but more ask them thoughtful questions that would help them understand, you know, what kind of approach they were using with the patient and what kind of clinical model they wanted to implement versus like what I would have done.
Katie Vernoy 15:46
With the changes that are coming through the field, there’s a lot with technology, there’s potentially differences that are going to happen with health insurance, with all the different platforms that are coming out, AI therapy, all these things, there’s so much that is shifting in our profession. How can clinical supervisors prepare early career therapists for these changes and making sure that they can still go the distance and find their particular place in the mental health profession?
Rachel Ledbetter 16:17
You know, I think part of it is letting them know that there is a different places within the mental health profession. And I hope I’m not getting on my soapbox here too much, but I see a lot on LinkedIn recently from clinicians that are just kind of beating the drum of: We deserve more pay. We deserve more pay. We deserve more pay. Which is absolutely true. Clinicians do deserve more pay. And if there is a company out there that can fix that for us in terms of higher reimbursement from insurance companies, great, like, let’s do that. But I think that I see it more from a perspective of you know, if you think about a lawyer, there are lawyers who go into the field simply to become public defenders, and they know what they’re going to make, and they know the population that they’re going to serve, and they’re entering into that willingly. You know, there’s other ones that want to be corporate lawyers and charge this much, you know, but like, thinking that all people can be served by a corporate lawyer isn’t necessarily, I think, always going to be the case. I think there is some level of clinician, and there’s a difference in pay just based on reimbursement rate. And I like to, you know, anytime I’m talking to a community mental health center, I’m like, make it super clear for your clinician. Show them what the reimbursement rate is for Medicaid. Show them how much they are making. Show them how much utilization manager is making, how much you’re spending on reimbursement for mileage and office space, et cetera, et cetera, so that people can understand we’re not trying to underpay you. This is the number that we’re starting with from insurance companies, and here’s how we get to you. You know, I believe that all therapists, or I would like to live in a world where all therapists are making great money, all of that sort of stuff. I just, I don’t think it’s very practical when we think about the population. Did I get on to my soapbox too much there? You guys think about that very issue, because I feel like I’m a bit of an outlier and kind of in the minority on my thoughts on that. So I’d love to learn from y’all.
Curt Widhalm 18:24
We’ll include a link in our show notes to our previous episode on how money works, where we talk about this exactly for both community mental health agencies as well as private practices. But it’s exactly the same thing that we talk about in that episode, which is it’s not for a lack of desire, it’s for a lack of the system and complaining to the right people is going to be where you actually make some gains on that, and that is going to be the people who set reimbursement rates, not necessarily the agency directors.
Rachel Ledbetter 18:57
That’s right.
Katie Vernoy 18:59
We also have an episode on pre licensees making a living wage. So we do have a lot of thoughts on this, but I think to your point there is, there are a lot of messages that say you should make a certain amount, or you should have this type of job, and all of that. We have another episode called, What if you hate private practice but, or what if you don’t like I don’t remember whatever the title is. I’ll put that link in the show notes at mtsgpodcast.com. But it is something where I think we’re in agreement, and I think that the advocacy at the level of trying to increase reimbursement rates, all of those things, it feels a little daunting in the current environment, but I do believe that that is where the work needs to be done, and determining how you navigate the current system, where there’s going to be AI solutions, there’s going to be self-help solutions that are going to eat away at, you know, the clients that we’re able to see. And so I think it’s just being able to understand the landscape of what’s actually happening. And you’ve been immersed in that, and have gone from being a mental health professional to being, you know, a founder of a startup. And so maybe you can reflect on that journey and what you’ve learned about kind of the other side of of the profession.
Rachel Ledbetter 20:20
Totally, yeah. And, you know, I have to say, like, I think we just got lucky, Motivo. And like, I say that a lot, because timing is everything when it comes to being a successful startup. Motivo, five years from now, would probably not have the success that it had, or five years early. If the pandemic didn’t happen, Motivo probably wouldn’t even be in business right now, because there weren’t enough people who needed supervision that were paying out of pocket that we could have generated, you know, revenue, and there weren’t enough businesses that were gonna pay for supervision when it’s not allowed in most states, or it’s restricted in a lot of states, you know. And this also goes along with the funding cycles as well, you know, Motivo has raised about 25 million from investors, and all investors eyes were on mental health and health care during the early days of the pandemic. So a lot of the digital health startups that you have seen come out of the last five years got funded. They actually got over funded at too high of a valuation during that time. Motivo didn’t get over funded because most people, most investors, were like, what’s this supervision problem? That doesn’t seem like a big deal, you know. So it was very hard for us to raise money. That ended up working very well for Motivo, because we didn’t have like this high valuation that we had to grow into. I hope I’m not getting too technical with the venture language. I will say that the investors are no longer interested in mental health startups by and large. They’re interested in AI right now, and that’s where they work. They have their thing, and this is what we’re investing in, you know. And so mental health founders, who have a great idea should just know that timing is a lot of whether or not you’re going to be able to make a go of it. And Motivo just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I didn’t do anything that made it happen. It just happened to work.
Katie Vernoy 22:26
What is it like being a founder of a company that’s been fairly successful in this other space?
Rachel Ledbetter 22:31
I guess I don’t think of us as successful yet, mostly because I like work from my pajamas in my house all the time. Like I’m not like, I guess, yes. I mean, I can acknowledge that our success, you know, we have like, 30 employees, and, you know, we’re doing well as a company, but, yeah, I don’t know, like, I think that I’m surprised, definitely, I’m tired, definitely, you know, it’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of learning. I think I’m I’m this sounds so horrible to come on a podcast and be like I’m so tired, but I am exhausted from the process of learning what we I feel like I have just been Motivo was just now getting to the point to where every day doesn’t feel like I’m pushing this impossible boulder up a hill, and those early days of a startup are pretty they probably seem like the early days of starting a private practice where you’re just like trying to get the wheels turning. So it’s been hard, but it’s been rewarding, and I just mostly feel grateful that that we’re able to do this work.
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Curt Widhalm 23:38
Where do you see with things like AI coming down the pike? Where do you see that coming for pre licensed clinicians? I guess this is kind of more of a question also of how does Motivo work? Are you telling supervisors, like, Hey, here’s how we as a company are feeling that the field is going and these might be things that you want to talk about in your mentorship?
Rachel Ledbetter 24:02
It’s a good question. I you know, I don’t I for the fact that I run like a mental health tech company, I don’t pay a lot of attention to what else is happening out there, and I probably should. With AI, I think this is a great force multiplier. I think about myself coming home after a long day of in person, community based counseling, going from home to home to home, and having eight case notes that I needed to do before the next day so I didn’t get too behind. If I had an AI tool that was listening in to my sessions and wrote the SOAP Notes for me, oh, my goodness, it would have been life changing to me. And so I see AI as being definitely an added tool. I do not see it ever being a replacement for therapy. I mean, what do I know like? I don’t really know what they’ll try to do with it, but I would, I would be sad. Maybe I’ll eat my word some days. But if I would be sad, if, in 20 years, AI was a bit of a replacement for therapists. That’s sounds awful. I see it as how can we use it to make therapists lives easier? A quick word of like caution, though, what I’m afraid is going to happen is that we’re going to use these AI tools, and then employers are going to start increasing productivity because they don’t have as much time doing case notes, right?
Curt Widhalm 25:19
Don’t give them ideas.
Rachel Ledbetter 25:20
They’ve already thought of it. They’ve already thought of it. And I’m like, don’t do that. Like, being a therapist, especially in a community based setting, is hard enough. Like, let’s make it easier on them, just for the sake of making it easier on them.
Katie Vernoy 25:36
How do you think clinical supervision will continue to iterate as supervisors get more familiar with virtual supervision and the different tools they might be able to use.
Rachel Ledbetter 25:46
Yeah, you know, I was just on this call the other day where we were talking about Eleos Health. It’s another great mental health company that I really like, and it does concurrent documentation, AI tool in that way. But it also does, like fidelity monitoring, meaning like, if you want to do EMDR therapy, then this tool will help guide you through that and document it as you go, and help ensure that you are maintaining fidelity to an evidence based practice. When I was a supervisor, I can remember just kind of being like anybody have anything they want to talk about or like staff a case, but if I had tools that were listening into the clinical supervision session to tell me how to guide somebody through a specific model that they were trained in and wanted to use, if I as a clinician, had tools that were telling me how to implement motivational interviewing in an evidence based way into my sessions, I think that would be a great thing. So I think our access to information at the time that we need it most, like when we’re right in front of a client or a supervisee, is something that can be enhanced with technology. I also just think, you know, we’ve already built an AI tool at Motivo that just scrapes boards websites and gets rules and requires so we can ask our tool how many hours of supervision are needed in Missouri for an LCSW, how many of those hours can be in person versus virtual supervision that, I mean, these archaic board websites have the information, but nobody’s compiled it into one place.
Curt Widhalm 27:28
What’s coming up next for motivo? Do you have future plans of continuing to expandout?
Rachel Ledbetter 27:32
Yeah, you know. I mean, mostly what we want to do, like the biggest kryptonite for startups, is distraction. You can very easily become Frankenstein with your product. If you even think about some of these old electronic medical records, it’s like, what can you not do? Like, there’s so many tabs, there’s so many options, and people like clean experiences with an app or a dashboard now. They want to be able to be like, here’s what I need I know how to navigate this. So really, my goal with Motivo is just to do the best clinical supervision we can do, to give you know people faith that we have vetted their clinical supervisors. The number one board complaint, by the way, the number one board complaint about supervision is that they find out at the end that their supervisor didn’t meet the qualifications to provide supervision, and I can’t think of anything worse than getting to the end of your hours and learning that your hours don’t count. So the fact that Motivo takes that burden up. Not only are we making sure your supervisor meets the requirements, but we’re also monitoring the Board’s website every single month to make sure there’s not any disciplinary actions, that they haven’t lost their license for any reasons, all of that sort of stuff. So I just want to be the place that just people think, like, wow, that was an excellent supervision experience for me. Beyond that, I don’t know. I just want to do that. I want to solve that problem. And I don’t know. I think that that’s kind of what I want to give to the world.
Katie Vernoy 29:04
So there are two types of folks that you’re probably wanting to connect with, obviously, or maybe even three types of folks. So we’ve got the clinical supervisees who need to find supervision out of pocket, that kind of stuff. Community Mental Health organizations that have a supervision gap that need folks to come in and fill it. And then there’s also those of us who could be available for clinical supervision. How does that work?
Rachel Ledbetter 29:33
Yeah, so definitely going to our website. If you’re a supervisee or an organization motivohealth.com you can contact me directly, Rachel R, A, C, H, E, L @motivohealth.com. For supervisors, you can also go to the website, but know that we have a big supply of supervisors. We have about 1500 today. We have a couple 1000 on our wait list waiting for an opportunity to supervise with Motivo. I think that’s mainly because we were, like, the first ones to do clinical supervision, so it was very easy for us to attract supervisors. Also supervisors, you know, it’s just usually something that they’re doing on the side of their desk. So they don’t, you know, like most people, want to be able to offer, like, a few hours of supervision if they meet the qualification. So I would just, you know, kind of examine your expectation, kind of limit your expectations for for how much we might need supervisors. We need them in some of our more rural, like smaller states.California, we’re doing quite well in in terms of, like supervisor supply, but we’d still love to have you and come and definitely apply if you’d like to. We pull people as soon as we need them, especially if you have a specific specialty or something and somebody asks for that, we’ll kind of expedite it.
Katie Vernoy 30:50
What states do you know which states you’re needing folks?
Rachel Ledbetter 30:54
Definitely need more in New York, we always do, more LCSWs in New York. Probably Oregon and Washington are two states, Tennessee, we might need some more. That’s probably it.
Katie Vernoy 31:06
Okay, great, because we have listeners in all 50 states. So…
Rachel Ledbetter 31:08
Love that.
Katie Vernoy 31:10
So if you’re one of those states, make sure that you check out Motivo if you’re wanting to do some supervision.
Rachel Ledbetter 31:15
Yes.
Curt Widhalm 31:15
So we will link to Motivo in our show notes, and Katie will probably also throw your LinkedIn in there. Is there anything else that you want to share for people to find out about you and the work that you’re doing?
Rachel Ledbetter 31:30
Yeah, just my email is fine. I’m super accessible. I love talking to supervisors. I love talking to supervisees, but I also love talking to like budding entrepreneurs, like I just, that’s kind of the role that I’m playing now that I don’t work 80 hours a week anymore, now it’s like, what can I do to, like, just enhance the profession. And part of what I like to do is talk to early founders and just, you know, just like, shooting, you know, whatever I was about to say, shooting the shit, but I don’t know if I can say that. But like, you know…
Curt Widhalm 31:59
It’s the internet you can.
Rachel Ledbetter 32:02
Okay, good, but just chatting about what’s your idea, and I can give you my thoughts and perspective on it, and you can give me your thoughts and perspective on my ideas, like that sort of stuff. I love that.
Curt Widhalm 32:13
And you can find those links in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com and follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, to continue on with these conversations, and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Rachel Ledbetter.
… 32:28
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