You Just Hired a Mental Health Virtual Assistant, Now What?
By Joy Bundy
A mental health virtual Assistant’s advice on what steps to take after you hire an assistant
Get the big picture from a virtual assistant
What are the tasks that are draining your time and energy and keeping you from doing what you “signed up for” in the first place—helping people?
A virtual assistant lets YOU help THEM better by taking the nitty-gritty day-in-and-day-out tasks off your plate.
List some of the tasks that CAN be delegated.
As you train, hand off tasks in chewable bites. While your virtual assistant has experience in these tasks, she’s still learning the particulars of your systems. Try to hand off one new big task every week or every two weeks.
For instance, I want my mental health virtual assistant to:
answer phones
schedule intakes
verify insurance benefits
send out information to doctors’ offices regarding initial visits
send monthly surveys to the clients who have been discharged the previous month
make calls to all the new intakes reminding them to fill out their paperwork
send texts to my clients to remind them of their appointment 48 hours in advance
maintain data from the survey monkey website
reach out to PCP offices to let them know of our services
send out billing statements to clients to submit to their insurance
create new files in EHR
takes calls to reschedule existing clients
process and send faxes
maintain call logs
respond to email inquiries
upload and process forms
data entry
calling pharmacies for prescription questions
and walking clients through Telehealth platforms (Simple Practice, Therapy Notes, TheraNest)
Fantastic! The big picture is wonderful.
It helps us know your ultimate goal and how we can better help you and ease some of your stress. And it’s fine to give us all your expectations at once—in an overview—but with the understanding that little bites are easier to swallow and process.
So, give us the big picture, but then triage it, and assign it a little bit at a time week by week, and keep adding gradually.
Details
Make sure your assistant has the information to do those tasks…
Passwords for Email, Phone, EHR, Fax, etc.
How do you want to communicate? How often?
The more details you can provide—the better. You can’t think of everything—it will be a work in progress—but extra things to consider…
Location: Where is your physical office located? (Address) What are the identifiable landmarks? What’s around the building? What entrance do they use?
I’ve heard on multiple occasions, “I’m right outside your building, where do I go now?” UH…..Your guess is as good as mine considering I’ve never seen the place. (Which is NOT what we say, but what we may be thinking….) SO—detail on location and building color, landmarks, staircase—anything can be helpful to direct the client to you and make them feel not so alone and on their own since they’re already doing a difficult thing to come to you in the first place!
Online portal: What does your online portal and paperwork process look like from your client’s point of view? How can we help them navigate that?
Referrals: You don’t see everyone—that’s fine—but please provide a list of qualified professionals whom we can point the potential clients to.
Who sees what? Do you take insurance? If so, which ones? Who do you see? Who do your other therapists see? Who don’t they see? Court-ordered? What are you passionate about? This helps the VA make the right match. The more info you have—the better match we can make.
Script for new intakes: Is there an exact script or a general guideline? What are the MUSTS for the intake calls.
Start your mental health virtual assistant out with a few tasks and add to them week to week.
Start with having your VA answer phones and schedule. This is a good and clear place to start. Add tasks gradually week by week.
Extra Projects
We’re here to help! When giving a project—please provide passwords, if needed, a clear vision of the end-goal and expectations, and a timeframe in which you’d like this to be accomplished.
Communication
It’s part of the details. The more information on anything that you can provide is better. If and when there are frustrations—communicate that to us. Both sides need to work with the understanding that the VA wants to do her best and do a wonderful job, and you want us to succeed as well. So when hiccups happen, remember they’re not intentional. Guide us with more details so that we can make sure that we do it better the next time that situation happens.
Letting go….
If you want to let your assistant fly, you have to let them go
Please check in with us. Weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, or daily if you prefer!
This is still YOUR SHIP—we are just helping you “mop the deck” and “batten the hatches”—it’s still yours—but we’re invested in you—your success is our success as well. So check in with us, but also trust us that we have your back.
Gracious Feedback
As with any new position, it takes time to learn the ropes and get really good at juggling all the details. Your patience through the initial bumps is imperative and appreciated. And sometimes that’s a two-way street!
We’re both learning together. And the bumps are learning experiences as part of the process.
Don’t grab that phone….
If you’re hiring a virtual assistant, please allow them to do their job. We may be on the phone for another client when a call from your practice comes in. We see it. We’ll get it!
“Calls will be processed in the order they are received….” as we’ve heard so many times before!
It’s still your office, you may take calls whenever you want, but if you’re not allowing us time to see the call and return it during our scheduled “watch” then you’re not getting the full benefit of our service. This could lead to frustration for you and your virtual assistant. Your virtual assistant wants to answer the calls and help you by processing that for you.
If you leap to a “missed call” because the VA was on another call (possibly another call for your practice)…it robs you of the chance to rest. Your virtual assistant saw the call come in (or will see it) and will respond. So rest, and trust your virtual assistant to do her job!
