When you’re transitioning to a new career, it can feel like you’re trying to swim through an ocean. It’s hard to expect a different career path from your current position. Still, sometimes it’s necessary to grow and evolve as a professional healthcare virtual assistant, and changes can be scary.
If you’re willing to take a chance on yourself and try something new, you’ll never know what doors might open up for you—and that’s an exciting prospect! The fact is that many people will change careers at some point in their life, and even if you stay in your current job for decades, there may come a time when you feel like you need to try something new.
So what does all this mean for those who want to become medical assistants virtually? Are they going against all logic and reason if they choose this path?
Why are Medical Background Checks Important?
Virtual assistants (VAs) have been making waves in other industries. Medical virtual assistants are more likely to have a healthcare background because they work with people who need it most. These professionals can be valuable assets to doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers as they provide support services like healthcare administrative tasks.
Searching online is great, but finding the precise and correct information you’re looking for isn’t always easy. The Internet is full of contradictory information, and even if you find an answer that seems correct, it may not be accurate for a patient’s case.
Every patient is different, so their symptoms may vary significantly, and their treatment can differ too. To make a significant difference in patient assessment, VAs equipped with the most up-to-date medical knowledge can help you.
Have a Better Understanding of the Patient’s Needs
You can improve your recommendations to patients and foster a positive rapport by being empathetic toward them and their situation. Moreover, helping them understand the importance of taking medications on time, maintaining healthy diets, and engaging in regular exercise can result in a faster recovery.
Easily Get Along With Doctors and Other Medical Staff
A healthcare virtual assistant needs to have a medical background that will help her understand medical terminology better. It ensures that work is more efficient with other medical professionals or employees since you will know what they are talking about when they use specific terms or abbreviations.
Quickly Grasp the Patient’s Concern
You can use this knowledge to explain medical procedures and terminology to patients in a way they will understand. Someone with a medical degree will bring valuable knowledge about medications used during treatment for heart attacks and strokes, which is essential when administering treatment during an emergency.
How to Effectively Hire a Healthcare Virtual Assistant?
In the healthcare industry, there’s a lot of sensitive patient information, such as laboratory reports, diagnoses, and treatments. For example, a minor error can seriously affect you and your patients.
Hiring virtual assistants who can demonstrate credibility by having experience in the medical field is preferable. You can do some of the following things to ensure that you get the best possible candidate:
- Look for Online Platforms and Outsourcing Companies that Offer Virtual Healthcare Services
It will help if you know the skills necessary to hire someone and do the job well. If they have those skills, they can complete their tasks promptly, and the quality of work may improve.
The best way to ensure that your candidate is qualified is by finding them through reputable online platforms with a wide range of candidates with different backgrounds and skill sets. From there, you can search their profiles and find the one best suited to your needs.
At Phoenix Virtual Solutions, our offshore outsourcing company specializes in providing virtual assistant services for healthcare professionals. We suggest candidates who are HIPAA trained and based in the Philippines to manage your tasks that can seriously impact your business revenue.
- Be Transparent About Your Needs and Expectations
The most important thing is to be transparent with your virtual assistants and set clear expectations. If you have a question about how they should do a task, say so.
If there’s something that needs to finish differently, let them know. And when things go well or poorly, let them know about those changes beforehand so they can adjust their priorities accordingly.
- Put Together a Comprehensive Job Description
Making a comprehensive job description will help you attract the right people to your company. It includes the skills, education, and experiences required for the position, working hours, and benefits your company offers.
- Use Social Media to Find Candidates
Social media is the place to go if you are looking for new hires or want to expand your network. You can find some candidates that are already in your network.
It gives you access to candidates who may not have applied if they hadn’t seen your job posting. It’s easy to search by location and skill set, so if you have any openings, it can help you find the right person.
You can engage with potential candidates and learn more about them before getting in touch. When you reach out, social media makes it easy to build a relationship with candidates and follow up with them after interviews.
- Carefully Review Each Applicant’s Qualifications and Background
When hiring new employees, reaching out to the person who seems like a good fit can be tempting. But if you do that, you could take advantage of the best candidate for the job.
Take your time reviewing applicants because each has different strengths and weaknesses that will affect their performance on the job. By thoroughly checking each applicant’s qualifications and background, you’ll find the right candidate most likely to succeed for your needs.
What are Other Healthcare-Specific Background Checks You Can Include?
Since you are in a position of credibility and commitment, medical background checks are an essential part of the hiring process for healthcare industry employees. The requirements for a medical background check vary depending on the job offered. Choose an experienced employment screening provider like Phoenix Virtual Solutions who can do the following:
Identity Verification
This procedure ensures that the person you are dealing with is who they are. Identity verification is essential to any healthcare-specific background check because it helps prevent identity fraud and other forms of deception.
National Criminal Database Search
These searches are an excellent way to locate all criminal records in one location. It uses extensive databases to find criminal records on a national scale.
National Sex Offender Search
To ensure that your patients and clients are safe, you can run a national sex offender search on each applicant. You get to identify people who have been criminally charged or pleaded “guilty” to a sex crime.
Drug Testing
Drug screenings can reveal drug habits that may disqualify an applicant from a position in healthcare. This tool is helpful for healthcare providers in their businesses because it can disclose information about an applicant’s history of substance abuse, which could hinder them from getting the job.
Employment and Education Verification
You can ask applicants for their degrees or certificates and work history. This verification ensures the applicant has the correct degree of preparation for the job. It determines their postsecondary degree, technical training, on-the-job experiences, and the reason for being fired from a previous job.
Government Exclusion Search
This background check is an excellent way for employers to find out if their potential employees have any convicted crimes. This search enables employers to access a government list of healthcare workers prohibited from receiving federal funds because of those crimes.
What are Frequently Asked Questions as a Healthcare Virtual Assistant?
Can you be a Virtual Assistant Without a Degree?
To become a virtual assistant, you don’t always need a degree. There are many ways to gain the skills you need to succeed in this field. You can take online courses or get work experience through internships or volunteer opportunities.
What are the Job Requirements for a Healthcare Virtual Assistant?
If you want to become a virtual healthcare assistant, the requirements will depend on the medical field and the management you’re working with.
For example, if you’re looking to work for a hospital or doctor’s office, your job might involve answering phones and scheduling appointments. If this is the case, you’ll need strong organizational skills, so your calls go through quickly and efficiently.
If you want to work for a large company, you’ll be responsible for managing their medical records, from scheduling appointments to filing insurance claims. You must have computer skills in Microsoft Word and encoding to do this effectively.
What are the Skills of a Healthcare Virtual Assistant?
Many tasks are within your responsibility as the healthcare virtual assistant handling projects. You must know what skills you’ll need to succeed in this position. Here are some examples of the skills you should have:
Administrative
Administrative skills are the bread and butter of being a healthcare virtual assistant. It includes scheduling patient appointments, converting physical records to digital ones, and ensuring on-time filing of reports. You’ll realize it eventually, but managerial tasks take up much of your time. Most spend more than 50% of their time on administrative tasks.
Communication
Healthcare virtual assistants must communicate clearly and professionally with clients, doctors, healthcare providers, and colleagues. They should also be able to communicate clearly with doctors and healthcare providers to get the information they need for their client’s care.
Problem-Solving
The virtual healthcare assistant can solve problems promptly and efficiently. Being good at problem-solving is helpful as they are the first point of contact between patients and healthcare providers. Some problems arise during treatment, so they must be on their toes to think quickly and come up with solutions.
Organizing
Another virtual assistant skill is keeping a patient’s treatment plan and other information organized. Their work requires them to keep track of all patient records containing all the details to help improve the patient’s health condition. They don’t miss any important information while working with multiple patients.
Technical
A virtual healthcare assistant uses technology like computers and healthcare-related gadgets often throughout the day, so they must have strong computer skills. They help patients manage their health issues and communicate using email, databases, and other technologies.
Final Thoughts
The medical community has grown increasingly interested in telehealth—for a good reason. As the healthcare industry embraces the benefits of digitization, more healthcare facilities and practices are beginning to realize the value of online medical or healthcare assistance, which Phoenix Virtual Solutions offers.
Trust is essential whenever vulnerable patients entrust you with their lives and health. You owe it to yourself, your employees, and your patients to ensure that you can trust the healthcare virtual assistants you hire. Contact Phoenix today to hire the best HIPAA-trained virtual assistants and lessen your burden in performing medical background checks!
