When a virtual medical assistant beats hiring in house

The comparison people make is hourly rate against hourly rate, and it is the wrong one. The rate is the smallest of the differences, and on its own it will lead you to the wrong answer in both directions.

Here is what actually differs.

What a hire costs beyond the wage

A front desk hire is the wage plus payroll taxes, benefits, paid leave, workstation, software seat, and the six to ten weeks before they are useful. None of that is optional and none of it appears in the number people compare.

Then there is the part nobody budgets: coverage. One person cannot cover a five-day week. When they are sick, on leave or resign, the eligibility checks stop, the phones ring out, and you find out what that hour a day was worth by watching denials climb two months later.

What a virtual assistant does not solve

Anything physical. Rooming patients, handling specimens, taking payment at the desk, unlocking the door. If most of the role is presence, hire.

A process that does not exist. A virtual assistant works your process. If eligibility is checked when somebody remembers, you will have bought a second person doing it when they remember. Fix the process first, then decide who runs it.

Judgment calls that need context. A new practice with no written workflow will spend more on supervision than it saves.

When the virtual option wins

When the work is scheduled and repeatable. Eligibility, authorizations, referral logging, reminder calls. Defined inputs and defined outputs, which is exactly what works well at a distance.

When you need part of a person. Most small practices need about twenty hours a week of this work, and cannot hire twenty hours of a competent person reliably.

When coverage matters more than proximity. An assigned team means someone is there when one person is not.

When you are growing and the desk is the constraint. Adding provider capacity behind a front desk that is already behind just moves the queue.

The honest version

If your front desk is fully occupied with people standing in front of it, hire. If your front desk is fully occupied with the phone, eligibility and authorizations, that work can go elsewhere and probably should.

The test is not cost. It is whether the work needs to be in the room.

Our virtual medical assistants are assigned to one practice, work your hours in your systems, and are covered when somebody is out. What that costs is in the pricing, published in full. If you want to see which parts of the front desk are actually costing you claims first, that is what the free audit looks at.