As technology expands, businesses also grow in the services they can offer. Unfortunately, the work entailed to keep up with this growth sometimes outweighs that of a company’s existing workforce. Hence, the emergence of hiring virtual healthcare assistants, whether onshore or offshore. Proving to be an effective move, first world countries like Europe, Australia and the USA are now the first in line to hire virtual assistants from Asian countries particularly in the Philippines.
An Overview of the Virtual Assistance Space in the Philippines
Over the years, the Philippines has been home to a variety of virtual assistants. Among its 80 million population, the country has over 2,000 public and private schools that offer higher education, producing a vast pool of graduates, all capable of offering different services for your business.
Among the services virtual assistants in the Philippines could help you with are customer care, customer order fulfillment, healthcare, patient data entry, e-commerce store management, web design and building, digital marketing, bookkeeping and many more.
Healthcare Workforce and Virtual Assistance in the Philippines
In the Philippines, the range of settings a virtual assistant can do is vast as it basically depends on his or her area of expertise. For example, if you want help with your marketing efforts, you can hire a virtual assistant for content writing, SEO, and graphic design. If you want help with expenses, get a virtual assistant for accounting or bookkeeping.
However, since we are in the field of medicine, you would want to hire a virtual assistant focused on healthcare. Basically, the role of healthcare assistants in the Philippines is to support medical practitioners in their administrative duties. Take note though that this is not limited to physicians only. Anyone who works in the medical industry can benefit from their services so this can range from specialists, surgeons, psychiatrists, psychologists, dentists, and veterinarians.
Top 10 Benefits of Hiring Virtual Healthcare Assistant from the Philippines
In your search for the best virtual assistants to handle your healthcare business, it’s only natural that you would want to hire people with the right background and experience. Well, that’s where the Filipinos come in.
Outsourcing from the Philippines has proven to be a success since it started in the early 2000s and continues to thrive. Many working Filipinos also understand the dynamics of a remote set-up. So how wise is it a move to hire them? Here are the time-tested benefits of Filipino healthcare assistants:
1. Your Filipino healthcare assistant can speak English well.
In the Philippine system of education, lessons are discussed in the English language, not the dialect of the specific province one is living in. Therefore we could say that Filipinos have been speaking English from the time they stepped foot in pre-school until probably they graduated with a college degree. With that span of years learning and practicing, it’s no wonder many Filipinos speak English as their second language.
2. Your Filipino healthcare assistant is familiar with how outsourcing works.
Outsourcing in the Philippines started booming when call centers became an occupation in the early 2000s. Since then, countries in the US, Australia, and Europe have set up headquarters in the Philippines and had Filipinos handle customer care. So, Filipinos are used to working remotely and are well adjusted to the arrangement including the different time zones involved.
3. Your Filipino healthcare assistant is friendly.
Ask any nationality and practically all of them would say Filipinos are nice. And it’s honestly nothing forced. Filipinos are just naturally friendly, with eyes that light up their faces every time they smile. This is why they are given the task to handle customer care because even with calls, you can easily tell that they are smiling as they talk and attend to your queries.
4. Your Filipino healthcare assistant is exposed to different cultures.
So there was this History book that described the Philippines as a unique heritage with four different cultures. It has influences from China, Spain, USA, and Japan in its history but at present, it has indeed become a melting pot of different cultures. Many foreigners have made the Philippines their home and since then, Filipinos have also learned to adapt to these different cultures.
5. Your Filipino healthcare assistant is willing to adapt.
As mentioned above, Filipinos have come to adapt to the quirks of other cultures. It’s also quite easy for them to do so because Filipinos are inherently flexible. Working with a team of Filipinos won’t be difficult because they are easy to get along with. Culture clashes are also minimal because Filipinos avoid conflicts preferring to work in a peaceful atmosphere.
6. Your Filipino healthcare assistant is respectful.
It must be in the way they are brought up as it’s been proven that Filipinos are really respectful. They know when to draw the line between when to be casual and serious with heads and colleagues. They value relationships and mentorship. Coaching and training is a welcomed task.
7. Your Filipino healthcare assistant is calm.
Seldom do Filipinos lose their cool. They are so used to multi-tasking that it has become second nature to them. Even in the midst of doing tasks simultaneously, they remain calm and collected. Even when faced with an irate customer for instance, you could still see them flashing that natural smile as they pacify and smoothen the situation.
8. Your Filipino healthcare assistant delivers.
Aside from being nice, Filipinos are hardworking. They take their jobs seriously and are even willing to render overtime if needed. Moreover, they take the initiative.
9. Your Filipino healthcare assistant has lower labor cost.
It’s no secret that labor cost in the Philippines is significantly lower compared to that of an onshore employee due to differences in wage laws and currency conversion. So you get to save more on your labor cost. Moreover, since this is a remote set-up, you need not worry about office space rental or purchasing office equipment because your virtual assistant is expected to provide his or her own hardware for the role.
10. Your Filipino healthcare assistant prefers working remotely.
Many Filipinos, especially working parents and breadwinners, prefer a work-from-home setup because they can juggle two major tasks: work and staying home with the kids and loved ones. As it is increasingly challenging to hire childcare, working from home is an ideal setup. Moreover, there is no need to leave the house and wrestle through long hours of commuting just to get into an office.
Bonus – Your Filipino healthcare assistant usually has a partner outsourcing company to make sure clients can expect the best service possible. They take care of the backend operational tasks like payroll and other operational roles needed to assist your virtual healthcare assistant. These companies also roll out metrics and guidelines for every virtual assistant to strictly follow to ensure top-quality service.
A Step-by-step Process on Hiring the Best Virtual Healthcare Assistant from the Philippines
The process of hiring your virtual assistant is essential as the person you choose will play an ultimate role in realizing your company’s goals. This can be daunting but no worries. This article exists for the main purpose of helping you go through the process of how to hire virtual healthcare assistants.
Assuming that you have already posted a hiring ad, it’s likely that you now have a handful of applications on your plate. Of course, you can’t interview everyone so the key here is to narrow down your choices. This formally begins the entire hiring process.
Review Applications
The important thing to remember in this step is your aim of screening applicants. Choose only those who fit the skills you require. Read through their background and past experiences to know which are already familiar with the tasks and tools you have for them. That way, all you need to do is just give a quick rundown of their job specs once they come on board and you don’t have to train them from scratch.
Conduct a Screening Test
Note that this screening test is not a formal test. It’s an extra step to gather information like their basic information, skills validation, when they can start, and expected salary. This is also to get a glimpse of how well a candidate can do the job. We suggest three tasks:
- Internet speed test with a screenshot of results.
- Quick typing test with a screenshot of results.
- Upload a picture with a short caption.
- A brief writeup describing a certain process a virtual healthcare assistant is expected to know.
For those who do not have satisfactory results of these tasks, you can eliminate them.
Schedule a Virtual Interview
For this step on how to hire virtual healthcare assistants, we suggest that you only tell the candidate that it’s a virtual interview so that they will think it will be via video. That way, there’s no chance that they will have someone else do the interview for them.
Time each interview to take not more than 30 minutes. This would have about 10-15 questions for candidates to answer between 3-5 minutes. Questions can be the same for all candidates focusing on customer service. Those who failed to finish the interview can be eliminated. Choose the top three and this time, schedule a video interview via Skype.
Interview the Top Candidates
The final interview that you will be doing is with the top three applicants. At this stage, you are looking for the candidate who would best fit your organization’s culture as well as looking out for red flags or signs of any exaggeration in one’s resume.
It’s expected to be a close fight between two or three strong and qualified applicants so ultimately, your final decision would now come to your gut feel as to who would perform this job best.
Orient Your New Virtual Assistant
Now that you have chosen the best candidate, it’s time to make the employment official. Have the new virtual assistant sign a contract stating job description, job specifications, salary details, and other terms and conditions related to the job.
It would also be good to schedule a meeting for orientation so that you could explain the tasks thoroughly and set expectations in this working relationship. At the same time, the new hire can also ask questions or clarifications if an
Should You or Should You not Hire Virtual Healthcare Assistant
We all know that doctors work around the clock, sometimes even more than 24/7 if needed. This is passion and dedication towards service and we understand the desire to allocate more hours to ensure patient care will always be tantamount; however, this may not always happen due to other tasks involved such as appointment setting, schedule plotting, phone calls, and similar tasks.
This is especially common for clinics having only one to two personnel who already have a pile of tasks on their plate or could also be true to bigger healthcare organizations who just want to lessen overhead expenses.
So here comes the choice of hiring a virtual assistant or not. Let’s rephrase that to a more specific question that would really get you thinking deeper about this issue: Why choose to hire a virtual healthcare assistant?
For starters, they can handle all the tasks that don’t need any of your medical background and expertise. They can serve as your customer care, attending to calls and queries as well as taking down messages while you are away on rounds or on duty.
Then there are also the seemingly simple tasks that surprisingly do take up more of your time:
- Setting up appointments
- Following up with patients
- Encoding or updating data of patients
- Collecting information regarding insurance
- Providing patient aftercare instructions
- Ordering supplies
- Managing payroll
In conclusion, there are a lot of advantages and the main reason is because it gives you the time and space to focus on the essential part of your vocation as a doctor, specifically those that only you can do and not negotiable to be delegated to someone else. More importantly, you can dedicate more time to the people that matter most – your patients.
A Pocket Guide to Finding the Best Virtual Healthcare Assistant
So now that we have established the need to hire them, the next question on your mind is where to find virtual assistants? By this, we understand that you want only the best Filipino Virtual Assistant candidates right?
Well, that’s where we, at Phoenix Virtual Solutions, come in!
With a roster of HIPAA-certified virtual healthcare assistants, you can be sure that our candidates are skilled, experienced, and willing to go the extra mile to get their tasks done.
The services we offer range from front desk support, scheduling and follow-ups, patient management, data entries, medical records maintenance, billing collection, payment posting, and insurance process.
Our candidates work on establishing a cost-effective workflow for healthcare providers, facilities, and just about any management company related to healthcare.
What’s more, our services are cost-effective and allow you to save you up to 60% of the standard labor expense. So you not only get to focus on your vocation as a medical practitioner, you get to save on your budget too!
So where to find the best virtual assistants? Only Phoenix Virtual Solutions.
Let us know how we can help you today!
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