Virtual Assistants Provide Administrative Acceleration in a Post-Covid Clinical World

Written Mar 20, 2023 by Dock Health Team

The co-owners behind Move Forward Virtual Assistants (MFVA) leveraged their entrepreneurial roots bringing the national portfolio of mental health practices to the next performance level. Jennifer Crawford and Meredith Eaton had three goals when they stepped in as owners at MFVA:

• Enable mental health practitioners to spend more time focused on patients by providing virtual-assistant support specifically around administrative needs
• Navigate the exponential need for mental health compounded by the pandemic with boundaries to help practitioners stay healthy themselves
• Institute time-saving practices and administrative processes to ensure their clients can sustainably grow

They brought in Dock Health to help compound time-savings and ensure highly reliable care with its HIPAA-compliant task management and workflow automations. They use Dock both to onboard their new clients and to serve day-to-day with existing ones. Read more about their story here.

Q: Tell us about your journey to becoming co-CEOs of Move Forward Virtual Assistants.

A: We founded another virtual assistant agency together in 2018 and have been business partners and great friends ever since. In 2022, a business friend of ours was working as an operations consultant for the then owner of Move Forward Virtual Assistants, Alison Pidgeon. She found out that Alison was interested in selling MFVA so she could focus on her expanding group practice. She thought we might be interested since we already had a virtual assistant agency. Being mission-driven entrepreneurs at heart, we really loved the fact that this company was working behind the scenes to help more people receive mental healthcare. The rest is history and we’ve enjoyed the privilege of shepherding MFVA to its next phase.

Q: Who are your customers and why are they experiencing day to day?

A: Our customers are mental health practice owners, who are overwhelmed with the administrative demands of their growing practices. In most cases, they are sacrificing clinician time to do all of their administrative tasks, which is a very frustrating and financially limiting position for practice owners to be in.

Q: Share with us the top 3 reasons mental health practices come to MFVA.

A:

1. They need help with insurance coordination and billing
2. They need help with intake and scheduling
3. Their in-house administrative team needs support

Q: Why are these problems for them?

A:

1. Dealing with insurance details and tracking down denied claims can be incredibly time-consuming. It is easy to get behind which can cause a significant decrease in revenue and cash flow issues. We’ve seen this happen in small and large practices.
2. Intake and scheduling is time-consuming and when a therapist is in session all day, they are returning calls and emails in the evenings or even days later. A slow response time means a decrease in client conversions. For therapists who are handling their own calls, they often experience issues with boundaries and that can be awkward and problematic.
3. For practices that already have administrative support, that person or persons’ workload increases over time as the practice grows. It makes sense to peel away some of their responsibilities to keep them from being overwhelmed and overworked. We can provide that continuity of support by virtue of being an agency with a team of mental health administrative specialists.

Q: Why has no one solved these problems before?

A: We are not the only mental health virtual assistant agency, but we are one of the few with U.S.-based employees as opposed to independent contractors. All of our mental health virtual assistants are fully vetted, including criminal background checks, HIPAA certified, and go through our multi-week training before working with clients. Our mental health VAs are also paid a salary and are provided with a full suite of benefits by MFVA. By infusing a work-life integration philosophy into our culture, our team can bring their best selves to our clients’ practices.

Q: What are the barriers to solving this problem? (This can be technological, inertia, etc.)

A: Our clients often come to us after trying to solve the problem themselves by hiring someone independently or by reducing their client hours. One of the biggest challenges to hiring someone independently is turnover. The job market is very competitive and when you invest time and resources into someone just to have them leave a few months later, it can be really disruptive to a practice. Not to mention the complexity that payroll and benefits administration adds to the equation. We’ve also seen solo practitioners reduce their billable hours by 50% in order to handle the admin themselves. Not only does the math not math, but the mental health professional is doing less of the work they are most passionate about.

Q: Tell us more about the experiences you’re trying to create for your customers. What specific impacts do you generate for them?

A: We want our customers to realize that we consider ourselves part of their team and that we are all working toward the common goal of their success. That starts with our onboarding which is carefully designed to create a strong foundation for our relationship and to provide immediate value to their practice. To do this, we start with a Needs Assessment where we can discover and prioritize their needs, and by then guiding them through creating their Standard Operating Procedures prior to their official Onboarding meeting with their virtual assistant(s). After that initial OnBoarding meeting, they officially enter the “OnBoarding period” which means that they will be getting extra attention from us to ensure that they are able to establish strong communication protocols and workflow and rhythm with their virtual assistant(s).

Q: What kinds of processes or areas of work do you impact?

A: We impact the client journey as well as daily operations for our practices. Our job is to take great care of their clients before and after their sessions. Operationally, we help practices run efficiently and professionally so they can expand effortlessly.

Q: Why is Dock relevant to these processes?

A: Dock is extremely relevant because it delivers the transparency that is so important to the people supporting a practice. From the practice owner to the support team, DockHealth provides a way to create standard workflows and task lists that allow everyone to know the status of every client and internal project while housing all the relevant data in one place. That insight allows for even smoother operations and ease of growth. Without a tool like Dock, larger practices that have multiple VAs or in-house administrative staff that are supported by our VAs, it is much harder to create efficient and reliable workflows and systems between everyone involved.

Q: What else would you like to share with readers?

If you are a practice owner with a growing practice, you do not have to be overwhelmed and overworked to have a financially viable practice. With the right digital and human support, you can design a practice that supports your life, rather than the other way around.