Figuring out whether hiring a virtual medical assistant is the right move for your practice? Here’s the complete guide to everything you need to know.
Imagine this: You’re a doctor with a thriving practice.
You’re seeing more patients than ever, but there’s just not enough day to get everything done. You’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, and you know you need help, but you don’t want to sacrifice the personal touch that makes your practice so special. Sound familiar? If so, then you need a virtual medical assistant!
In this guide, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about virtual assistants, including what they are, the benefits of using them, how they work, and what guarantees you can expect.
We’ll also provide a step-by-step guide on getting set up so you can enjoy all the benefits a virtual medical assistant for your medical practice has to offer.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant (VA) is a highly-skilled professional who can provide a wide range of services to support your medical practice, from appointment scheduling and customer service to billing and collections. VAs are work remotely, which means they’re available from anywhere to help you manage your practice. Which means no extra office space needed and you can search and hire from anywhere!
Virtual assistants have become incredibly popular, especially in healthcare, as they offer a cost-effective and flexible solution for practices that want to improve efficiency and patient satisfaction.
Click here to learn more and to get started with our #1 team virtual medical assistants.
How Does a Virtual Medical Assistant Work?
Virtual assistants use various tools to interact with patients and perform their duties. These tools may include a secure messaging app, video conferencing software, and an online customer relationship management (CRM) system. Specifically with medical providers, virtual assistants will need access to medical records, patient information, and your scheduling system (EMR / EHR) to complete their job correctly, but this is all done using software protected by state-of-the-art security.
Whether a patient is chatting with your practice online or on the phone, they’ll be greeted by your medical virtual assistants in a friendly voice. They can either leave a message or talk to the virtual assistants directly, who will then handle the task at hand to take care of your patients.
Once the appointment is scheduled, the VA will send a confirmation message to the patient and add the appointment to your calendar.
If you need to cancel or reschedule an appointment, your virtual assistants can take care of that for you as well.
The best part?
Your virtual medical assistant can help with all kinds of other tasks. This includes EMR system management, taking time to answer questions, taking care of time-consuming admin tasks, managing patient charts, and even handling billing and collections.
All of this so you can place your attention on providing quality care to your patients.
Click here to learn more and get started with our #1 team of virtual medical assistants.
What are the Benefits of Using a Virtual Assistant?
There are plenty of benefits that come with using a virtual assistant, including:
Increased productivity
By delegating tasks to a VA (virtual assistant), you’ll be able to free up your valuable time so you can focus on seeing patients and growing your practice. So much of your time will already be consumed on phone calls, follow-ups, filling out prescription refills, and working in the front office role.
It’s not what you are trained to do, and while you surely have someone in your front office to handle things, the chances are they already have too much on their plate day-to-day.
A clinic can’t grow sustainably in such circumstances, but thankfully, technology provides an option. By outsourcing these more tedious tasks to individuals who will essentially act as your virtual medical receptionist, you alleviate the stress and allow for more productive work to take place.
Easy Transcriptions
Your virtual medical assistant can transcribe your notes from appointments so you can focus solely on seeing your clients and providing them with the patient experience they’re expecting. When you consider how much time you may spend trying to transcribe doctor-patient conversations, you’ll start to realize how much you can save.
So many medical practices are already trying to use machine learning tools that claim to be able to transcribe perfectly, but let’s be honest; there’s a little way to go before they are truly accurate and reliable.
When it comes to the healthcare industry, accuracy can literally mean life or death, so it’s vital that you choose virtual medical assistants that can provide accurate transcriptions.
Increased Office Space
Take a moment to think about all the things you need in your office: a desk, a computer, a phone, etc. Now imagine not having to worry about any of that because you can work from anywhere! With a virtual assistant, you won’t need an office since they can do everything remotely. This can free up a lot of space in your home or office.
Improved Patient Satisfaction
Bringing all these benefits together, it’s easy to see that using virtual medical assistants is one of the best ways to improve patient satisfaction in all areas. Your patients get to save time by talking to someone online rather than coming directly to you.
They can contact you at any time, even when you’re officially off the clock, and your overall patient visits will be far better since you can focus on delivering a quality patient experience every time.
After all, when patients and clients have their calls answered promptly, appointments are scheduled quickly and efficiently, and all their needs are taken care of in a professional manner, they will be far more likely to recommend you to others and come back again in the future.
What Guarantees Can I Expect When Working With a Virtual Medical Assistant?
Of course, working in the medical industry means you’re working with a lot of important data, and patients need to be able to trust you. Thus, you need to be able to trust your virtual medical assistant.
The guarantees will vary depending on the VA companies you’re working with. However, you’ll want to be on the lookout for guarantees that include the following;
HIPAA Compliant Virtual Assistants
HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a set of regulations governing the handling of protected health information (PHI). Any business or service you work with should be HIPAA compliant to ensure the privacy of your patient’s data.
Quality Assurance
The company you work with should have a quality assurance process to ensure you’re getting the best possible service. This may include regular check-ins, training, and feedback.
Getting Started with a Virtual Medical Assistant for Your Medical Practice
As you can see, there are many benefits to using a virtual medical assistant for your healthcare or medical practice, and what’s more exciting is that growing your business in this way has never been easier, all thanks to the Virtual Gal Friday virtual medical assistants.
Here’s how.
Step #1 – Schedule a free consult call
We understand that the needs of medical professionals change depending on who you are. This is why the first step is to schedule a free, no-obligation call with us. During this call, we’ll get to know you and your business and see how we can help your practice grow.
Whether you need one virtual medical assistant to handle, let’s say, all your administrative tasks or a many virtual medical assistant services to cover different areas of your business, we’ll create a customized solution especially for you.
Step #2 – Get set up
Once you decide to work with us, we’ll set you up with your new virtual medical assistant(s) or virtual medical receptionist. This includes creating any necessary accounts, providing training, and ensuring you’re comfortable with the process.
We will introduce you to your assistant(s), link up all the medical records and electronic systems needed for you to provide optimal patient care, check over any checks or insurance verification processes that need checking, and everything else.
All you need to do is provide us with the information we need, and we’ll take care of the rest.
Step #3 – Get started
And that’s it.
We’ll organize what we like to call a ‘Kick Off Meeting’ that properly connects you and your assistant, where you’ll get the opportunity to talk over your business processes and explain how you want things carried out from both an admin and patient standpoint.
You’ll be able to share your expertise, meet the team, introduce your doctors, describe how you want your patients to be treated, what tasks need to be completed, and basically everything you need for your practice to run smoothly.
After that, it’s simply a case of your virtual medical assistant getting to work and freeing up your time so that you can focus on providing the best possible care for your patients within your practice.
But you’re probably wondering…
Why Choose Virtual Gal Friday?
Aside from being the leader in the virtual medical assistant industry, being in business for over 25 years and having more than a decade of knowledge and experience in the medical field world of virtual support, Virtual Gal Friday is a company that puts you at the center of everything we do.
All of our virtual assistants have the training to bring them to high standards, 100% vetted by us, fully HIPAA compliant, and know how to use all the technology to get the job done right.
What’s more, you pay for what you need and nothing more. We hire our virtual assistants as employees, not contractors, so we both know they’re loyal and accountable. That’s more cost-effective for you and will save you both time and money.
Of course, you can enjoy full coverage from the point of contact. If a virtual assistant is sick or leaves, we have trained assistants ready to take their place immediately, ensuring you’re never left in the dark.
With the ability to deal with all insurance verifications, medical and dental billing, EHR and EMR management, full patient schedule task management, advice representation, email management, and so much more, Virtual Gal Friday has everything you need to succeed.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how our virtual medical assistant services can help you and your doctors practice reach new levels of success.
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