Running a healthcare clinic — whether you’re a physician, dentist, vet, or any other healthcare professional — is an overwhelming responsibility. Not only do you have patients to care for, but you also must manage the administrative duties that constantly pile up.
What if you could solely focus on what you love doing and outsource the rest? That’s what virtual assistants are for. But how much can you expect to pay for this type of service?
Let’s break down the average virtual assistant cost and what you can expect to pay for a VA who has the healthcare experience to support you and your practice.
What is a virtual assistant?
Virtual assistants provide administrative support, just like administrative assistants. But instead of working from your office or clinic, they work virtually. This means you can hire virtual assistants from anywhere in the world.
Having a virtual assistant on your team can be useful if you find yourself constantly bogged down by repetitive and routine tasks.
Are you interested in onboarding your own virtual assistant to help your practice thrive? Book a call with our team, and we’ll get you set up with the perfect virtual assistant for your needs.
What does a virtual assistant do for a healthcare practice?
Some virtual assistants are generalists — meaning they have the skills to do a little bit of everything in an office. Typically, generalist VAs don’t have any experience working in a healthcare setting.
But when you hire the right person, you get specialized support as a healthcare professional. The right person will understand your industry and the intricacies involved in running a private practice.
A Healthcare Virtual Assistant (HVA) is an ideal remote worker for any healthcare practice. They have previous experience as medical professionals that most generalist VAs don’t have.
Virtual assistants specialized in the healthcare sector can help you run a virtual front desk to ensure that your reception area runs smoothly. When you hire a VA who’s trained in HIPAA compliance, they can handle your patients’ information with care.
While they’re running a virtual front desk, your remote assistant can answer incoming calls and assist with appointment scheduling for your patients.
They can also call or email patients regarding appointment confirmations, rescheduling, or cancellations. You can even outsource your personal calendar management to them.
But these are tasks any generalist assistant could handle. Where a Healthcare Virtual Assistant stands out is in their ability to handle a wide range of specialized tasks, such as:
- Medical documentation: Because HVAs have healthcare knowledge, they can update patient files, conduct medical data entry, and handle other types of medical documentation.
- Insurance verification: Your HVA can take care of prior authorizations and make all necessary verifications with patients’ insurance companies.
- Medical billing: Make the switch to a virtual medical billing process with a virtual assistant on your team. This makes billing simpler for you and your patients alike.
- EMR/EHR: If you already have a system, your virtual office assistant can start using it. They can also help with EMR implementation if that’s not already done.
Finally, a virtual assistant can act as a medical scribe. They can provide live charting services while you’re seeing patients. Because they’re not physically present, the charting process is much less invasive for patients than if you were to hire an in-person scribe.
Are virtual assistants worth it?
Virtual assistants are almost always worth the expense for busy healthcare professionals — as long as they’re adequately trained in your field.
First, they allow you to focus on your patients and avoid getting weighed down by a long list of tasks. As a result, you can do more of the work you love and ensure better clinical outcomes for your patients. With a VA handling a large portion of your office work, the chances of you getting distracted by such work are reduced.
Because your virtual assistant can handle your clerical duties, you might also be able to go home at the end of the day earlier than before. With this increased efficiency, you can even choose to take on more patients if you wish.
How much does a VA cost per hour?
The hourly cost of having a virtual assistant depends on several factors.
For example, you wouldn’t pay the same hourly rate to workers who provide different virtual assistant services, just like you wouldn’t pay a nurse practitioner the same wage as a registered nurse who has less experience and training.
But the average cost of a VA also depends on where you’re hiring your assistant from. You also won’t pay the same wage to a freelancer as you would an employee.
To establish a baseline, consider that the hourly wage for a virtual assistant in the US is $16.46 per hour. But note that certain skills help virtual assistants earn more.
These skills include:
- Payroll administration: 46% more
- Scheduling: 40% more
- Billing: 7% more
- Graphic design: 22% more
- Bookkeeping tasks: 10% more
- Project management: 16% more
- Online research: 7% more
- Office administration: 6% more
- Blogging: 22% more
These numbers indicate that a talented virtual assistant can be expensive. In a healthcare setting, you’ll need to find someone who has skills in billing, scheduling, office administration, and even payroll administration if that’s a task you want to outsource.
Virtual assistants who have more years of experience developing each of these skills will also ask for higher rates.
You’ll also need to pay a VA more, depending on their home state. That’s because some states have a higher cost of living.
Below are some examples of cities and states in which virtual assistants may ask for higher rates:
- Los Angeles, California: 37.2% more than the national average
- Baltimore, Maryland: 26% more than the national average
- Dallas, Texas: 22% more than the national average
- San Diego, California: 20% more than the national average
- Orlando, Florida: 19% more than the national average
- Austin, Texas: 18.5% more than the national average
- Atlanta, Georgia: 18% more than the national average
- San Francisco, California: 12.8% more than the national average
- Minneapolis, Minnesota: 7% more than the national average
- Denver, Colorado: 4% more than the national average
- Portland, Oregon: 4% more than the national average
While the above information doesn’t provide an exhaustive list of factors that can influence a virtual assistant’s cost, it should at least give you an idea of what to expect.
How to find the best virtual assistants without breaking the bank
Hiring virtual assistants in the US can be expensive, especially in cities and states with a higher cost of living. But keep in mind that because VAs work remotely, you don’t have to hire someone from the US. The best virtual assistants can often be found with virtual assistant companies that train them overseas.
Keep reading to find out how to find the best virtual assistants overseas to improve your healthcare practice.
Where are the best VAs located?
You can find virtual assistants almost anywhere in the world. However, some of the best ones live in the Philippines.
The Philippines isn’t the only country where you can find a dedicated assistant at a lower cost than North America. However, the Philippines is known for its friendly and hard-working labor force.
Filipino workers are highly skilled, educated, and loyal to their employers. Many of them are also proficient in English. They understand American culture and enjoy working with American employers.
Additionally, Filipinos understand how outsourcing works. Because outsourcing in the Philippines is so popular, many Filipinos are familiar with remote communication.
How much is a VA in the Philippines?
Did you know that you can hire a Healthcare Virtual Assistant for a flat fee of $9.50 per hour with Hello Rache?
You’ll save $7 per hour with a Filipino VA compared to the US national average. With a full-time employee, that would be over $13,000 saved per year.
Not only is this wage much lower than what you’d pay a worker in the US, but you also don’t need to commit to a specific number of hours. For instance, if you only need an assistant for 10 hours per week, you can do that. But if you need an entire team of five VAs at 40 hours a week, you can do that, too. There’s no minimum number of contracts.
This solution is much more flexible than hiring a virtual assistant. Additionally, many virtual assistant companies require you to hire someone for a weekly minimum, which doesn’t work for healthcare practices that only need a few hours of support per week.
Even though there are no weekly minimums, you still get to work with the same person every day. This makes hiring a VA similar to hiring an employee — but without the complicated onboarding process. Plus, you can pick and choose who you want to work with.
The hiring process is also quick and painless. If you want to hire a virtual assistant from the US, you’ll need to go through several steps that can take weeks or months, including:
- Creating and posting job listings
- Paying to appear on high-visibility job boards
- Reading through relevant applications
- Interviewing all the candidates that seem like a good fit
- Running background checks to ensure your patients will be safe with your chosen candidate
- Employee onboarding
It can take several months before you have a virtual assistant who’s ready to work. On the other hand, you can have a Healthcare Virtual Assistant in just a few days when you work with Hello Rache.
Are virtual assistants in the Philippines qualified to work in the healthcare industry?
If you believe you must hire a virtual assistant in the US to ensure they’re qualified in the healthcare industry, here’s the truth:
Virtual assistants from the Philippines with healthcare industry experience are usually more qualified than virtual assistants in the US.
How is this possible?
Virtual assistants who work in the US are trained in administrative tasks. When you find a great candidate, that person may also have experience in the healthcare industry.
But they’re not healthcare professionals. They’re administrative professionals. And it wouldn’t make sense for someone with a healthcare education to take a pay cut as a virtual assistant.
On the other hand, Healthcare Virtual Assistants are registered nurses and other healthcare professionals who have also received administrative training.
Why does it make sense for those individuals to become virtual assistants for you instead of operating in their original field?
On average, registered nurses in the Philippines only earn $20 per day. Even though the cost of living is lower in the Philippines than in the US, that’s still not a lot of money for the hard work they do.
Plus, Filipino registered nurses’ commutes can take hours — up to three per day. This leaves them with little time to spend with their families.
Working as virtual assistants for US clinics can help healthcare professionals in the Philippines earn two to three times more than their typical wage without having to commute to work.
If you’re worried about performance and compliance, keep in mind that every HVA who works with you will get tracked and monitored. They’ll also undergo a rigorous background check and interview process before meeting you. You won’t need to manage any part of that process on your own.
Hire a Healthcare Virtual Assistant today
The cost of hiring a virtual assistant doesn’t have to be in the double digits per hour for you to access talented, qualified support for your healthcare practice. With Hello Rache, you can get a Healthcare Virtual Assistant in a matter of days. Book a call with our team to find out what Hello Rache can do for your practice.
