In-house staff or virtual assistants? Which one is better for dental offices?

Virtual assistants or in-house staff? Which is best? It depends on your dental office's demands. However, a virtual assistant (VA) can bring many advantages to your business, including better cost, availability, and accessibility. 

In this article, we compare the two and explain which one is best for your practice.

Dental office staffing comparison

For many years, the administrative tasks of dental practices have been carried out by the staff members located in the dental offices. These staff members manage the functions that are very important to the functioning of the office: 

• They schedule the patients and manage them in and out of the office.
• They take care of the billing process for patients.
• They also manage the filing and dealing with insurance claims. 

All these tasks are vitally important but take a lot of time. Often, the practice rents space just to have the office staff there to do these jobs.

Conversely, the rise of virtual assistants has changed how dental practices function. They are revolutionizing the industry: 

• Virtual assistants are remote workers who handle administrative tasks from afar, often at a much cheaper price than in-house employees. 
• They can be hired part-time or full-time, giving dental practices flexibility in their staffing that was unheard of just a few years ago.

Cost savings in dentistry

Dentists must consider cost savings, especially when running a practice in a competitive area. Here are some comparisons: 

• In-house staff does not come cheap. They are not cheap because they cost us in the three main areas of cost: salaries, training, and benefits. When you add it all up, hiring a full-time administrative staff member can cost a dental practice more than $50,000 annually (some suspect it costs even more). So, a virtual assistant is an inexpensive alternative.
• VAs cut out extra costs! Our specialists free up resources that dental practices can use elsewhere. These resources, of course, are necessary to ensure practices stay competitive.

Dental virtual assistants as an option

Dental virtual assistants focus on providing administrative support customized to meet the particular needs of dental practices. They are trained in dental vernacular, the ins and outs of insurance processes, and managing patients in an office setting. They know how to get things done in a dental office because they talk and walk the walk. In short, they are probationers in the dental virtual assistant program that never ends and keeps them on a low pay scale.

Dental virtual assistants can boost efficiency and productivity within a practice. By using these professionals, a practice can delegate routine administrative tasks and complete them at a virtual location. This allows the in-practice dentist and staff to focus on the patient and clinical care, which is their responsibility. Not only does this shift improve immediate patient care, but it also contributes to enhanced overall practice performance.

Remote workers in dentistry

The increase in working from home has allowed dentistry to recruit talent from far and wide. This is because our contemporary technology allows remote and in-office workers to communicate almost as quickly as they were in the same room. Moreover, dentists can solve many problems facing their patients just as well in a teleconference as they can in a treatment room. Following are some key advantages dental practices gain when hiring remote workers.

In conclusion, virtual assistants versus in-house personnel hinge on dental practices' situations. Immediate support and the cohesive team environment that in-house staff can provide are hard to replicate with virtual assistants. These remote workers invariably lack the presence that makes a patient or a team member genuinely feel they are at the "dental home." Virtual workers' flexibility and cost savings make them a viable option for many dental offices.

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