How Remote Virtual Assistants (VAs) Can Be Used in Private Practice

As expenses rise across the board, many private practices are seeking solutions to reduce overhead or operate more efficiently. Many physicians are also running micropractices that operate on a very lean model. Additionally, as consolidation occurs across practices and technology continues to improve, many practice administrative employees are now working remotely regardless, thus introducing the potential for potentially saving money by utilizing remote virtual assistants or employees that may offer opportunities for cost savings, particularly if located overseas. Below, we’ll cover what a remote virtual assistant (VA) can and cannot do, how physicians on our online communities for doctors are using them effectively and for what purposes, and tips for how to successfully implement virtual assistants into your private practice’s workflow.

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What is a remote virtual assistant (VA) in the context of a medical practice?

In general, a remote virtual assistant (VA) is someone that you can hire to work for you remotely as an independent contractor or through an agency that provides remote workers. Virtual assistants may be located within the country (in your city, another city, or another state), or increasingly commonly, in another country. 

As practice overhead increases and staffing shortages amplify, many more private practices have been utilizing or exploring the use of virtual assistants, as this can serve as a creative method to find affordable and needed help. They can perform a wide range of duties ranging from administrative support to patient interfacing roles, discussed in more detail below.

There are many companies that focus specifically on providing virtual assistants who are trained in private practice operations and on how to perform commonly needed tasks in private practice that can be performed remotely.

As a side note, we often see physicians on our communities referring to their remote virtual assistants as virtual employees, and these terms can be used interchangeably. Just remember that in the strictest sense of the word, virtual employees are usually not employees unless you’re paying them as a W2 rather than a 1099.

What are some examples of tasks that a remote virtual assistant (VA) can help with in your private practice?

If you’re used to in person staff, you may immediately think about all the ways that they help you, and think that it would be impossible for you to hire a remote worker. 

However, the first thing that you should do if you’re considering a remote virtual assistant is to think through the workflow of your practice. Make a list of all the functions that your staff provide. Then identify the tasks that could be done remotely, and what things require someone being there in person. Start grouping skillsets for the things that can be done remotely.

Voila - you’ve already started building your use case and job description for a virtual employee!

Common ways that members of our physician community use remote employees or virtual assistants include: 

• Appointment Scheduling: Can remotely handle scheduling of appointments and reminders

• Phone and Fax Services: Answer incoming phone calls and make outgoing phone calls, file faxes, etc

• Pre Visit Front Desk Services and Patient Intake: Can organize new patient registration forms, get medical records, and medical history

• Triage: Triage patient inquiries to the appropriate person on your staff or yourself

• Surgical scheduling: Can navigate the coordination required in scheduling surgery

• Insurance Verification: Can verify the patient’s insurance and what requires pre-authorization

• Scribe: Can serve as a scribe documenting encounters with patients in real time if the appropriate technology is in place for them to monitor in person or telehealth visits

• Support during Patient Visits: Get together paperwork such as work or school excuses, put in referrals, call the pharmacy, send medical records, provide language translation, or pre-fill paperwork

• Prior Authorization Support: Can help to perform prior authorizations from insurance companies for necessary diagnostics or treatments, gather supporting data

• Eligibility Specialist: Can confirm that patients are eligible for specific benefits, treatments, research protocols, or other programs

• Coding Specialist: Can assign relevant codes to a patient’s encounter for billing purposes

• Billing Specialist and Coordinator: Can process payments, billing, and insurance claims, and track when payments are made and accounts receivable, and manage the collections and revenue cycle management process

• Remote Patient Monitoring Support

• Clinical Trials support

• Patient Engagement Specialist: Can communicate with patients and provide education, help with remote patient monitoring, increase compliance, and otherwise foster patient satisfaction and loyalty

While these are the most common ways practices use these remote virtual assistants, many practices have also found niche areas specific to their practice where a remote assistant can offload responsibilities from their in-person staff, thus allowing your on-the-ground team to be able to focus more on direct patient care.

Benefits / pros of using a remote virtual assistant in your private practice

As the virtual assistants that you hire or contract will become an integral part of your practice’s operations, it’s important to understand the pros and cons of using them. There are many potential benefits to using remote employees, some of which we have alluded to above. These include:

Address staffing shortages

• Can help address staffing shortages when it’s hard to find in person employees

• Can allow you to hire when hiring an in person employee is prohibitively expensive

Increase in person employee and patient satisfaction, and decrease staff turnover  

• Allow in person staff to focus on in person interactions, treatment, and patient satisfaction instead of administrative work

• Reduce burnout amongst existing employees by taking some tasks off their plate, such as paperwork, followup calls to patients and insurance companies, triaging phone calls, etc

• Burnout → employee attrition, which can be a dangerous cycle of resulting in more and more work on remaining employees → more employees quitting

Reduce costs

• Virtual employees generally have lower hourly rates, particularly if they work overseas

• Virtual employees usually don’t require benefits

• No need for office space

• May provide their own equipment if they are contractors or if this equipment is provided by the agency you hire them through

• Reduce some of the other associated costs of having more people in the office (break rooms, necessary staff bathrooms, food and drinks, parking spaces, HR support, office supplies and appliances, tech support, etc.)

Free up office space and create more revenue

• Having more office space could allow you to see more patients

• You could use that space for additional ancillary revenue streams for your private practice like product sales, clinical research, ancillary services, etc.

• You could rent that office space out to another medical practice or business

Improve efficiency

• Having virtual staff to manage non-patient facing work instead of having your office staff juggle direct patient concerns or care with other tasks introduces efficiency and reduces distractions

• Hiring people that have dedicated skillsets for the virtual work may introduce both efficiency and expertise over employees that are good at helping on many things, but not experts in any

• Allows the ability to put more customizable systems, workflows, and standard operating procedures in place to further improve efficiency

• Can offer additional hours where work can get done in addition to the normal workday (particularly with international virtual assistants), which can get things done faster

Foster growth and scalability of the practice

• Personnel availability, staffing issues, and inefficiencies within a practice often prevent practices from being able to expand to new locations, take on more patients, or otherwise grow the scope of what they can offer their patients

• Increasing manpower in a cost efficient way will allow you to hire more employees and increase the bandwidth of your practice

• The additional hours or after hours capabilities provided by using (particularly international) virtual assistants can not only increase the speed at which work gets done, but expand your ability to take on more work or increase your work hours without needing to pay overtime or find employees willing to work outside of normal working hours

Drawbacks or cons of using a remote employee in your private practice

Of course, there are downsides to virtual assistants as well. These could include:

• Obviously, can’t help you with in person tasks

• You will have to train them on your office’s specific practices (but would have to do that with an in person employee as well), and this could get confusing if they work with other practices as well. Many practices address this by having remote virtual assistants that only work with their practice

• May not fit in as well with the team, who is forging in person bonds daily, which may prevent them from becoming as good of a good team player or make them not as invested in the success of your practice (you should interview your candidate accordingly to assess fit and motivation)

• Virtual assistants are often fleeting staff and therefore you may find yourself putting in a lot of effort to train someone only to find that they’ve moved on to something else a few months later. Many virtual assistant companies address this by having a minimum contract period that they lock their employees in on

• Your patients may prefer talking to the same people on the phone that they see in clinic

• May be harder to monitor or reach (but monitoring systems exist in case this is a concern)

• May need to upgrade your technology or buy additional licenses so that you can communicate with them and that they can access your practice’s systems

• If you don’t use a company, you may need to learn how to pay international employees and file appropriate paperwork

• They may leave for reasons other than you, if they don’t like the intermediary that they are working with, or its policies

Where can you find a virtual assistant that has experience working with private practices and the medical setting?

There are basically two ways to hire a virtual assistant - find one yourself through your networks or through online virtual assistant platforms or forums, or use a company that specializes in providing virtual assistant services specifically for medical practices. 

It’s always cheaper to cut out the middleman, so if you have a prior MA or office staff member that wants to switch to a virtual role, this could be your best bet. 

However, if you don’t have a known entity, there are many reasons why using a virtual assistant staffing company that specializes in physician practices may be of benefit. Pros of using a virtual assistant company include:

• Ability to hire quickly, with the benefit of things like a background check and verification of their education and credentials

• Expertise in hiring virtual assistants and what qualities will make them successful, including the language skills, experience, and professionalism they need for you to rely on them

• Not having to navigate privacy and legal issues yourself, as the company likely has the structure in place to ensure compliance with legal and privacy regulations like HIPAA and the use of a BAA, appropriate security measures, etc.

• Scalable and experienced methods to appropriately train them with the basic skillsets they need (you will still likely need to fill them in on the nuances or procedures of your own practice), such as HIPAA, how to scribe, billing and coding, etc.

• Many of these companies require a minimum commitment from their VAs, thus decreasing turnover rates of VAs

• Can provide replacements if somebody has an unexpected emergency and needs to call out for a while

• A team to facilitate issues or disputes with the employee

• Not having to deal with HR or payroll, or international payments

Related PSG Resources:

• GSD Associates provides full-time and part-time virtual assistants for a comprehensive range of administrative, sales, marketing, and management services, with a focus on enhancing efficiency and productivity. Their mission is to streamline and optimize business management for physicians and other professionals, offering efficient solutions that free up valuable time and resources. Use our PSG partnership inquiry form for 10% off your first year of services.

• ​Edge Health provides college educated remote employees that work full time for your practice.  They perform tasks such as primary or secondary phone support, billing, claims, insurance verifications, scribing, social media, and other tasks.  Practices tend to use the services in multiple different ways.  They are trained prior to starting in your office, and the cost is substantially less than what you would pay an in-house employee. To learn more about Edge's services and schedule a demo, and receive $500 off each of your first 3 months, connect through our affiliate link.

Conclusion

Virtual assistants can be a very valuable addition to a private practice, particularly in the current healthcare landscape where overhead is increasing, administrative workload is becoming increasingly burdensome, and where staffing shortages are rampant and hiring is difficult. There are pros and cons to virtual assistants, but they can cover a wide range of responsibilities conventionally handled by in person employees, and help alleviate responsibilities for your in person staff so they can focus on patient care and have less burnout. As a bonus, they are generally more cost efficient - sometimes by many orders - thus making them a win-win solution for many practices looking to scale or address staffing shortages without increasing overhead. There are many virtual staffing solutions offered by the companies listed above that can alleviate some of the friction in navigating the hiring, onboarding, retention, legal and security, and payment processes involved with virtual assistants.

Additional private practice resources for physicians

Explore related PSG resources:

• Physician’s guide to starting and running a private practice

• Resources and perks for physicians in private practice

• Checklist for starting a private medical practice

• Ways to reduce private practice overhead

• What to consider when hiring a medical assistant for your private practice

• How physicians should use virtual assistants 

You can also sign up for alerts on upcoming free private practice educational webinars and

watch replays of past private practice educational events.