Time means different things to different people. Some people seem to never have enough time to do everything they need in a day. That is where outsourcing some of these tasks can help save time and allow you to be more productive. When patients come into your office, they can become frustrated if they experience long wait times.
Benefits of Outsourcing
To improve the patient experience, and help physicians `spend more quality time with their patients, outsourcing these office tasks offers a solution to the problem of not having enough time for everything. Healthcare outsourcing is not a new concept, it has been gaining popularity due to its benefits for the industry. Let’s look at 5 benefits of outsourcing your medical tasks:
1. More focus on patient care
Doctors struggle to balance the demands of paperwork with the demands of patient care. Records have to be kept of patient visits, and trying to do it after the visit may extend wait times of other patients, and taking mental notes during the visit can make the patient feel like they only have part of the doctor’s attention.
In fact, they probably spend more time on documentation than anything else. Doctors spend 3 hours or more per day completing documentation tasks. They could see 9 more patients within that amount of time. Outsourcing these tasks has the potential to increase productivity and strengthen the doctor-patient relationship.
A Virtual Medical Assistant from VA.care can relieve the doctor from this burden of paperwork and allow them to focus more on patient care. Having someone else to help carry the workload makes it easier for everyone. It will improve your efficiency, and give you more time to go from one patient to another. Outsourcing provides physicians the opportunity to see more patients and be more efficient in their day-to-day tasks.
2. Virtual Medical Assistants are Professionals
When you outsource your healthcare administrative tasks, you have trained professional handling the task for you. This will give you more time to diagnose and treat patients, which is the largest task of all and the most important. One advantage is that you have access to a large pool of skilled professionals proficient in administrative documentation. Hiring a skilled professional with vast experience and training, ready to take on any type of task will make a big impact on the efficiency of your practice.
Delegating tasks like inbound and outbound phone calls, insurance verification, prior authorization, referrals, and other back-office tasks will free up other staff for more important duties.
3. Saves time and money.
Business often chooses to outsource to save time and money. The amount of money you save by not hiring additional office employees is significant. You won’t have to spend any additional time training employees. Your Virtual Assistant is already trained in-office procedures and can organize and manage tasks to fit your requirement as a client. Since a Virtual Assistant works from their location, it eliminates the costs for office supplies, furniture, and computer hardware, which in turn allows you to reinvest in patient services, research, and amenities to enhance patient care.
4. Improves the patient experience.
One of the main complaints patients have is long wait times for appointments. Many times they come in on their lunch break or after work and don’t want to spend a long time in the waiting area because they need to get home to their families. Streamlining the patient processing times can get patients in and out faster, decreasing the time they spend waiting.
Another area of frustration is being put on hold when calling to make an appointment. If the people behind the desk are busy, patients checking in may also be left waiting, which doesn’t make a good impression. Letting a Virtual Medical Assistant handle all of your incoming calls and billing questions can greatly reduce the number of calls waiting in queue and improve the patient experience. Completing prior authorizations, checking eligibility, and managing your calls can take a big weight off your shoulders.
Virtual Medical Assistants can manage multiple tasks such as appointment setting, prescription refill requests, billing information, and many other patient needs. Quick and speedy service helps enhance the patient’s experience and ensure they become a repeat customer.
5. Eliminate inefficiencies by outsourcing your administrative tasks.
Hiring a Virtual Medical Assistant to manage your phone calls and complete documentation tasks is one of the best medical applications of this technology to date. Since your Virtual Medical Assistant is a trained professional, you can be assured that the patient documentation will be accurate and done according to the best office practices. Try out this technology and see what it can do for your practice.
This technology is available to you and you can use it as much as you need to. You can also hire multiple Virtual Healthcare Assistants if you are short on office staff or want to streamline your business. Outsourcing eliminates many of the obstacles that affect your ability to perform your duties efficiently.
Providing good patient care is the goal. In order to have happy, returning patients, you need to follow up with them to identify if they are getting the full value of what they are paying for. You can do that by spending a few minutes each week to check in with them because now you have more available time.