11 Tasks Healthcare Professionals Should Delegate To A Virtual Assistant

There are no breathers in the healthcare industry. Everything is challenging, demanding and extremely precise. The struggle becomes more intense when you are self-employed. 

Healthcare professionals are largely affected by burnout due to work overload and excessive pressure. Burnout is defined as physical as well as mental exhaustion, depersonalization, and a mitigated sense of personal accomplishment. As per a recent survey, private medical practitioners put in up to 52 hours into their work each week. And their sleep cycles are usually majorly impacted. Most professionals get only 6.7 hours of sleep. 

The workload is significantly increased among private healthcare service providers because they have to manage everything on their own. In a situation such as this, healthcare professionals have to handle the rising volume of patients along with piling admin and management tasks. 

Many healthcare professionals fear that their patient’s confidential data and information might get compromised if delegated to virtual assistants. They don’t want to take any chances that may put them at risk of HIPAA violations. 

But it cannot be denied that these professionals are the ones who need to employ virtual assistants for medical practices the most. 

Healthcare professionals must learn how to outsource virtual assistance tasks so that they can take a load off of their heads. This will give them more time to focus on more pressing tasks and also have some free time for other activities. 

Let’s dive straight away into it!

What is a Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant is a trained professional who is an expert in their profession and supports a company or their clients remotely. 

Virtual assistants or VAs are the ones who are employed to perform daily routine tasks. You can leave out a lot of healthcare admin tasks for virtual assistants. An administrative support assistant takes care of a lot of simple and time-consuming tasks so that healthcare professionals can focus more of their time on relevant tasks. 

Healthcare professionals can choose to delegate the following 11 tasks to a virtual assistant agency:

1. Billing and invoicing
2. Managing calendars
3. Email marketing campaigns
4. Website management
5. Performing online research
6. Scheduling appointments
7. Travel bookings and accommodation
8. Organizing and creating a daily activity schedule
9. Checking voicemails and answering or reverting phone calls
10. Healthcare documentation support
11. Project design creation

Virtual assistants will more efficiently streamline workflows, improve productivity and reduce overall time spent on operational tasks. 

In addition, employing virtual assistants for day-to-day work will significantly reduce the cost of operations. Professionals will have to pay only for the tasks they outsource to virtual assistants instead of having full-time employees on the payroll. 

Steps to Employing a Virtual Assistant in Healthcare Sector

As we discussed above, there are many rules, processes and requirements for hiring the best virtual assistant service in the healthcare sector as compared to other sectors. It may feel a little overwhelming when you a just starting.

However, it is not half as scary and daunting as it appears.

Our research allowed us to curate three key areas for healthcare professionals to address when they hire virtual assistant services. 

Assigning tasks to agents will look like a very stressful pursuit at the very start. But later as you advance it may bring a rewarding benefit to your professional growth. 

Let us take a look at the 3 aspects one by one and discuss a little about them:

Confidentiality

Patient case history, privacy, and all other information should be kept confidential. When you adeptly follow government confidentiality laws and abide by rules to ensure patients' information is safe with you, your patients develop a feeling of trust in your clinic or facility.

In-depth and intricate background verification is a must for all virtual assistants.  Usually, a company that provides virtual assistant services run these verification checks before employing professionals. Name and address verification is done. Once they pass the verification, you can approach them and make them sign an agreement for data protection and confidentiality. 

Based on the size of your company, you are required to have the necessary permissions from authorities responsible for data protection and ethics. Once you have secured permissions from dedicated teams, you must start the process of hiring virtual assistants. 

A lawyer or a legal agent can help you prepare a non-disclosure agreement to be signed by your virtual assistant.

Compliance

Virtual assistants are trained professionals who have probably been working in the healthcare sector for a long time. These professionals are well aware of the HIPAA regulations and act as per the rules only. In case they are new, you can brief them on the subject or choose your team wisely. Many virtual service-providing companies train their employees regarding this beforehand so you do not need to go through the drill yourself. 

Bond and Connection

You and your team must have a professional bond so you are inclined to achieve the same goals. Especially when you are working with a virtual team because they do not get to see you every day. They work from a remote setup. They must understand your style of work and what are a few necessary things they need to bear in mind. For example, if your work is time-sensitive or urgent and you need the work to be done within a dedicated time, it must be translated to the agent. 

You need to communicate with the team so they can be on the same page as you and they know everything about the task so they deliver the results to your expectations. 

Coordinate with your tech support team to set up access to important avenues such as login credentials, necessary permissions and digital entrance into all essential systems and platforms.

Types of Tasks You Can Delegate to a Virtual Assistant? 

Even though virtual assistants can handle most of your operations, it is your job to figure out delegating which tasks will put you at an advantage. To be precise, you should never delegate tasks to virtual assistants that require offering a medical opinion. 

However, in case you have a task that does not require constant monitoring by you then you can consider delegating that task to the virtual assistant. If a little instruction from you can put the task on auto mode, you should hire a virtual assistant who can handle the task well on your behalf. 

The following are a few tasks that you can delegate as a healthcare professional to virtual assistants to save time and effort. 

Calendar Management and Scheduling 

A well-organized calendar and schedule can set fuel for your work. Filling your task's plate to the brim will only make you feel stressed and overworked.  When you have a schedule set to maximize your productivity you feel sorted, and accomplished. It is no news that every minute counts in the healthcare industry.

Calendar management is one of the most common tasks that is outsourced to virtual assistants. You can also choose to outsource this task to your virtual assistant. This includes tasks such as setting up appointments and sending notifications as reminders to track and follow important deadlines. They can also speak with other professionals in your team and attempt to keep them on the same page. This way they will help you make the most out of every passing minute. 

Having a trustworthy and reliable team of experts on your side will be an add-on. This will free up a lot of time and energy so that your core team are able to dedicate their time and effort in the right direction. You will be able to enhance customer experience by reducing wait times and thus encourage them to take the next appointment. 

Billing and Invoicing

Managing A-class services not only includes providing wholesome medical care but also getting paid appropriately for the healthcare services you offer.  

Coming from a medical background, there are chances that you are more devoted and inclined towards the care aspect. It is possible to feel overburdened with the additional task you get. Many financial aspects are pressing and vital for your business. You have to take care of billing, budgeting, invoicing, expenditure tracking, insurance cover, verifications and much more. These activities can consume the best of your time and leave you with even fewer hours for your patients.  

As per the latest research, it has been found that several business owners face a loss of 20 days every year running after delayed payments. Therefore, having a skilled virtual assistant who can handle this for you will make the operations smooth like butter. 

Email Marketing Campaigns

As per McKinsey analysis report, it has been observed that a professional spends on an average 28 per cent of their work day going through their email- both reading and reverting. 

This means that out of every 24 hours, an average full-time worker spends 2 hours 14 minutes each day on emails. In 2018, Adobe conducted a survey and realized that the time spent on emails had increased to 3 hours and 6 minutes. 

A total of 100 billion emails are sent and received daily. Out of this huge number, only 14 per cent of it is relevant. Therefore there is a need to incorporate ways to reduce this enhanced pressure and free up a significant amount of time which can be used otherwise. 

Once you give access to your email to a virtual assistant they will ensure that your work email is free from spam and junk emails. They can organize your messages based on priority and importance. They may as well respond to minor queries such as operational hours, doctor availability, test requirements, fee structure payment options and much more.

Website Management

Presently businesses cannot function without a digital presence. Patients look up information online, book appointments, and check for doctors and specializations through the website. It is best to have a professional on your team who will manage a good digital presence. 

Virtual Assistants can offer the following services to efficiently manage your website:

• Writing, managing, updating and posting content such as medical articles and blog posts. Experts at website content writing services can upload important announcements as well.
• Offer Live Chat support to customers via an add-on feature through the website itself.
• They can manage social media accounts schedule and add relevant posts systematically. They timely look into comments, deal with both negative and positive feedback etc.
• Virtual Assistants will curate survey forms for patient bookings, registrations, feedback, and other important surveys.
• A digital marketing virtual assistant can keep your website SEO-optimized so that you can reach more people.
• You can also delegate the task of passing on urgent messages such as clinic closure, doctor’s sudden unavailability, etc. to patients. 

Performing Online Research 

If you think a VA cannot help a medical practitioner with online research, you are wrong! There are ample research tasks which can be invaluable to healthcare providers which can be easily done by VAs. 

Let us take a look at the tasks which can leverage the skills of a virtual assistant to advance a healthcare professional’s work to a great extent:

• Virtual assistants can stay updated with the latest publications on reputed medical websites and journals, compile journals and research papers and share them with the medical practitioner.
• VAs can navigate through massive amounts of medical databases such as Embase, PubMed, etc and pass on relevant resources to the client.
• They can dig into comparative studies and gather information on alternate treatment options which can help doctors make an informed decision.
• Virtual assistants can explore several topics which can educate patients. For instance, if you are a dentist, they can look up videos, or available resources on flossing techniques to share with the patients. They can also write short pieces to inform them about specific medical procedures.
• They can conduct a competitor analysis and keep a watch on current industry trends so your business keeps up with the changing times.
• Virtual assistants can collate and sort data and pass it on to the practitioners so they can make data-driven decisions.

Travel Bookings and Accommodation

It is very common for medical practitioners to travel either to impart their knowledge in reputed institutions or to give expert opinions in critical cases. If you are an independent practitioner, chances are that you organize your seminars in different locations. It is overwhelming to manage hotel stays and travel bookings at the last moment when you could have done something else. 

This is where the virtual assistant appears as Superman to save the day. 

Virtual assistants for healthcare professionals look into all the available and inexpensive options for flights or train bookings. They can check other transportation options within the destination city so the commute is easier. They take into account the travel preferences of the individual and plan accordingly. 

In addition to this, they explore the best possible accommodation options which are conveniently located close to the spot where they need to be. 

They can book conference halls well in advance for any personal seminar. They can also take care of travel documentation which involves passports, visas and other relevant medical document. 

Safety is a major concern when you are travelling to another country, they can set up emergency exit set up to ensure your safety during the travel. 

In case you need to do any last-minute modifications, they can right away do it for you so you don’t have to go through the hassles all by yourself. 

Checking Voicemails and Answering or Reverting Phone Calls

As a medical practitioner, you must have had an experience where your phone never stops ringing. It is not possible to handle everything on your own. Here, a virtual assistant can take a lot of load off of your head. They can assist you in the following ways: 

• Thoroughly checking voicemails. They can efficiently sort and transcribe important messages from patients or pharmacies.
• VAs can perform call screenings based on instructions given by you. This way you will get only important calls.
• They respond to generic queries such as appointments, bookings etc, and coordinate with both the doctor and patient parties.
• They are well-trained to handle irate patients and resolve their issues on the first call. However, they can pass on the call in case it should be handled by you. 

Healthcare Documentation Support

Virtual assistants can prove to be a very important asset when it comes to healthcare documentation support. There is so much paperwork involved in hospitals. There are bills, reports medical history, lab test results, prescriptions and much more. A VA can help you sort each patient’s data systematically. 

Doctors often need to document observations about a patient’s medical history and course of treatment, A VA can record it so the doctor can visit the same from time to time. 

They can tabulate patients’ electronic health records and generate reports, discharge summaries and test result interpretations. 

Many a time, Doctors need input lab results and radiology reports all assembled in a single file. VAs can group all diagnostic reports in one place with recognizable tags and categorization. These results can be produced any time it is required.

Time Management 

The one thing that medical practitioners can always make more use of is time management. The ever-increasing piling of patients can give anyone a time crunch. Virtual assistants can squeeze some time out of the same 24 hours so you can have a piece of peace. 

Virtual assistants can create a to-do list for you depending on your recent appointments. They can filter urgent cases and manage the overflowing appointments by giving them a later date.

They can implement techniques like time blocking where you have dedicated hours fixed for specific tasks as well as breaks. 

Virtual assistants for doctors and nurses can remind them to practice self-care such as drinking water often, taking a short walk between shifts, having meals on time and relaxing whenever needed. 

Marketing Tasks

Irrespective of the industry you are operating in, there is always a need to have a digital presence as we discussed above. Creating a website is a layman’s thing but maintaining it constantly is the real deal. A Virtual Assistant can constantly monitor your engagements, and write compelling content for your website, and ad copies. 

They will also run ads on several channels including social media platforms. They are adept at using quality tools such as Canva to create attractive infographic images and graphic designs. 

Inventory and Supply Management

Medical virtual assistant’s duties involve tracking inventory information such as medical supplies, equipment, medicines, etc. They can maintain data so that you can check the availability by just inserting the name of the item.  They also sort medications on spreadsheets and maintain a list of expired or nearly expired medicines. 

You can also get information regarding reorder alerts and stock updates. Your VA can coordinate with the suppliers to avoid any accidental shortages. 

Bottom Line

Healthcare providers are most susceptible to burnout and be stressed among most other professionals. There is usually a hefty amount of administrative tasks reserved for them every single day. These tasks may be very significant to operations but it is important to analyze which tasks require your utmost attention. 

VAs are assets to medical practitioners and healthcare providers. Not only do they perform a wide range of activities but also provide quality customer support to patients. 

Looking to manage healthcare services smoothly? 

To learn more about our healthcare virtual assistant services, contact MyTasker. Access a myriad of options to streamline healthcare appointments, maintain an online persona, and boost processes.