It usually starts as a quiet thought somewhere around year three or four. You are sitting in a team meeting, listening to someone talk about the new productivity dashboard, and a small voice in the back of your head says: I could just do this myself.

For a lot of therapists, that thought never goes away. It grows. You start running the numbers. You start daydreaming about a waiting room that actually feels like yours, a schedule no one else controls, and a fee split that doesn't quietly take 40% off the top of every session you work for.

Going solo is one of the biggest professional decisions you will ever make. It is exciting and terrifying in roughly equal measure. And while everyone talks about the freedom, far fewer people talk about the unglamorous logistics — the contract clauses, the client conversations, the moment you realize that all the compliance infrastructure you took for granted was actually someone else's job, and now it is yours.

Let's walk through the whole thing, in the order it tends to actually happen.

First, get honest about the timing

There is rarely a perfect moment to leave. But there are better and worse ones.

The strongest position to leave from is one where you have a stable, full caseload, a few months of personal financial runway saved, and a clear-eyed read on your contract. The weakest position is leaving in a burst of frustration with no plan, no savings, and no idea what your non-compete actually says.

Before you do anything else, sit down and answer these honestly:

How many sessions a week do you currently run, and how many would you need to run solo to match your take-home pay?
How many months of expenses can you cover if your caseload dips during the transition? Most people find it takes three to six months to rebuild momentum.
What does your contract actually say about leaving, notice periods, and clients?

That last one deserves its own section, because it is where good intentions meet legal reality.

Read your contract before you tell anyone

You almost certainly signed something when you joined the group. Find it. Read it slowly. The clauses that matter most are usually the ones you skimmed on day one.

Non-compete and non-solicitation clauses. A non-compete may try to stop you from practicing within a certain radius for a certain period. A non-solicitation clause is narrower — it says you cannot actively recruit the group's clients or staff. Enforceability varies enormously by state, and the legal landscape around non-competes has been shifting fast. Do not guess. If there is any clause that worries you, an hour with an employment attorney who knows healthcare is some of the best money you will ever spend.

Notice periods. Many contracts require 30, 60, or even 90 days of notice. Honoring this isn't just polite — breaking it can have financial penalties and will absolutely shape how the rest of the transition goes.

Client ownership language. This is the big one, and it bleeds directly into the next section.

Can you take your clients with you?

This is the question that keeps people up at night, and the honest answer is: it depends, and it is messier than you want it to be.

There are really two separate questions tangled together here.

Who owns the clinical record? In most group-practice arrangements, the records belong to the practice, not to you as an individual clinician. That means you generally cannot simply copy charts and walk out with them. Doing so could violate both your contract and HIPAA. If a client wants their records to follow them to your new practice, the clean path is for the client to request their records, or to authorize the transfer in writing — the record moves because the client directed it, not because you took it.

Who does the client choose to see? This is different from records, and it is ultimately the client's call. Clients are not property. They have the right to choose their provider. What you generally cannot do — depending on your non-solicitation clause — is actively pull them toward the door before you leave.

The ethically and legally safe approach looks something like this:

Do not solicit clients while you are still employed there.
When you leave, the practice typically notifies clients that you are departing.
Clients who want to continue with you can be told how to reach you, often through a neutral notification process the practice agrees to.
The handoff respects continuity of care above everyone's commercial interests.

Your professional code of ethics is explicit that client welfare and continuity of care come first. A client who is mid-treatment for trauma should never become collateral damage in a business dispute. When in doubt, ask: what serves the client? That question will keep you out of most trouble.

The client transition itself

However the notification happens, the clients who do follow you deserve a thoughtful handoff. Keep it warm, clear, and free of any negativity about your former practice.

A good transition includes the practical details clients actually need: your new location or telehealth setup, your new contact information, fees and whether you are in-network, and a clear sense of continuity. The emotional message underneath all the logistics is simply I am still here, and your care matters to me.

For clients who choose to stay with the group, do the work of a clean clinical handoff — solid closing notes, a clear summary for whoever picks up their care, and a respectful goodbye. You want every chart you touch to be one you would be proud to have audited.

Untangling the business side

Once the people side is handled, the infrastructure side begins. This is the part that surprises people, because at a group practice almost all of it was invisible to you.

Your insurance panels. If you were credentialed under the group's contracts, you are not automatically credentialed as a solo provider. Re-credentialing with each payer can take 60 to 120 days, sometimes longer. Start early. If you plan to take insurance, begin the credentialing applications before you leave, because a gap here means a gap in income.

Your business structure. Decide whether you are operating as a sole proprietor, an LLC, or something else, and get the registration, business bank account, and tax setup in place. Talk to an accountant who works with clinicians — the self-employment tax math is genuinely different from W-2 life.

Liability insurance. Your malpractice coverage at the group may not follow you. You will need your own policy, and if you had a claims-made policy, you may need tail coverage for the period you worked there. Confirm this before your last day.

The physical or virtual office. A lease, a telehealth platform, a phone line, a way to take payment. None of it existed for you before; all of it is yours now.

The part nobody warned you about: compliance is now your job

Here is the quiet realization that hits a lot of newly solo therapists somewhere in month one.

At the group practice, you were covered under their HIPAA program. There was a privacy officer. There were policies in a binder somewhere. The electronic health record had a signed business associate agreement that someone in operations handled years ago. Risk assessments happened, or at least you assumed they did, without your involvement. You practiced inside a compliance bubble that someone else built and maintained.

The moment you go solo, that bubble is gone. Every single piece of it is now your responsibility, and HIPAA does not offer a grace period for new businesses.

Under the HIPAA Security Rule (45 CFR § 164.308), you — as a covered entity of exactly one — are required to:

Conduct a risk analysis. A documented, good-faith assessment of where electronic protected health information lives in your practice and how it could be exposed. This is the single most-cited gap in enforcement actions, and it is now entirely on you.
Designate a security official. In a solo practice, congratulations, that is you. The role still has to be formally assigned and documented.
Implement written policies and procedures. Not borrowed from your old group — your own, reflecting how your practice actually runs.

You will also need:

Your own NPI as the practice. You likely already have an individual NPI (a Type 1), but a solo practice may also need an organizational NPI (a Type 2) depending on how you bill and structure things.
Your own EHR and your own business associate agreements. Every vendor that touches protected health information on your behalf — your EHR, your telehealth platform, your email provider, your cloud storage, your billing service — needs a signed BAA with you, the new entity. The agreements your old group had do not cover your new practice.
A Notice of Privacy Practices with your name and contact details, available to clients.
Breach notification procedures, so that if something does go wrong, you know your obligations under the Breach Notification Rule rather than discovering them in a panic.

It sounds like a mountain. In practice, it is a finite checklist that you can knock out in a focused week or two. The mistake is assuming it will sort itself out the way it seemingly did before — because before, it was someone's full-time job, and that someone is no longer in the building.

The emotional side is real too

We should name the part that the logistics guides skip.

Going solo can be lonely. You go from a building full of colleagues, hallway consultations, and the easy reassurance of other clinicians nearby, to an office where the only other person is the client in front of you. The isolation is real, and it sneaks up on people who were sure they wanted the independence.

Imposter syndrome shows up too. Without the brand and reputation of the group behind you, it is easy to wonder whether clients will come, whether you are good enough on your own, whether you have made a terrible mistake. Almost everyone who has done this felt that. It passes, usually around the time your calendar fills back up.

Build your supports deliberately. Join a peer consultation group. Keep your own therapy or supervision going. Find a few other solo practitioners to text on the hard days. The independence you wanted does not have to mean doing everything alone.

You can absolutely do this

Thousands of therapists make this exact leap every year and never look back. The freedom is real. The income, for many, is better. The ability to build a practice that reflects your actual values instead of a corporate playbook is genuinely worth the effort.

The transition just rewards preparation. Read your contract. Protect your clients' continuity of care above the business squabbles. Start credentialing early. And do not let the compliance piece become the thing that derails your launch — it is the most knowable item on the entire list, and the easiest to get right if you tackle it head-on.

Get your compliance sorted early

Setting up a practice is overwhelming enough without worrying about federal regulations. Yundra's free HIPAA risk assessment takes 25 minutes and tells you exactly where you stand — so you can tick the compliance box and get back to the work that matters.

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Leaving a Group Practice to Go Solo: The Complete Transition Guide