 Virtual assistants are becoming a popular tool used by many different types of businesses, even those that are small. The truth is, most businesses could benefit from the many services provided by virtual assistants. From appointment setting or insurance coding to marketing and graphic design, virtual assistants can alleviate many burdens of businesses.
Many small businesses and practices are managed from home, as the internet has provided options to traditional brick and mortar commercial settings. Because of working from home, business owners and professional service providers work as the sole employee of their company or practice. In this scenario, hiring a virtual assistant for tasks that a receptionist or secretary would provide makes sense, as those duties are required for success, yet take up important time of a professional working alone. No worries that there is no where to “house” the assistant, and the scale and scope of work they provide is taylor made to fit any need and budget. In general, utilizing the services of a virtual assistant can actually save money compared to the hiring of an actual employee. There is no payroll taxes, benefits, or other financial obligations of the business owner as these assistants are contracted on an “as needed” basis. There is also no employee management involved, which can be time consuming in and of itself. Virtual assistants provide specific services and do so without oversight of the contractor, making this business relationship simple and productive. Outsourcing of specific tasks, rather than roles, is very beneficial. A primary role of any business owner or professional practitioner is to establish and cultivate relationships with clients. This can include spending quality time on program development, case management, speaking engagements, and other high value tasks that can not be outsourced. Declaring what tasks are low value, but necessary, and giving them to a qualified virtual assistant maximises the time spent on running and growing a successful practice. Becoming overwhelmed with mundane tasks that never end can stall the progress of any professional. Most virtual assistants are self-employed, or work for a provider who hires and trains assistants for specific lines of work. The Revitalized Therapist offers virtual assistance for psychotherapists that are trained to provide the services unique to your field. Deciding to outsource aspects of work to virtual assistants is the wave of the future, not only for small businesses, but corporations alike. The versatility of services provided with the ability to hand pick duties that will free up time and ease stress, is what makes utilizing a virtual assistant such an attractive business decision.  All professions produce stress, some more than others. Work related stress is among the top causes of anxiety and unhappiness among professionals today. Careers involving the caretaking of others breed their own distinct forms of stress. Therapists make their life’s work helping people cope with stress, but for many therapists the stress of their practice can be overwhelming.
Therapists and mental health professionals are caregivers at heart. For most, the very reason they chose their careers was to heal and support people in need. Those who form their own practices can quickly realize the business of counseling can sometimes take over the actual act of counseling. The demands of running a business can produce stress and ultimately burnout among mental health providers. A successful counseling business has specific needs in addition to the actual act of therapy. Scheduling and customer service are just as important as insurance billing and collections. If one aspect begins to fail, it can cause the entire practice to break down. Many therapists are adept in their chosen profession, but find the daily demands of their practice frustrating, which leads to burn out. Aspects of business management can be outsourced to professionals who can provide the administrative support therapists need to run a successful and fulfilling practice. The increased need for business management assistance in mental health care has given rise to innovative solutions in this industry. Because each practice has unique needs, virtual administrative assistants are increasing in popularity. Therapists can contract with consulting agencies that provide virtual assistants who are specifically trained in the mental health field. These assistants accommodate a wide range of needs, allowing the therapist to spend more time and energy on clients instead of business. Many overwhelmed mental health counselors struggle with work life balance. The intensity of providing emotional support to clients can be all consuming. Seeking help from virtual assistants and outside support systems can be crucial to the well being of therapist and the success of a practice. But there are also other strategies that can be implemented to ward off burn out. As a business owner, it is important that therapists write themselves into the equation. Setting and maintaining business hours, taking vacation and sick leave, and compensating for over time are all ways therapists can guarantee self-care. Far too often practices can take over personal life if allowed to go unchecked. Caretakers can not provide quality care if they are continuing to put themselves last. Understanding that private mental health practices are businesses is fundamental to achieving a rewarding and successful counseling career. As in any profession, outsourcing administrative duties when appropriate can save valuable time and increase productivity. The nature of any mental health profession can be taxing and emotionally draining, but the rewards of maintaining a well-managed work life balance are countless.  First, it is essential to understand precisely what a virtual assistant does. A virtual assistant provides support to other people or businesses, virtually. The support can be administrative or technical.
Virtual assistants do not have to live near you. The only thing needed in addition to high-speed internet is a private computer. Virtual assistance is available for growing and established companies, and our services can be used in all capacities. You’ve made a long to-do list for yourself; the day starts smoothly, and then suddenly things go haywire. If your office activity has increased, it's likely you will need extra support. You don't really need a full time staff member, but it is clear that you need help. We can help you:
We understand that all therapists need to rest to counsel and treat clients effectively. Therefore, our services are essential to therapists with practices of all sizes. It is possible you are putting too much pressure on yourself to get things done. You are stressing, neglecting to take care of yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and overworking to get things done. A virtual assistant will take the weight off your shoulders. We will handle all tasks and complete them efficiently to a high standard. We will also pay close attention to your workloads, address problems, and diffuse those that make you stressed. Do you dream of balancing work and life? Sometimes deadlines and family functions clash, making it completely impossible. At this point, you've missed enough birthday parties, christenings, and social gatherings to be considered the bad friend, and it weighs on you. Virtual assistants free up time to spend time with family, tuck in your children and enjoy your friends. Life outside of work is essential to self-care. When you are fighting stress and taking measures to improve your well-being, you are mindful of our body's needs. You regain control and focus and can effectively treat your clients when you are taken care of. Virtual Assistants are your weapons for fighting stress and controlling your life. You don't need to do anything but give us the orders, take care of yourself, and take care of your clients. With Revitalized Therapist – Virtual Assistant Solutions, you can customize services that meet your needs. We elevate stress, save you time, money, assist with marketing, growing your practice, and establishing passive income streams. Please view our website to learn how we communicate with you and your clients, our billing practices, how will schedule and other relevant information. Contact us to schedule a consultation and discuss the needs for your growing business. From there, we will decide upon a package, and our team will get to work.  At Revitalize Therapist, we play an extremely important role in helping to connect psychotherapy practices with patients and support these busy offices with administrative and marketing work.
Many of our customers would recommend Revitalize Therapist to any therapist office. Because of our commitment to taking on the tedious and time-consuming tasks that often distract therapy professionals from excellent patient care, Revitalize Therapist is an active partner in improving therapy services to a community. We manage voicemails, intake, eligibility, claim status, electronic file updates, appointment reminders and much more – so that you don't have to! But at the same time, we do more than just “filling in the gaps” – being an active partner means collaborating for excellence. The Nature of Therapy Services Here's part of the philosophy that led us to develop Revitalize Therapist services for professional therapy offices. Psychotherapy and mental health services are a particular kind of business. These businesses are some of those that can least afford to mire inbound callers in confusing red tape and less friendly customer interfaces. Imagine it from the patient's perspective – dealing with emotional or mental health problems and calling a phone number to be connected to a confusing, interactive voice system or a brusque and unconcerned receptionist. In so many cases, those with mental health and behavioral needs don't get the help that they need because they are discouraged or turned off by mediocre intake systems. A good intake professional has to have a good bedside manner and much more. They must be aware of current insurance and billing practices. They must understand how these look to a patient. They have to be able to empathize and put themselves in the client’s shoes and recognize how to deal with the challenges of intake and billing. Many experienced receptionists and clerical professionals in therapy offices will tell you about these challenges, but they won't have ready solutions. Instead they just get burned out and the practice suffers more. At Revitalize Therapist, we bring a real rejuvenating outsourced plan to our therapy office clients. That's why we call it Revitalize Therapist– take a look at our mission statement: “Our mission is to create more space for you in your life so you have time for the things that matter the most to you. We accomplish this by taking care of the time consuming task you don't enjoy and streamlining your practices to increase the efficiency of your practice. We assist you with administrative task, marketing, growing your practice, your tribe and establishing passive income streams. There are so many things that we are excited to share with you. We are passionate about empowering therapist to utilize creative solutions that promote the prosperity of their practice and happiness in their lives.” Take a look at our website to see more about everything we do for our mental health clinicians. Some doctors and therapists like to go it alone – to take on all of the entire chain around patient care and billing. But many others feel they are best served in a collaborative model where professional and reliable outsourcing allows them to focus on the patient's needs first. Call us and have a conversation about how to enhance and improve your outreach and patient management practice.  Automations are changing my life and the flow of my business! Automations have not only cut my todo list in half but also do the thinking for me. This allows me to free up mental, physical and emotional energy for the things that matter the most to me. Automations also allow my business to continue to run efficiently and productively and grow even when I am not in the office. Here are a few automation systems that changed the game for me! Schedule OnceAs a private practice owner and owner of The Revitalized Therapist I am constantly scheduling consultations. Being that these meetings occur frequently having an automation system to do the work for me made all the difference. Schedule once allows you to set a schedule of open time slots for your appointments that your clients are able to choose from, but that is not the best part....Schedule Once also integrates with your google calendar (Simple Practice sincts with my google calendar too!), your outlook calendar and several others. Schedule once connects with tons of other apps that you may be using already like zoom, zapier (which I am also crazy about), Active Campaign, Asana and so many others. An automation in Schedule Once looks something like this: 1. Client schedules from my website through Schedule Once. 2. Schedule Once triggers a Zoom meeting invite associated with the clients booking and adds it to my calendar. 3. When a client is booked via Schedule Once Zapier sends the client an email that confirms their appointment and shares a link to attend the zoom meeting. It then triggers a link to complete their paperwork online as well! 4. Zapier then also adds the new potential client to my email newsletter list and continues to build a relationship and complete my marketing for me! So freaking amazing! And this is really just the tip of the iceberg. ZapierWith Zapier automating pretty much everything you do online to run your business is possible. From conference and event registrations, email marketing, managing multiple calendars, organizing your emails, sending attachments directly after a first client meeting, directing clients back to your website, sends clients reminders, manages sales funnels, you name it Zapier can do it for you. Zapier links all your apps and provides suggestions of ways you can integrate these apps and make them work more efficiently for you by automating them. Zapier links with over 1000 apps for businesses for marketing, research, scheduling, team management, I could go on and on but you really have to check it out for yourself. It is extremely easy to use and takes all of the guesswork out for you.
Here are some examples of suggestions that Zapier gave me just today of things it could be doing for me and all I have to do is click add Zap: Create HubSpot contacts from new ScheduleOnce bookings Create new activities in Redtail CRM for ScheduleOnce scheduled bookings Create ActiveCampaign subscribers from ScheduleOnce bookings Create MailChimp subscribers from ScheduleOnce bookings Create/update ActiveCampaign contacts from new ScheduleOnce bookings Create ActiveCampaign contacts from updated ScheduleOnce bookings Add contacts to an ActiveCampaign automation when they book through ScheduleOnce Post new ScheduleOnce bookings to a Slack channel Create Infusionsoft contacts from ScheduleOnce bookings Create HubSpot CRM contacts from new ScheduleOnce bookings  Imagine having more free time to focus on your clients, increase your income and take that vacation you have been dreaming about. Having a reliable virtual assistant will not only help with all of that, but will also give you that one go-to person with whom you will grow a trusting relationship, who will make your days less stressful, and give you less to worry about overall. Let me start by saying I know what it’s like to have high anxiety and worry to make sure every little detail is covered, and let’s be real, perfectionism most likely gets in the way too. It takes time to see that if you allow a few of your burdens to be handled by your virtual assistant, your tasks are being completed on time, if not earlier than they would have been if you had to complete them yourself. You will be able to breathe more, worry less and be that much more excited about life and those goals you’ve been setting aside. So, why wouldn’t you find someone to help take all of that plus more off your back? I know it’s hard to let go but let me tell you it will be worth it. Those endless phone calls and emails you must respond to as quickly as possible, or those hours spent trying to get through to an insurance company and you were transferred to 3 other departments before the issue was resolved. Those days you missed lunch because you were needed elsewhere. Put all of that to a halt, eat your lunch with time to spare, go for a walk and get fresh air. Hand over your phones and know your clients will all get a call back the same day they call. New potential clients won’t be lost, because they’ll get an answer within the same day they reach out. Know that the client who needed to be squeezed in last minute, will get a spot as soon as possible because your virtual assistant made it happen while also not inconveniencing your other clients. Know that your money was collected from each client the same day they had session. Are you feeling that extra time on your hands? No? Okay, let me continue. Know that your research that needed to be done, will be sent to you before you even open google on your laptop. You will not have to call an insurance company again! Leave it to your virtual assistant to take care of it and get all the information you need. If you need to get your social media more active and just don’t have the time? Let your trained and certified virtual assistant get you out there and noticed. 
 Are you looking to streamline your business practices, increase your profits and have more space in your life? If you want to expand, grow and increase passive income streams then yes, you should hire a virtual assistant. Make the Transition to Outsourcing Tasks Work For You, Your Clients and Your Business Start with a small package: prioritize streamlining your business practices so your practice runs like a well oiled machine. This strategy decreases stress immediately and allows you time to build a trusting relationship with your VA. Imagine what it would be like for you if your practice ran with more efficiency and ease. How would you feel everyday knowing that your billing is handled correctly and you never had to call another insurance company again. What would it be like for you if you could mentally and physically unplug knowing your calls and scheduling were handled in an ethical manner and you only had to focus on your sessions? What would it be like to have email autoresponders that schedule newsletters that keep your clients and referral sources engaged? What would it be like for you if you actually had the time to write that book, go on vacation, create a webinar or facilitate the group you have great ideas for? What would this be worth to you? What fears would you need to get through in order to let go and enjoy more? Identify 3 things now that are your top priorities for streamlining your practice? What is not working, what is it that your have difficulty understanding, and what causes you the most stress? List the things that would make contacting your office and scheduling with you easier for your clients? Let Go of Your Phone Work with a virtual assistant that is trained by a therapist. Therapist are more likely to train their virtual assistants in empathy, reflective listening, clinical assessment and crisis intervention than any other source. Therapist understand how hard it is for clients to make that first call, what a valuable opportunity for relationship building calls are and how to make appropriate referrals. Virtual assistants can also get you more private pay clients. Virtual assistants have time to go that extra mile for your clients by discussing the potential risks of utilizing health insurance for therapy, look up out-of-network benefits for your callers and spend additional time reflecting your value and unique skill set to clients. Therapist struggle with letting their phone go, mostly out of fear that something will go wrong if they don't. I invite you to consider, what it would be like for you if there was a virtual assistant out there that could handle and respond to your callers and clients more efficiently and just as skillfully as you could how would you feel? What would you utilize that time for? It is imperative that you take into account that scheduling for a private practice requires more time and effort on your part than that of any other industry. How? First, there is only one of you not a staff that shares the calls like in a medical setting or group practice. Next, emotions and life experiences are unpredictable thus your clients needs are too. Therapy practices are unique as they require weekly appointments. That is a big commitment in terms of scheduling for clients and tons of unexpected changes and life circumstances get in the way of being able to have a consistent therapy session schedule. The amount of client calls and emails you receive in a week regarding cancellations, rescheduling, following-up on no shows, calling referral sources, responding to new callers is more extensive and time consuming than most businesses. When I time tracked how many hours per week I was spent on email and phone communication regarding scheduling it came out to 6 hours!!! 6 valuable hours, that if I had the choice would have rather spent with my clients doing what I love the most, therapy. My assistance efficiency was also much higher than mine due to not having to manage clinical issues and being a efficiency master. My clients were also happier as they could reach someone within business hours immediately. I got my 6 hours back and increased my income and sanity as a result. Understand The Value of Your Time You provide difficult life saving support to struggling individuals everyday. This is not an industry where quantity over quality applies. As therapist and born caretakers, we often put the needs of others before our own. A lot of us assume that we are supposed to be it all, do it all and do it all well. I hear from therapist all the time that feel buried in work, stressed, behind and lonely. They never even considered obtaining more support for their business by professionals who are trained to complete the tasks they are struggling with. Furthermore, they think it is a luxury that they can't afford and judge themselves for falling behind. The reality is, is that most therapist are falling behind. It is not possible to be the accountant, the insurance billing expert, the administrative support staff, the marketing expert and an excellent therapist. Outsourcing some of my work, truly changed my life. $60.00 a week paid for 10 hours of administrative work that I no longer had to worry about and opened up 6 hours of free space in my week. To have free space for joy, to have additional time to see a client made it more than worth it. AuthorCristina Smugala, MA, LPC A virtual assistant is a person who works remotely and typically possess various business enhancement skills. A VA can help you with marketing, designing your brand, administrative task and a endless list of others. VAs provide various services and cater to various types of businesses. A VAs main function is to provide you and your business with functionality and support. Name any administrative task and your VA can complete it. Really the sky's the limit. Also, VA's possess unique skills you do not have or you do not have time to learn. Let's face it running a business is already complicated enough and no one can possibly specialize in all things all of the time and still sleep, eat and have a life. As a mental health professional and understand the value of down time and self-care. After years of running my practice solo and feeling the real wear and tear of burnout if I can automate it, delegate it or outsource it I am all for it! |
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