The Medical Virtual Assistant: Healthcare Is Making the Shift

Healthcare is evolving: there is a growing need to find less costly staff while still offering patients high-quality service. In addition, there are issues of extra space to contend with; therefore many companies are looking to hire a medical virtual assistant.

What do virtual medical assistants do?

A remote medical assistant can support a wide variety of healthcare professionals with an array of tasks. These tasks are often clerical and may also involve accounting. Also, the marketing efforts of the practice owner can be supported. Virtual medical assistant services fall under a wide umbrella. However, even though their skill sets might differ and so too their tasks, such remote assistants have one thing in common: they all work remotely, offering their services to the selected practice. Below is a breakdown of the key tasks a medical virtual assistant can accomplish.

Admin tasks

When the medical practice opens, any doctor will acknowledge the need for assistance with managing the admin work. Their core onsite staff member may start to manage the billing; later, someone may need to help this employee with further daily admin tasks. Hiring another staff member can be a problem – besides lack of space, the costs of a new recruit can be pricey. However, a virtual assistant can help with these administrative tasks at a cost you can easily afford.

The various administrative tasks

These will include the recording of new patients and also referrals. Then there is:

• Appointment setting, in other words, managing the scheduling, dealing with cancellations, and sending out reminders to patients.
• Calendar management — here the assistant will create a schedule that reflects appointments made by patients, but also noting other obligations, for example, events or meetings. The assistant can organize the patient files in your database.
• With supply management — here the assistant can track supplies and order additional stock when needed.
• There is the task of medical coding and billing. The assistant will perform follow-ups on patients as per the doctor’s request.
• Prescription repeats must be managed.
• Then there is email management — replying to email messages so that the inbox remains well organised.

Remote receptionist

A virtual medical assistant can answer your telephones exactly as an onsite receptionist would. Your virtual medical assistant can deal with issues, take memos for you to reply to at a later stage, and transfer any urgent calls to you. A virtual assistant can work on additional responsibilities between incoming calls.

The benefit of such a system

Here the benefit is that your phone is always answered. Moreover, having the same person answering the calls provides consistency. Lastly, the assistant can screen your calls, so you do not waste your time dealing with, for instance, medical reps. Additionally, the virtual assistant is not limited to answering your phones. The assistant can also attend to clients via email, or even per live chat.

Bookkeeping

A virtual medical assistant can pay bills, dispatch invoices, and manage the payroll. The virtual assistant can also create financial reports, which will reflect your expenses and give an estimate of cash flow.

Technical support

If your need is more technical, you can consider hiring a more tech-savvy virtual assistant. Such a specialist can offer you much-needed technical support. They can also set up your medical software; and then train the staff on how to use it correctly.

Marketing

To grow a practice rapidly, you must get the word out pronto – hence the need for marketing. This might include specific marketing tools such as a user-friendly website, also social media accounts. In addition, you should be sourcing some good reviews that can be posted on the web. You might also want to include a paid ad campaign on both Google and Facebook, to reach your target audience.