Should You Hire a Virtual Assistant for Your Therapy Practice?
If you operate a thriving private practice, you know how difficult it can be to find any spare time. You need to focus on providing therapy for your customers and often find it hard to complete many administrative but important tasks. In fact, you may be considering seeking out a virtual assistant for therapy, but what do you need to know about this approach before deciding to hire one?
In this article, we’ll discuss how a virtual assistant can help you manage your therapy practice so you can focus on your clients.
What Is a Virtual Assistant?
In the past decade, virtual assistants have become an essential part of both the offline and online business world. They are either professional and dedicated contractors or work as part of a company providing such services, and they can perform a range of different tasks. Potentially, they can help you with administrative, clerical, and accounting tasks that can range from simple to complex.
Tasks You Can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant For Therapy
Virtual assistants are great to use whether it’s a few hours a week or on a steady basis. Handing over the administrative and time-consuming tasks you don’t look forward to will help keep your practice running smoothly. Here is a list of tasks that can readily be outsourced to a virtual assistant:
- General administration
- Booking and managing appointments
- Receptionist
- Data entry
- Research
- Travel planning
- Content creation
- Graphic design
- Customer service
- Email management
- Bookkeeping and accounting
- Social media management
As you can see, a virtual assistant can certainly help take a lot of the pressure off, but they are not suitable for everything. For example, if you want to develop a better relationship with a key client, you should handle this yourself. When you want to create some important content that requires highly specialized knowledge, you should ensure that someone with the requisite training within your organization takes that on instead.
Pay Rates and Working Hours for Therapy Virtual Assistants
Pay rates can vary widely. A virtual assistant for therapy could charge anywhere from as low as $1 per hour to more than $100. This disparity is often due to the physical location of the virtual assistant. Many of them live and work in the Philippines or India but are still available to help business owners in the US. They will typically charge a lot less than somebody who may be based in the US, largely because their cost of living is substantially lower. When considering salary for this role, factor in what you would pay someone in office and base your numbers on that.
Working hours will also vary substantially and based on the person’s existing workload. The more experienced virtual assistants may have less available time to spend with new clients, and you will need to negotiate the number of hours per week based on the work you require.
How to Hire a Virtual Assistant Through a Service
Certainly, you may find it a lot easier to locate and subsequently hire a virtual assistant if you work through an established service. They will do the research for you and vet the individual to determine their qualifications and reliability. They can also present you with a range of solutions and put you in touch with those specializing in certain areas. If you use a hiring service, be aware that they take a commission on top of the individual pay rates, making a small difference to the overall cost.
Why Hire a Virtual Assistant?
If you’re ready to offload some of the work you’ve been avoiding, it may be a good time to hire a virtual assistant. Here are some reasons why hiring a virtual assistant can help your therapy practice.
Leveraging
You may find that you cannot expand your therapy practice because you are tied up with administrative or clerical tasks. A virtual assistant will help you increase your efficiency by taking away a lot of those repetitive or mundane chores. You can leverage a virtual assistant to open up more possibilities and give you some breathing space as well.
Saving Money
You won’t need to invest money to onboard and train new employees. A virtual assistant will have picked up the requisite skills on their own and be ready to bring those to the table. They can “hit the ground running,” whereas you would have to allow extra time for a new employee, which represents an additional cost.
Flexibility
Your new virtual assistant can also provide you with the requisite skills when you need them, thereby filling any skills gap in your organization. You can also scale up or down your requirement to reduce your costs or quickly outsource more work if need be which could be challenging with an on-site employee.
Efficiency
Taking on a virtual assistant who lives in a different time zone can sometimes be advantageous. For instance, you can outsource a task when you sign off for the day, and it may be completed by the time you come to work in the morning. If you have a project that demands immediate results, you’ve got maximum efficiency.
What Are the Disadvantages of Hiring a Virtual Assistant?
While hiring a virtual assistant can ease much of the stress in running your therapy practice, it’s important to be aware of the challenges you may face.
Availability
Sometimes, a virtual assistant will be extremely busy and may work with several different clients. In so doing, they will have to juggle their time effectively, and they may suddenly become unavailable if things do not all go according to plan.
Communication
You may find it hard to communicate with your virtual assistant simply because they are virtual or remote. Sometimes, internet connections, power outages, or major storms (commonplace in the Philippines, for example) can be hindrances. You may not be able to complete an important video call when the pressure is on.
Reliability
While most virtual assistants are trustworthy and reliable, there is still a risk associated with data security. If you need to share sensitive information, you must ensure that your virtual assistant has been thoroughly vetted before proceeding.
Continuity
A virtual assistant is, of course, an independent contractor. There is a risk that they may simply walk away from any engagement for personal reasons or if they are not able to handle your growing business demands.
Final Thoughts
Many people who operate a private therapy practice or are thinking about opening one may value the input of a virtual assistant. It’s best to weigh up the pros and cons yourself to determine what will work best for you and your business.
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