Unlock the Best Medical Virtual Assistant Skills Today
Medical virtual assistants need to come equipped with a certain set of skills in order to provide quality patient care and perform their clinical duties. Virtual assistants have become increasingly vital to the healthcare industry. Their services have enabled doctors to provide better patient care, and even have an improved work-life balance by performing administrative tasks that would have taken doctors hours to complete.
With reduced workload and burden, doctors can then focus better on their patients. When they’re finished with patient care, they can return to their homes and personal lives worry-free. That’s one of the things medical virtual assistants bring to the table. This is why they’re becoming more sought-after in the industry.
Key Medical Virtual Assistant Skills
Doctors and medical virtual assistant agencies are very particular about the virtual assistants they hire. They want the best for their practice, which require the best virtual assistants in the market. If you want to make it in this competitive field, you’ll need to hone your skills to become valuable and sought after.
Skills in Administrative Tasks
One of the main duties of a medical virtual assistant is to perform administrative tasks. This covers a lot of duties and responsibilities. In a nutshell, these tasks are the ones done by medical professionals that have nothing to do with patients – at least directly, but otherwise just as important to the medical practice.
Examples of administrative tasks are:
- Data entry
- Insurance claims verification
- Medical billing
- Handling of medical records
- Research
- Customer service
- Schedule appointments
These are just a few examples out of many, but they’re a huge chunk of the responsibilities of a healthcare virtual assistant. These are skills every VA needs to acquire and master before they think about penetrating the healthcare industry.
Adaptability
The world of medicine is fluid and ever-changing. Multiple changes can happen to practices, medicine, technology, and regulations. Everyone within the industry need to adapt to these changes accordingly to keep their practices going and treat patients better.
The tools and software that are responsible for keeping electronic health records and patient history may change, regulations may adjust to the needs of today’s patients, and new medicine may arise due to advancements in technology. Virtual medical assistants should be adaptable as well if they’re to serve doctors and their patients properly.
Effective Communication Skills
A healthcare virtual assistant will be required to speak to multiple people throughout the work week. They may speak to patients, other healthcare professionals, and whoever else the doctor will require them to contact. To perform this part of the job effectively, the healthcare virtual assistant needs to have excellent communication skills.
A healthcare virtual assistant needs to be able to articulate their words properly so that they can convey whatever the doctor needs them to. They need to speak well and listen even better so they can address the needs of patients and clients. They must be confident enough in speaking to keep up with other healthcare professionals, who are relatively busy and want to make communications brief yet fruitful. All of these can be done thoroughly when you have strong communication skills.
Healthcare Knowledge
Knowledge is power when you work in any industry, but even more so when you work in healthcare. Knowledge enables doctors to treat and cure their patients through medicine and procedures. As a healthcare virtual assistant, it is your responsibility to have medical knowledge at a fundamental level so you can assist your doctors better in providing quality patient care.
Medical jargon, treatments, HIPAA regulations, and medical tools are key information for medical virtual assistants. You don’t need to be as skilled or knowledgeable as other healthcare providers like doctors, physicians, or registered nurses, but you need to know enough to understand the language spoken in the world of medicine.
Technical Skills in Healthcare Software
One of the most important virtual assistant skills is the ability to use healthcare software effectively. Most of your work will require you to handle these tools remotely. These medical software involve email management, data entry, handling of electronic medical records, medical billing, and clinical administrative support, among a few others.
Not only do you need to be technically skilled to use these tools, but you’ll need to be technologically fluent to use similar software in case your doctor requires you to use new ones. Software and tools constantly change in healthcare settings. You’ll need to be familiar with their concepts enough to learn how to use new or updated software quickly.
Organizational Skills
Virtual healthcare assistants will be required to organize a lot of documents for doctors and healthcare providers. This task can increase productivity in clinics moving forward, making this an imperative task. You’ll need to have excellent organizational skills to complete these tasks properly.
Organizational skills come with fastidiousness and a keen attention to detail. Organize documents such as electronic health records and patient records according to how your doctor wants them arranged. Have a gripping impulse to keep these records neatly organized. This will also make your job as virtual healthcare assistant easier as you go along.
Multitasking
It isn’t unheard of for virtual healthcare assistants to handle multiple tasks at once or meet multiple deadlines in a given period of time. Considering this, a medical virtual assistant needs to be adept, or at least comfortable at multitasking to be good at their jobs. The needs of the doctor should be met and tasks can pile up. An excellent virtual assistant can perform multiple tasks without caving.
As you are well aware by now, the healthcare industry is a high-pressure environment. There is very little room for error when you work in an industry that deals with the lives of patients. Having said that, when you are given multiple jobs to complete, you must do so without fail.
People Skills
As previously mentioned, one of the jobs of a medical virtual assistant is to interact with others on a regular basis. Whether you’re answering calls from patients or requesting documents and information from other healthcare providers, you’ll need to have excellent people skills to do the job properly.
While a tad similar to communication skills, people skills are a different ability altogether. This requires patience and empathy to deal with patients effectively, who can often be understandably irate and manic. An excellent medical virtual assistant needs to be great with people so they can manage them with care and decency against hostility.
Time Management
When you work remotely as a healthcare virtual assistant, you are often left to work on your own schedule. The doctor you work for will be too busy to tend to you every step of the way. That said, to do this job effectively, you’ll need to be excellent at time management.
You’ll need to be responsible enough to begin working at a given time without being closely monitored. You’ll also need to handle your work hours efficiently and complete your daily tasks and meet deadlines accordingly. Treat your hours properly and manage your time efficiently to allow your doctor to focus on their patients rather than tending to you constantly.
Intuitive Problem Solving
As a healthcare virtual assistant, you’ll be faced with a series of problems in your job regularly. Problems and tricky situations are expected, and even welcome when you work in healthcare. In most cases, your manager or doctor can assist you whenever there’s a problem you don’t know the solution to. In other cases, however, you’ll be required to solve problems on your own.
As previously mentioned, your doctor won’t always be there to help you. You’ll need to be knowledgeable and intuitive enough to solve problems with the tools and resources you’ve already been given. Reserve problems that are too massive and too technical for doctors to solve. Most issues should be dealt with before the doctor even knows about it.
How to Develop the Skills of Medical Virtual Assistants
Knowing the skills needed to become an effective healthcare virtual assistant is just the first part of the equation. Knowing how to acquire these virtual assistant skills is the next course of action. Here’s how you can develop the skills of a healthcare virtual assistant.
Experience in the Medical Field
The best way to develop skills as a medical virtual assistant is to have experience in the medical field. This is why most doctors and VA agencies hire virtual assistants who are former medical professionals. A lot of medical virtual assistants today were previously nurses, pharmacists, or medical technologists.
That said, though, this is not an absolute requirement to become a medical virtual assistant. Some of the best medical virtual assistants today have no prior experience in the industry whatsoever. However, they did take the time to develop their skills elsewhere.
Training and Certifications
Those who have now prior experience to the healthcare industry can become just as effective as a medical virtual assistant by undergoing training programs, attending workshops, and acquiring certifications. This is a great way to further qualify yourself and make yourself an attractive medical virtual assistant and get hired by the highest-paying agencies and work for the best doctors.
On top of that, training and certifications also give you the skills and knowledge needed to become an effective medical virtual assistant. These prepare you better for the job and empower you to complete whatever task a doctor can assign.
Self-motivation
Medical virtual assistant skills are mostly acquired remotely. There will be no management or superior figure guiding you to acquire these skills. You’ll need to be self-motivated enough to do so on your own. Know the gravity of these skills and the importance of acquiring them as a virtual assistant. When you realize how vital it is to learn these skills, you’ll be motivated enough to go forward without external guidance.
Patience and Repetition
Skills are generally developed through exposure and repetition. Nothing is perfect, but studying and training constantly can get you very close. That said, be patient and keep studying and undergoing training. You’ll acquire the necessary healthcare virtual assistant skills in no time.
Keen Observation
Another way to develop healthcare virtual assistant skills is to be a keen observer. During training programs and workshops, you’ll often be exposed to the most common situations that may happen daily to you as a virtual medical office assistant. During these sessions, you’ll need to observe properly and absorb information effectively.
Pay attention whenever you are being educated about healthcare. Acquiring the necessary healthcare virtual assistant skills can be a time consuming task, but it can be made quicker when you pay better attention.
Self-education
Outside of programs and workshops, you should also take the time to study the world of healthcare on your own. This is especially important if you have no prior experience with the industry. Whenever you have free time, do your own research or grab a book about assisting medical professionals. Better equip yourself with knowledge so you’ll be more than capable of assisting healthcare professionals when you do get hired by one.
Collaborate
Another excellent way to gain healthcare virtual assistant skills is to collaborate with other virtual assistants. Join forums or online virtual assistant groups to meet other like-minded individuals and collaborate. You will learn a lot about the routine tasks, activities, and common predicaments of a medical virtual assistant from those who are formerly or currently employed as one.
Learn from them and be inquisitive with healthcare knowledge. You’ll find that a lot of these professionals will be more than willing to aid you. On top of gaining information and knowledge from them, these groups will also give you access to doctors, employers, and clients, as well as programs that provide certification.
Overall, collaborating with other healthcare virtual assistants will do wonders for your career. Take the time to seek these groups out and join them as soon as you can.
Importance in the Workplace
Being an effective and skillful medical assistant plays a major importance in the medical workplace. Your efficiency and competency will elevate the doctor’s medical practice through better patient satisfaction, increased productivity, more streamlined access to records and documents, and better communication.
On the other hand, failing at your job can be detrimental to the doctor’s practice. When administrative and clerical tasks aren’t done efficiently, the clinic can experience setbacks that ultimately affect patient care. Errors, however minor, have the capability of disrupting the practice.
Mistakes are understandable, of course. However, they should be very minimal or instantly mitigated whenever they do arise. Mistakes can be avoided or solved more easily and quickly when the medical virtual assistant is skilled enough to do the job effectively.
Continuing Education of a Healthcare Virtual Assistant
Most virtual assistants are content with the knowledge they’ve acquired the moment they get hired by a doctor or an agency. This is a mistake given how rapidly evolving the world of healthcare is. Having said that, if you want to continue being an effective virtual medical assistant, you’ll need to continue your education even after you get hired.
An agency like VMeDx provides continuous education to healthcare virtual assistants so they are better prepared and equipped to face the evolving face of healthcare. Education doesn’t stop at employment. It continues well past that. The best medical VAs are the ones who are keen on further educating themselves even after getting hired. That’s how you ultimately become an effective healthcare virtual assistant.
Be Skilled To Be Successful As a Virtual Healthcare Assistant
Your abilities and skills are your main draws of power as a virtual medical assistant. It’s how you aid any medical practice and empower doctors to treat patients more efficiently. Having said that, take the time to hone your skills as a virtual assistant.
Of course, your skills will be all for nothing when you’re not working with the best doctor for you. For that, you can join VMeDx today and we will ensure that you’ll be paired with the doctor and medical practice that needs your skill set the most. You’ll be able to utilize your skills efficiently, allowing you to have a more successful career as a virtual healthcare assistant.