The outside of Dr. Munsell’s office building. Dr. Munsell says that a virtual assistant provided a cost-effective way to expand his team’s efficiency.
Virtual assistants as optometry staffing solutions
By Joseph M. Munsell OD, Diplomat, ABO
Jan. 2, 2025
Staffing is always a challenge. You wonder which new employees will best mesh with your existing staff and who will do the best job for your patients and practice.
We recently found hiring success by adding two virtual assistants to our office. Here is how we did it.
Help In-Person Employees Focus More on Patients Right in Front of Them
We currently have 33, non-provider, in-person staff members and two virtual staff members.
Our aim is to have all in-person employees be customer facing, so they can focus on the patient first and provide a stellar experience in our office. We are moving the back-of-house, administrative tasks to virtual employees.
A virtual assistant, based outside your office, can take care of all tasks that are NOT patient-facing, so your in-office staff can put the focus where it should be–on the patients standing right in front of them.
Use a Staffing Agency to Find your Virtual Assistant
We used a staffing agency called HelloRache to hire our virtual assistant. They are U.S.-based, but contract assistants in the Philippines. They specialize in placing virtual staff in doctors’ offices. They take responsibility for ensuring that all employment laws related to the virtual assistants are followed.
Editor’s Note: There are other virtual staffing agencies to choose from, such as: Zirtual, Belay, Time Etc, Fancy Hands, Virtual Assistant USA, TaskBullet, among other options.
We have a weekly agreement with the assistants, paying them at the end of every week. You can hire part-time or full time. We opted for two full-time assistants. We pay the hiring company a set hourly rate, and they then they pay the virtual assistant.
We first contacted the company and gave them a profile of our clinic, providing information about our specialties within optometry, EHR type, patient volume and more.
We then described the exact roles and duties that we wanted a virtual assistant to fulfill. After providing them with that basic information, they sent us multiple candidates.
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The candidates’ resumes, introductory videos and background checks were provided. We then chose a few to interview over Zoom, like we would for any prospective in-person employee.
Our virtual assistants are independent contractors who need to sign a business associate agreement with us.
After we chose the one we wanted, we set up all of the technical aspects allowing them remote access into our system and the on-boarding process began.
Make Sure You Have Technologies in Place to Connect Your Virtual Assistants to Your Office
The most important thing is to ensure you have the proper technologies in place. Virtual assistants require remote access into our servers and EHR as well as our vendor sites.
When we train, we use a remote desktop access that allows us to screen share. We have instant messaging in place, so if questions arise, our virtual assistants are able to communicate with our in-office coordinators instantaneously.
Do Thorough On-Boarding Process & Training
Our virtual assistants are great individuals who share our perspective on patient care.
We did a similar on-boarding process with them that we would do with our in-person staff, and used the same training manual that we use with our in-person team members.
During these interactions, and in our manual, we highlight our mission and vision statements, our core values and all of our aspirational values.
Also, through our daily interactions with the virtual assistants, we continually reinforce our organization’s values. They also are required to be a part of our monthly staff meetings, which helps integrate them into our team.
Our in-office staff members have direct interactions with our virtual assistants, and love them. The virtual assistants on our team are kind, fast learners. They work hard and are extremely grateful to have an opportunity to earn a living. They are some of the best staff members we ever worked with.
Assigning Specific Tasks to a Virtual Assistant
One of our virtual assistants works on billing tasks. They submit all of our vision plan exam and material claims.
Our other virtual assistant orders all of our glasses. Our opticians print out all of our hard cards with all of the lens and frames option selections and our virtual assistant takes that information and submits it to our lab through the vision insurance portals or directly to our labs.
Virtual Assistants Can Be More Cost-Efficient
We found our virtual assistants to be more cost-efficient than hiring additional in-person staff members.
The virtual assistant is on an hourly rate. This rate is contracted at about half of that of an in-person staff member who would perform the same tasks. And that is not including all of the in-person staff members’ benefits and taxes.
They also can be more efficient in completing administrative tasks than in-person employees. Our in-person employees’ main focus is on patient care and patient experience, so their administrative tasks are constantly being interrupted.
An off-site employee can dedicate their whole focus to the administrative tasks assigned.
A Solution for Hiring Challenges
With the changes in the labor market since the pandemic, and ODs’ continuing staffing challenges, dedicated virtual assistants are a huge help.
They allow our regular staff to do what they enjoy most in direct patient care, taking laborious administrative tasks off of their plates. This increased staff morale and helped us fully meet our staffing needs.
Joseph M. Munsell OD, Diplomat, ABO, is the owner of Cheyenne Vision Clinic in Cheyenne, Wyo. To contact him: jmunsell25@gmail.com
