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What are the outcomes that you want to drive in your private practice? Are you spending consulting-value hours doing hourly-wage tasks? Where should you hire and place your virtual assitant to have the most leverage for your practice’s success?
In this podcast episode, Brandon Shurn discusses the secret to scaling without hiring more staff with Chris McShanag.
Podcast Sponsor: POP Consulting
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Meet Chris McShanag
Chris McShanag is the Founder and CEO of Virtual Teammate, where he helps private practices and growing businesses scale by strategically leveraging virtual assistants. He specializes in identifying operational bottlenecks, optimizing team structure, and enabling business owners to focus on high-value, revenue-generating work. Chris is particularly focused on reducing burnout among healthcare professionals by offloading administrative tasks, allowing them to spend more time with clients and less time on paperwork.
Visit Virtual Teammate and connect on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
In This Podcast
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How many dollars is this task worth?
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Which day-to-day challenges can virtual assistants help solve?
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How to hire a VA to get the best results
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Essential qualities in good virtual assistants
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Final takeaways for listeners
How many dollars is this task worth?
Scaling is about leveraging people in the right spots throughout the company. Whenever someone is doing something that will either cost or make money, you need to ask: Is this the right person for this task?
Being able to delegate [well], what I like to refer to is [the question], “How many of your $100 resources are doing $10 tasks?” And then delegating appropriately. That’s where I see leaders scale without having to add a lot of staff, because you are ensuring people are productive, and they’re in the right seats to grow there. (Chris McShanag)
Look at the dollar sign attached to the task. Is it worth you, the CEO of the practice, to do the billing or take out the trash?
If the income that you could bring into the practice is significant, then don’t spend those hours doing a task you could pay another person to do.
Which day-to-day challenges can virtual assistants help solve?
Unfortunately, physician burnout has grown. When you dig back … that’s because physicians and medical providers are spending a lot of their time on paperwork, on being in front of the computer instead of being in front of the patients. (Chris McShanag)
Virtual assistants can add the most value to private practice owners by allowing them to do what they are trained to do and what brings in the most cash flow: seeing clients.
VAs can tend to phone calls, emails, paperwork, and billing, which dramatically frees up a therapist’s schedule, and it’s even likely that one hour worked by the therapist is able to pay for a few hours of VA duties.
Some of the tasks that virtual assistants can do include:
- Insurance verification and eligibility
- Patient scheduling
- Patient billing, denial, or appeals management
- Provide personal touchpoints for a client who wants to reach out to the practice with queries
How to hire a VA to get the best results
The question I always ask my clients when I first meet them is … “What is holding your business back today? What is your biggest frustration? What is the work you’re doing today that you don’t believe is the best use of your time?” (Chris McShanag)
Quite often, a practice owner is the ceiling to the growth of their business. They do everything themselves, from the basic tasks to seeing clients, and it hurts the business.
Therefore, prioritize doing what you can do best, whatever brings in the most cash flow for the practice, and then hire VAs to do the rest of the necessary admin that supports the work, which only you can do.
If you want to hire a VA in a way that really supports and pushes your practice to grow, look for the bottle neck (which could be you doing emails!) and place them there.
Essential qualities in good virtual assistants
The assistants that Virtual Teammate hires are screened for both skills and essential interpersonal qualities, making them great fits for a variety of businesses, including private practices.
Some of these essential qualities include:
- Empathy
- Communication and comprehension
- Behavioral work ethic that’s aligned with the client’s needs
When they join the organization, they are provided with ongoing, evergreen training on the latest technologies and regulatory [aspects], and then when they’re deployed with a client, the client doesn’t just get the virtual teammate, they also get a client success manager that ensures the success of the engagement. (Chris McShanag)
Final takeaways for listeners
Are the people working in your practice doing the tasks that create the most leverage? What is the best time that you can spend to grow the business?
Can you buy back some time by hiring an assistant to take over a standard task so that you can do what only you can do as the owner?
Useful Links:
- Work with us
- Visit Virtual Teammate and connect on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Check out these additional resources:
- Referrals: How Real Relationships Build Your Practice with Kelly McCullough | GP 321
- Practice of the Practice Network
- Group Practice Launch
- Group Practice Boss: www.practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss $149 a month
- PoP Group Practice Owners Facebook Group
- Free resources to help you start, grow, and scale
- Work with us
- Practice of the Practice Network
Meet Prof. Brandon Shurn
Brandon Shurn, Ph.D., LCPC, LMHC, AFC®, NCC, is a licensed clinical professional counselor and the founder of EmPower Me Holistic Counseling, a fully virtual Maryland-based practice. He’s also a full-time professor in Seattle University’s online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program. With extensive experience launching and directing university training clinics, Brandon now focuses on helping therapists design and grow impactful, sustainable practices. Outside of his work, he enjoys fitness, yoga, Wing Chun, golf, reading, and spending time with his family and dogs.
Visit Empower Me Counseling, and connect with Brandon on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Email him at: [email protected]
