GoHighLevel for Psychologists: Practice Setup (2026)

By Dr Priya Jaganathan, GoHighLevel Certified Admin · HL Growth Partner, Australia · Updated 2 September 2026 · 12 min read

GoHighLevel for psychologists works best when you treat it as the front door of the practice and nothing more: it captures the enquiry, runs the screening and intake, books the first session, sends the reminders and keeps the GP referral paperwork visible, while your practice management system (Halaxy, Cliniko or Power Diary) stays the system of record for clinical notes, Medicare claiming and invoicing. Set up that way, a solo psychologist or a six-clinician group gets a reliable enquiry-to-first-session pipeline without moving anything sensitive into a marketing platform.

I have built this for Australian practices ranging from a single provisional psychologist working from a shared room to group practices with a full-time reception team. The build below is the version that holds up: seven pipeline stages, a handful of custom fields for Mental Health Treatment Plan tracking, two Calendars, four Workflows, and a plain-English privacy consent. I have also included what it costs in Australian dollars and where AHPRA's advertising rules force you to change the standard GoHighLevel review playbook.

What GoHighLevel should and should not do in a psychology practice

Draw the line before you build anything. HighLevel for psychology practices handles marketing, enquiry management, intake forms, appointment reminders and client communications. It does not hold session notes, risk assessments, outcome measures or anything that constitutes a clinical record. Those live in Halaxy, Cliniko or Power Diary, which are built for that purpose and sit inside Australian hosting and compliance arrangements that GoHighLevel does not offer.

In practice that means your intake form asks for contact details, referral source, GP name, whether an MHTP exists, presenting concern in the client's own words (one short field), and consent. It does not ask for a full history. Once the first session is booked, the clinician opens the practice management system and starts the file there. GoHighLevel keeps the relationship and reminder layer; the PMS keeps the clinical layer. If your structure resembles an allied-health group, the GoHighLevel for physiotherapists and allied health snapshot covers the same separation from the physio side.

Sub-accounts, snapshots and who owns what

One sub-account per practice. If you run two locations under the same ABN, still use one sub-account and separate the Calendars by clinician and room. Build the pipeline, fields, forms and Workflows once, save it as a snapshot, and you can restore a clean copy in minutes if someone breaks a Workflow. Clinicians get user access limited to their own Calendar and assigned contacts; reception gets full contact access; the practice owner is the only admin.

The enquiry-to-first-session pipeline

Create one pipeline called Client Intake with these stages in order: New enquiry, Screening call, Intake form sent, Intake complete, First session booked, Active client, Discharged/Reactivation. Every enquiry becomes an Opportunity in stage one, whether it arrived via the website form, a phone call logged by reception, a GP referral fax that someone typed in, or a Conversation AI chat on the site.

Stage rules that keep the board honest

• New enquiry: reception must move the card within one business day. A Workflow with Trigger: Opportunity Status Changed and a Wait of 24 hours fires an Internal Notification to reception if the card is still in stage one.
• Screening call: a short call to check fit, fees, clinician availability and whether the client has an MHTP. The outcome is logged as a tag: screen-suitable, screen-referred-out or screen-waitlist.
• Intake form sent: the Workflow sends the form link by email and SMS and starts a three-day chase sequence.
• Intake complete: Trigger: Form Submitted moves the card here automatically and fires an Internal Notification to the allocated clinician.
• First session booked: Trigger: Customer Booked Appointment moves the card and tags the contact first-session-booked.
• Active client: moved manually by reception after session one is marked Showed, or automatically with Trigger: Appointment Status = Showed on the first-session Calendar.
• Discharged/Reactivation: when the clinician closes the file in the PMS, reception moves the card here. A reactivation email at 90 days, if the client consented to it, is the only marketing message this stage sends.

GP referral and Mental Health Treatment Plan tracking

Medicare-rebated sessions under a Mental Health Treatment Plan are capped at ten per calendar year in the current arrangement, typically six on the initial referral and four more after a GP review. Practices lose money and goodwill when nobody notices a client is about to hit the cap or the review letter is overdue. Six custom fields solve most of this.

Custom fields to create

• Referral source (dropdown: GP, psychiatrist, self, NDIS, EAP, other)
• Referring GP name and GP practice (text)
• MHTP referral date (date)
• MHTP sessions used (number, out of 10)
• MHTP review due (date; set to referral date plus the sessions on the initial referral, or as the GP letter states)

Reception updates MHTP sessions used after each rebated session; some practices push this from the PMS via a Zapier or Make step, though I generally keep it manual to avoid double-counting. Two Workflows watch the fields. The first uses Trigger: Contact Changed on MHTP sessions used, an If/Else on value equals 5 or 9, then Send Email to the client with a plain note that a GP review or new referral is needed before the next rebated session, plus an Internal Notification to the clinician. The second uses Trigger: Contact Date Reminder on MHTP review due at 14 days before, sends an SMS to the client and a task to reception to request the review letter from the GP.

Tag the contact mhtp-active while a plan is current and mhtp-exhausted when sessions reach ten. A smart list filtered on mhtp-exhausted and pipeline stage Active client is your weekly list of clients to follow up before they drop off because the rebate stopped.

Calendars, buffers and clinician round-robin

Set up two Calendar types. The first is a Round Robin Calendar called Initial Consultation that offers 50-minute slots across all clinicians accepting new clients, with a 10-minute buffer after each session and a maximum of two new-client bookings per clinician per day so nobody ends up with four intakes in a row. Round-robin distribution should be set to optimise for availability, not equal distribution, unless the practice has agreed a fair-share rule. Clinicians who are full simply have their availability removed from the Round Robin Calendar without touching their personal Calendar.

The second is a Personal Calendar per clinician for ongoing sessions, usually 50 minutes with a 10-minute buffer, and a minimum scheduling notice of 48 hours so online bookings cannot land inside your cancellation window. Sync each clinician's Google or Outlook calendar for conflict checking. If the practice books ongoing sessions in the PMS rather than in GoHighLevel, that is fine; keep the GoHighLevel Calendar for the first session only and let the PMS own the rest.

Telehealth sessions

Add a separate Calendar or a booking question for telehealth versus in-room. The confirmation message should include the video link the practice actually uses (many use the PMS telehealth room or Zoom Healthcare rather than the GoHighLevel meeting link) and a note about finding a private space.

Session reminders and the 48-hour cancellation reminder

This is where GoHighLevel for psychologists earns its subscription. Late cancellations and no-shows are expensive because the hour cannot be resold at short notice, and reception chasing every gap by phone is a poor use of a salary. The reminder Workflow I use has Trigger: Customer Booked Appointment (or Appointment Status = Confirmed for PMS-synced bookings) and runs this sequence:

• Immediately: Send Email confirmation with date, time, clinician, location or telehealth link, fee, rebate note and the cancellation policy in one sentence.
• Wait until 72 hours before the appointment: Send SMS reminder with a reply keyword. Reply C to confirm, R to reschedule.
• Wait until 48 hours before: Send SMS stating that the free cancellation window closes today at the appointment time and the late-cancellation fee applies after that. Keep it factual and warm; this message does most of the no-show reduction.
• Wait until 24 hours before: Send SMS final reminder.
• If/Else on reply keyword R: Send SMS with the reschedule link and an Internal Notification to reception.

A separate Workflow with Trigger: Appointment Status = No-Show sends a gentle check-in SMS two hours later, adds the tag no-show-1, and creates a task for reception. Second no-show adds no-show-2 and routes to the clinician for a conversation rather than another automated message. The full logic, including the reschedule link handling, is in my GoHighLevel no-show automation guide. Two things matter for psychology specifically: never reference the presenting concern in an SMS, and give clients a way to opt out of SMS while keeping email, because some clients share a phone with a family member.

Waitlist automation

Clients tagged screen-waitlist sit in a smart list. When a cancellation frees a slot, reception triggers a manual Workflow (Trigger: Contact Tag Added, tag waitlist-offer) that sends an SMS to the next three waitlisted clients matching that clinician with a booking link valid for four hours. First booking wins, and a Trigger: Customer Booked Appointment removes the tag from the others. This works better than a broadcast because you control who gets offered which clinician.

Secure intake forms and Australian privacy obligations

Build the intake in the GoHighLevel form builder with conditional logic so NDIS participants, EAP clients and MHTP clients see only the fields relevant to them. My GoHighLevel forms and surveys guide covers the mechanics; the psychology-specific points are below.

GoHighLevel stores data on US and global cloud infrastructure. Under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, health information is sensitive information, and APP 8 requires you to take reasonable steps before disclosing personal information overseas, or to obtain informed consent. Your consent text on the form and in your privacy policy should say, in plain language, that contact and intake details are stored with an overseas cloud provider for the purpose of managing enquiries, bookings and reminders, that clinical records are held separately in your Australian practice management system, and that the client can request access or correction. Have your own lawyer or the APS professional advisory service review the wording; this article is not legal advice.

Practical steps that reduce your exposure: keep the presenting-concern field short and optional, switch off email notifications that copy the full form submission to a shared inbox, restrict user permissions so casual staff cannot export contacts, and turn on two-factor authentication for every user. Do not connect Conversation AI to anything that could be read as clinical advice; limit it to hours, fees, location and booking.

Connecting Halaxy, Cliniko or Power Diary

Cliniko and Halaxy both expose APIs and webhooks, and Power Diary has a Zapier app. The integration I recommend is deliberately one-directional and thin: a new client created in the PMS pushes name, email, mobile and a pms-client tag into GoHighLevel via a Zapier or Make step, and an appointment created in the PMS triggers the reminder Workflow through the GoHighLevel inbound webhook trigger. Nothing clinical crosses the boundary. Do not attempt a full two-way sync; the appointment status models differ and you will spend weekends debugging it.

AHPRA advertising rules and the review workflow

Here is where psychology differs from every other GoHighLevel review setup. Under the National Law, registered health practitioners must not use testimonials about clinical aspects of a regulated health service in advertising. AHPRA's Advertising hub is explicit that this includes reviews you solicit, curate or republish on your own website or social channels. A Google Business Profile that you do not control is treated differently from reviews you request and display, but the safest reading is that a standard automated review-request sequence is not appropriate for a psychology practice.

You have two defensible options. The first is to skip the review workflow entirely, which many of my psychology clients choose. The second is a carefully worded request sent after the intake process, not after sessions, that asks about the administrative experience only: how easy it was to book, whether reception was helpful, whether the reminders were clear. Even then, you cannot control what a client writes, and if a review describes clinical outcomes you should not feature it, quote it or respond to it in a way that endorses the clinical claim. My GoHighLevel reputation management and Reviews AI article explains the general workflow; for psychologists, switch Reviews AI auto-replies off and have a human read every review before responding.

What it costs a small psychology practice in AUD

The figures below are illustrative estimates at roughly 0.65 USD to the AUD, using GoHighLevel's published pricing and typical LC Phone rates for Australian SMS. Your actual SMS cost depends on message length (a segment is 160 characters for plain text, fewer with emoji) and on your provider. The worked example is a three-clinician practice sending about 600 SMS a month, which is roughly 150 appointments with three reminders each plus a small number of intake chases.

If you would rather register your own Twilio account than use LC Phone, the trade-offs are covered in my GoHighLevel LC Phone vs Twilio comparison. Either way, Australian SMS does not require US A2P 10DLC registration, but ACMA's Spam Act rules apply: reminders to existing clients are transactional, reactivation and newsletter messages are commercial and need consent plus an unsubscribe path. Keep the two message types in separate Workflows so the compliance settings never bleed across.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Storing session notes, risk information or outcome measures in GoHighLevel contact notes instead of the practice management system.
• Copying a generic review-request Workflow from a trades or dental snapshot without checking it against AHPRA's testimonial rules.
• Putting the presenting concern or diagnosis into SMS templates, where a shared phone or lock-screen preview can expose it.
• Allowing online booking inside the 48-hour cancellation window, which makes the policy impossible to enforce fairly.
• Building a two-way sync with Halaxy or Cliniko before the one-way version has run cleanly for a month.
• Skipping the overseas-storage consent language on the intake form and privacy policy.

If you want a psychology-practice intake and reminder system built properly in GoHighLevel, book a strategy call with the HL Growth Partner team.

Book Your Strategy Call →

Frequently asked questions

Is GoHighLevel for psychologists compliant with Australian privacy law?

It can be, provided you limit what you store to contact, intake and booking information, keep clinical records in an Australian practice management system, and include clear consent language about overseas cloud storage under APP 8. Compliance is about how you configure and use it, not the platform itself, and you should have your privacy policy reviewed by a lawyer or your professional association.

Can GoHighLevel replace Halaxy, Cliniko or Power Diary?

No. Those systems handle clinical notes, Medicare and DVA claiming, invoicing and practitioner compliance. GoHighLevel handles enquiries, intake, reminders and marketing. Run both, connect them with a thin one-way integration, and keep the boundary clear.

Can I automate Google review requests for my psychology practice?

Only with care. AHPRA prohibits testimonials about clinical aspects of care in advertising, so an automated post-session review request is risky. Either skip it, or send a single request after intake that asks about the booking and reception experience only, and never republish or endorse reviews that describe clinical outcomes.

How do I track the ten Medicare-rebated sessions?

Create custom fields for referral date, sessions used and review due date, update sessions used after each rebated appointment, and run two Workflows: one that alerts the client and clinician at session five and nine, and one that reminds reception 14 days before the review date to request the GP letter.

What does it cost per month for a three-clinician practice?

As an illustrative estimate, roughly AUD 225 to 245 per month on the Starter plan, made up of about AUD 150 for the subscription, AUD 10 for an Australian number, AUD 60 to 80 for around 600 SMS, and a few dollars for email. This excludes your practice management system subscription.

Related articles

• GoHighLevel for physiotherapists and allied health
• GoHighLevel for dental clinics
• GoHighLevel for vet clinics
• GoHighLevel for NDIS providers