DOES A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT MAKE SENSE FOR YOUR DENTAL PRACTICE?

We all wish we had more hours in the day, this is especially true when you have dual roles of both a dentist and a small business owner.  The administrative team is often just as time crunched as the practice owner, they have to balance patient care and administrative tasks and the latter often are pushed to the side when the office is busy.

While these tedious, time-consuming tasks aren’t always fun they make a big difference on the practice’s bottom line. Things like insurance claim follow-up, proactive insurance benefit updates for incoming patients and continuing care follow-up all have a direct impact on collections.  This is where a virtual assistant can be a great asset for your practice. There are many advantages both financial and emotional, to delegating these tasks to someone who isn’t physically in the office, including:

• Virtual assistants do not have patients in the office or on the phone to attend to

• You are only paying for the hours needed

• No payroll taxes, benefits, vacation or holiday pay 

• No additional business expenses such as computers

• Less stress due to not having to manage another employee

• No training (Virtual Dental Office has dental office and practice management experience)
  

If you can relate to any of these points below, it may be time to start thinking about hiring a virtual assistant to increase collections and reduce stress for the doctor and their team. 

• You are struggling to get it all done

• Your practice’s administrative pile keeps getting bigger and bigger
• Your team is busy with patient care and attention

• You don’t have the time to recruit, hire, and train a new employee

• You do not have enough tasks to fill a full or part-time position consistently, yet need additional help

• You have team members going on vacation or maternity leave which will increase the workload and stress on the rest of the team
  

Many other practices are experiencing the benefits of adding a virtual assistant to their team.   You can easily get started with a virtual assistant without extended contracts, making it a valuable option worth exploring.