Do you feel you never have enough time to spend with your patients? Is the administrative work in your medical practice becoming unmanageable? A Medical VA can lighten your workload, and free up your time.
Duties of the medical virtual assistant
A Medical VA can take all the administrative tasks off your hands that end up taking so much of your time.
They can assist your office with:
- Setting up appointments, sending reminders to patients, and managing cancellations.
- The intake of new patients, as well as referrals, and refilling prescriptions.
- Managing your calendar, and scheduling all your appointments, meetings, and commitments.
- Organizing your office supplies. If they see you are running out of supplies, they can handle the ordering process.
- They can manage your patient database.
- They can respond to your emails, and ensure your email inbox remains manageable.
- You’re always going to have a lot of insurance tasks, and your VA can manage the communication with your patients’ insurance companies. Claims can be sent immediately, and the waiting time for verification can be eliminated. The VA can also check in advance if treatment can be preauthorized.
Virtual receptionist
The VA can also answer your phones, just as if you have a receptionist in your office. They can transfer urgent calls, take messages to which you can respond to later, or even resolve some of your issues.
Your phones will always be answered on time, and since it will always be the same person doing it, they can build a relationship with patients. The VA will also save you time by screening your calls and only transferring the calls to you that are really important.
The VA can also manage live chat, text, and emails that take place through your website.
Virtual scribe
Some virtual assistants are experienced in doing data entry for electronic medical records (EMR) and electronic health records (EHR). The VA could also join you in the exam room via encrypted video conferencing and chart the examination while it’s taking place.
Benefits of using a VA
- You can book more patient appointments, and spend more time with your patients if your administrative tasks are taken care of. It will also improve your service to your patients if you have more time to listen to them.
- You will have less stress and more time to take care of your own health if you have someone helping out with the office tasks.
- A VA will also save you money, as they’re less expensive to hire than a personal assistant. You just pay for the hours you need.
- You don’t have to train the VA, as they will always be up-to-date with the latest developments, and will also receive training through the agency they work for.
- A VA will also be able to start working immediately. You just need to have a contract drawn up.
- A VA never comes to your office, so you don’t need more office space and equipment.
Having a visible online presence for your practice is important as most customers now look for reviews on the internet or social media before deciding what service they will use and where they will spend their money. You need to create brand recognition on various social media platforms in an effort to create long-term growth for your practice.
Many customers and possibly also your patients want to interact on social media before they actually come to your practice. In this case, the virtual assistant can interact with prospective patients on various platforms.
Social media marketing can be a lot of work, and you’ll have to make sure you have the right person for the job, especially if you want them to handle other administrative functions as well. The work will involve posting content and graphics on various platforms, and even promotional videos to engage with potential patients. It’s also important not to go overboard. You need to ask yourself what you really want to achieve with social media marketing. Do you only want to get new patients or do you also want to provide them with valuable information about various healthcare conditions?
If you don’t know anything about social media and you can share a virtual assistant with other healthcare practitioners, it might be a good idea that you get an additional VA who specializes in social media.
You preferably need someone who would be able to create a social media marketing plan and knows something about content marketing. The social media VA should also know how to use analytic tools to measure the success and failure of the social media strategy.
You may need a VA who specializes in social media because while the job appears easy, it could end up taking a lot of time each day to communicate with patients. The Social Media VA would also need to work in cooperation with the Medical VA, should they receive medical questions or questions of an administrative office nature. For example, if patients try to book appointments through social media, or they have specific inquiries, they can be referred to the Medical VA.
Final thoughts
Once you’ve hired a Medical VA to assist you with your office tasks, you’ll never want to be without one again. Hiring a Social Media VA to promote your practice via social media and communicate with your potential patients will also save you time while growing your practice at the same time.
Doing marketing campaigns, updating social media platforms and communicating with people through social media, can take up a lot of time. As a busy healthcare practitioner, it’s also worthwhile to get a Social Media VA to do this for you if your Medical VA doesn’t have the time or skills. Just the amount of time you will save makes it worth your while to get this type of assistance for your practice.
Ellen Diamond did her degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. She is interested in mental health, wellness, and lifestyle.
