Overcoming Staffing Challenges to Improve Morale and Efficiency w/ Beth LaChance

Erik Sunset: [00:00:00] right. Hello and welcome back. I’m Erik Sunset, your host of the DocBuddy Journal. DocBuddy, of course, is your source for healthcare solutions that take the pain and cost out of broken workflows. And today we’re joined by Beth LaChance. Beth is the CEO of Global Medical Virtual Assistants. Beth, thanks so much for joining us.

Beth LaChance: I’m so excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me,

Beth LaChance: Erik.

Erik Sunset: It is our pleasure. And that’s kind of a short and sweet intro. You’re the CEO of Global Medical Virtual Assistance. What else should our listeners know about you?

Beth LaChance: Yeah. Well, it’s been an interesting, an interesting ride in the virtual assistant world. It’s, it’s relatively new to the medical space. Highly utilized across the board in so many different industries, but really new to the medicals. Face. And it’s been really, really interesting because pre COVID was very different and compared to post COVID when it comes to the remote work staff.

Beth LaChance: Right. So yeah, I think that we can just kind of dive right into how it works [00:01:00] and the excitement around the industry because it is relatively new.

Erik Sunset: Yeah. And that COVID was such an inflection point globally. Healthcare obviously got a pretty special treatment. At the time I had involvement with both the dental and medical revenue cycle management solution vendor and the dental side of things just was shut down completely barring emergencies. But I

Erik Sunset: would imagine that business was booming and not to be crass, but as medical practices started to come back online and virtual visits started to take place and be more and more commonplace that folks were clamoring for staffing. What was that like?

Beth LaChance: Yeah. Well, interestingly enough, so kind of what happened is ours, our strategy sessions or our sales calls that would happen previous to COVID were. Long, tedious trying to convince people that yes, it’s possible to have and utilize remote staff. And and it was just a long sales funnel. Like, it just, it took a long time to kind of close up some of those conversations and get [00:02:00] them to to start with us.

Beth LaChance: COVID happened and everyone in the medical industry was, was thrust into having to get get accustomed to remote staff, meaning almost everyone in their practices had to go home, work from home, couldn’t come in. And so obviously there was a huge limitations with that, but at the same time, it opened the doors wide open for a service like ours in terms of.

Beth LaChance: Wow. Remote staff and remote work is absolutely possible and now critical to a fast paced growing practice or a practice that just is so incredibly overwhelmed. And so now our sales calls post COVID are so different. I mean, they come to us not asking how is it possible, but when and how quickly can we get up and running and what does the process look like immediately they’re asking, okay, what’s the, what are the steps?

Beth LaChance: How do we move forward? So it’s just a huge difference. But I, during Covid itself, we start, in the very beginning of Covid, it was our typical sales calls, nothing really [00:03:00] different. And then as Covid continued, and especially, especially the duration was much longer than we anticipated. Our sales sales team got very, very busy and we were able to very quickly get staffing, remote staffing for our medical practices.

Beth LaChance: And, you know, when they only wanted to start with one or two VAs, they ended up with five or 10 VAs and every practice ended up kind of, you know, evolving to being larger numbers for us, which has been really, really, really exciting.

Erik Sunset: One of the things that I hear from medical practices and surgery centers and all different places that we consider a healthcare organization, it’s not just that good help is hard to find. Any help is hard to find. And obviously you go through a pandemic that changes the game, but as we kind of come out the other side and you know, different parts of the country came out the other side sooner than others there’s been a huge hurdle to, to hiring and retaining any. Kind of staff, good, bad, or ugly.

Beth LaChance: Right. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think that what we have seen from from [00:04:00] our end and our perspective is we’re able to backfill those empty roles with the administrative work needed around patient care. And we’re able to do it in such a way that. You know, when when practices start with us, we can start with a couple of virtual assistants and quickly scale up as needed as they see how how act how well it’s working out.

Beth LaChance: But it’s still across the board. We’re just seeing this mass exodus out of health care altogether. Especially like. front desk, nursing, medical assistants. People are doing all the office work in the back end. A lot of the administrative work around patient care. We’re seeing this mass exodus and or people just very quickly realizing that, oh, it’s such a competitive market.

Beth LaChance: I’m gonna leave this practice. 000 bonus somewhere else and I’m going to leave and, and, and job jump. So where we kind of fit into that is that we’re able to find immediate help to get into those, into those practices and immediately make an impact. Also, it makes it possible that what we have seen is morale in the practices that [00:05:00] have brought us in as additional staffing, the morale of the existing practice staff has gone way up because we’re taking away some of the.

Beth LaChance: Some of the tasks that they don’t want to do, the tedious stuff, some of the things that are keeping them on the phone, on the phone all day with insurance providers or insurance insurance companies. And so some of the things that they don’t like about their job, those are the things that we can take over and we can really become you know, we can become an asset to the practice.

Beth LaChance: So. That’s been a really, really cool thing that we’ve kind of seen overall. Initially, some practice people in the practice get really nervous that, oh, we’re going to be, you know, now they’re bringing in someone from the outside. It’s all going to be remote workers and they’re going to get rid of us.

Beth LaChance: And that’s really just not the case. We have not had one practice that has brought us in, in order to let go other people in the practice. It’s really been to enhance their services, to make sure that their staff isn’t overworked or to help the ones that are overworked to really make sure that they, we can take off some of the tasks off their plates, so they can really hone in on the, on on patient [00:06:00] care.

Beth LaChance: So, it’s been it’s, it has completely evolved in such a way that I, I think a lot of practices didn’t anticipate,

Erik Sunset: Yeah. And speaking of that anticipation, you know, as you said, the marketplace for healthcare workers is more and more competitive, you know, practices offering bonuses and better pay. And you just have less of a, of a pool of talent to hire from what’s been

Erik Sunset: sort of a black box to me. Cause I’m a little bit removed from that.

Erik Sunset: I hear the same things from, from our clients and through the years. But what are practices saying? Why is it so tough to retain staff? Why is it so tough to hire? You know, we’d love some kind of, some anecdotes there because a lot of people are scratching their heads. They say, we see the numbers, we see the data it’s happening, but what’s going on?

Beth LaChance: yeah, everyone is everyone. Everyone is scratching their heads. There doesn’t seem to be a real definitive answer, except for there’s just this mass exodus, even if they offer the ability for some people [00:07:00] to continue to work remotely, meaning they were in the practice, but then. It just across the board, staffing has become a very big issue in all industries and most definitely in medicals had the most impact on us.

Beth LaChance: But there’s just no real, we don’t have a real answer as to why it’s happening. I certainly ask anecdotally. From different, you know, from different people that I meet up that I meet up with at different organizations, and we just don’t really have a real answer to it. But everyone does know that they need a solution regardless of whether or not what the answer is.

Beth LaChance: They need a solution to their staffing needs. And so that’s kind of You know, where, where a lot of the conversations end up directing towards. Okay. So what’s the solution to this?

Erik Sunset: And you mentioned that one of the, one of the big value ads that you deliver to medical organizations is removing the cost of time from administrative burdens, just pure admin work. Here at DocBuddy, we’re really big on, on time and more time for life, even. So on the other end [00:08:00] of this, something that probably can be quantified is what’s the cost of that time?

Beth LaChance: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, and so many of us that are, if they’re business owners or are at high level positions in different companies, you start trying to figure out, well, what is my time worth? And where should I be spending my time? And so what we need to do as practice managers and or business owners in our medical practice is to look at that same thing.

Beth LaChance: If you have a high level nurse practitioner or a mid level practitioner that you’re paying 100, 000 a year, why are they doing 10 an hour tasks? So we need to also have that mindset. We have that mindset for ourselves, right? You know, we certainly have that mindset for ourselves. So we need to drill down and look into our business as well.

Beth LaChance: And medical practices are businesses. And when you drill down and you actually look at that, and then you can really come to a solution on, okay, well. Where do we need to be spending our money? We need to be spending our money and trying to get some of those 10 an hour tasks off of some of our, some of the staff members are being paid top dollar.

Beth LaChance: [00:09:00] And, and that’s where you’ll see the bang for your buck. That’s where you’ll really be able to to see the difference and how you’re spending your money in a practice. So your mid level practitioner has billable hours that are direct revenue to our practice. Why are they doing 10 an hour tasks? Your medical assistant could be driving, bringing in more paint, could be bringing in more patients to the rooms and and cleaning off rooms faster and getting patients through just as quickly if they then were on a call trying to figure out an insurance verification for an injectable medication.

Beth LaChance: So, you know, all of those things can drive more revenue into the practice just by utilizing, you know, different ways of looking at your at your business and what time how much time someone is doing. Doing tasks that frankly just don’t drive revenue that could be off, you know, offset by including a medical virtual assistant in the practice.

Erik Sunset: Sure. And sort of a secondary driver there, what you just laid out is fantastic optimizations. You know, don’t have the, the high salaried provider doing. Work that they shouldn’t [00:10:00] be. But I would imagine that with the proper level of staffing through virtual assistance, you’re able to sort of optimize that patient experience, give patients better accessibility, because that’s where healthcare starts is with the encounter, nothing happens before then, but you need to have a visit scheduled to get to that point.

Beth LaChance: Right. Oh, absolutely. Well, and what we are seeing is a change in the market is that patients are demanding more of a white glove service when they call into a practice. They don’t want to get a phone tree that then lands them in a voice mailbox. They want a live person. They want to be able to speak to somebody quickly and figure out, okay, you know, whether it’s a patient, a new patient appointment, the need to make or a cancellation of an appointment with a reschedule, whatever, whatever their issue is, right?

Beth LaChance: Or it’s, or it’s more emergent. They want a more white glove service where they have access. It’s they have access to health care quickly. And so where we kind of fit into that is that in most cases were brought into very, very busy practices that just either [00:11:00] don’t have enough staffing to handle the amount of patients coming in or they’re just so quickly growing.

Beth LaChance: They’re bringing in more practitioners, but they’re not bringing in more admin. They’re not bringing more and more administration. to help out with those with the additional influx of patients coming in. So kind of where we kind of fit into the mix is that adding in that front desk person, we can do that remotely.

Beth LaChance: So you still have your front desk receptionist, you have them there doing the work that they would ordinarily do, but we would be in addition to that, but we’re just doing the work remotely or insurance verifications, prior authorizations. Those mid level practitioners, the nurses, and also your medical assistants shouldn’t be on the phone.

Beth LaChance: That can be something that is delegated to a virtual assistants in the practice that ultimately are kind of taking that off their bucket, getting them done and handing that information directly over through the EMR directly back to the practice. So that they can go ahead and continue on seeing patients as needed.

Beth LaChance: And then they don’t have a full voice mailbox, right? They have time to actually talk, [00:12:00] you know, talk to their patients. So there’s so many different ways that we make such a heavy, heavy impact on the administrative work that happens around patient care has become overwhelming. And in most cases, practices aren’t set up to handle that overwhelming work any longer.

Beth LaChance: And so medical virtual assistants are a great solution.

Erik Sunset: Well, they’re not, the practices aren’t set up to handle that work, but as you look a little bit further down the line, you know, there’s a lot of folks doing a lot of important work to really give patients a true consumer experience. And that’s, that’s not an easy thing to do, but as Every day passes, every month, a year goes by, we get closer to a more consumerized product being healthcare. And that accessibility piece is going to be huge. You will begin to see, at least in my opinion, conjecture, you’ll begin to see practices that don’t pay any attention to patient accessibility sort of die the slow heat death. Where, and there’s a generational aspect to this too. [00:13:00] If I can’t get help right now, I’m never calling back.

Erik Sunset: I’m never going to talk to you again. And I’m never going to be your patient. What do you see

Erik Sunset: from that?

Beth LaChance: Yeah, without question. It’s interesting. I think our parents and our parents parents are extraordinarily patient people. They’ve gotten used to waiting. Our generation and younger, we’re impatient. We’re not going to wait. And therefore, we’re going to find accessibility somewhere else. And that’s where the competition comes in, right?

Beth LaChance: Because now medical practices are competing for patients. They don’t want to lose patients to other practices. And they have to start offering accessibility. And that’s through making sure that either they have enough practitioners. Where they have enough enough help to be able to handle the amount of patient care and patient load that’s coming through their practice.

Beth LaChance: So it’s a demand. I mean, we were, I mean, even with my Children, my God, they send a text and they want an answer immediately. I get a question mark. They send me a text and I don’t respond within a minute. They’re already sending me a question mark. And I’m like, well, I haven’t even had a chance to respond yet, but we all are starting to have that Same mentality, even when we’re [00:14:00] calling into our medical practice, when I’ve got a sore throat and I need to be seen or I’ve been given, you know, my primary care doctor is saying I need to see a pulmonologist.

Beth LaChance: Okay, I call a pulmonology practice, but I can’t get through. So it, the right now, it is being demanded by our practices and they need to find a solution. And the, and the practices that do find a solution. They’re the ones that are, that are going to continue to grow and blossom and hit the mark where patients are going to be really satisfied,

Erik Sunset: And this is again, way out, you know, in conjecture land, just my own little opinion would love to hear your thoughts on this, that you have sort of a spectrum. Now we’ve got the big health system where it’s really attractive to be an employed provider. I don’t have to really think about that. And that’s great.

Erik Sunset: I’m not a provider myself, so I’ll kind of leave my opinion of all that there. But I think that there’s going to be more and more of a market for independent practice with an eye towards patient experience because I hate dealing [00:15:00] with my health system here in South Florida. They’re great, great people, great outcomes, you know. Fortunate

Erik Sunset: to have staff to provide great outcomes, unfortunate I had to go through it. It’s like, how many times am I going to have to call to get a response? This is killing me.

Beth LaChance: Yes, I, you know what? It’s so, it’s so interesting. I just had this conversation last night with a friend actually. Just on, on a personal note, trying to get in to see my regular PCP who has been acquired and as part of a very big health system now, I can’t get in. And so I am contemplating, okay. I’m not going to pay for a personal health care out of pocket.

Beth LaChance: And and so for me, you know, that’s something where I, I can contemplate that, but the reality is everyone is trying, is getting to that, that position where we want that. So yeah, I think more and more there will be especially this younger generation of physicians that are, that are now getting out of medical school and their residency and they’re getting out there to provide.

Beth LaChance: A lot of them are pretty savvy, and they will start their own businesses, and they will [00:16:00] be independent and, but they will cap the number of patients that they will see, which then we will still see that same issue, right, because they may say, okay, well, I’m a primary care doctor, but I’m going to cap my practice at 100, 100 patients, and I will not take in more than 100 patients.

Beth LaChance: Therefore, they can provide that white glove service that they’re expecting to provide, and patients are willing to, and patients are looking to get from them. But in the end, if we don’t have more of them out there, we’re still stuck with the same situation we’re in, unless we’re lucky enough to have one of those providers be ours.

Beth LaChance: So, you know, it’ll be interesting to see the dynamic because as we know, medicine is a business. And as they become part of every practice has become more and more part of private equity or become more and part of a larger health systems, the demand is that they need to see more patients. And with the C with seeing more patients, it’s this awful cycle of, in the end, we won’t, we won’t get the care that we are expecting to see.

Beth LaChance: And especially the personal touch we want to see. [00:17:00] And, and when it comes to our health, so. It’ll be interesting to see how all this plays out over the next, you know, over the next decade, because not everybody can go private equity. Not everybody can be part of a large health system or else we are going to end up in a, in a healthcare system that none of us are going to be happy

Beth LaChance: with.

Erik Sunset: What will be really interesting is if we end up in a, in a truly outcome and a truly value based model, how does that play nice with private equity? Because PE and medicine is really easy with, when it’s a patient production line, but That

Erik Sunset: doesn’t seem to be, won’t be the case for forever, I guess I’m

Beth LaChance: Right. Yep. Especially, yeah, especially if you’re in, in in specialties that are, difficult diseases to treat, and then you’re only looking at patient outcomes. Yeah, that’ll, that, that will be very, very interesting to

Beth LaChance: see.

Erik Sunset: I’ll be a very engaged spectator there. Very

Erik Sunset: engaged.

Beth LaChance: Failure.

Erik Sunset: And it’s it’s apparent that medical organizations need to embrace technology. I very much think that [00:18:00] virtual assistants are a part of that, that potential technology stack. Healthcare lags so far behind in adoption. We’re doing better. We’re doing better,

Erik Sunset: but there’s still a lot of ground to be made up. What are some of the biggest factors you’re seeing for health care organizations to adopt tech now this year, 2024, not the plan for it. What do you think needs to happen right now?

Beth LaChance: I think, well, nothing moves really fast in medicine, right? I mean, let’s be real. Like, there’s, it takes time for budgets. It takes time to, for, you know, to get everything approved through the committees and there’s a lot of red tape, right? The smaller, smaller practices, they can make decisions on their own where they will struggle and continue to struggle to make immediate strides in technology is the cost.

Beth LaChance: You know, that, that is always a really big factor. So they probably have more autonomy to be able to do so, but don’t have the money to be able to do it. Whereas some of the larger practices, hospital systems, they do, they do have [00:19:00] they do have the ability to spend the money possibly, but not necessarily want to make that jump.

Beth LaChance: And so there’s so much fast technology. There’s so much happening in this field right now. with technology, with AI and everything else that’s being flooded into this market. And I think everyone’s just kind of pushing the brakes for now, excited about what’s to come, but kind of pumping the brakes. But I think in order to get people to really move now, it has to be a mindset.

Beth LaChance: You know, I, COVID made it possible so that they had no, the medical industry had no choice. They were put in a position of having no choice. They had to make it, had to make a decision, had to make a change. But right now with technology, You know, if we don’t have some other really big factor, it’s going to take some time before there’s a, there’s really big movements and shifts in technology.

Beth LaChance: But it’ll, again, that’ll be really interesting to watch, especially with the amount of AI that’s coming out and technology across other industries, but medicine, because of HIPAA, PHI and other factors, it’s, you know, it’s, [00:20:00] you know, we’ll see how quickly we embrace it.

Erik Sunset: I am. I’m a little bit of a skeptic for now in in so called AI large language models, you know, is that really AI? You don’t have to debate that right here, right now. But you see the big EHR vendors moving to integrate that into their products. To, to what end though, and I’m happy to put you on a soapbox, you can give a more political reserved answer, but what’s going to take more time? A physician generating text using a large language model and chat GPT is the most famous of those. So physician generating text with an LLM and then going to have to proof it, edit it, be sure it’s accurate. Be sure that the medical record from which that LLM is drawing is accurate because there’s no guarantees

Erik Sunset: there or just doing it themselves.

Beth LaChance: Yeah, that that’s where it all will. The proof will be in the pudding. I think for right now where we do see the huge advantages will be [00:21:00] in in diagnosis. That’s where we’ll see where it will, but when it comes to day to day patient care, direct patient care, meaning conversations between a, a practitioner and a patient or a practice and a patient, I still, I just, I like you, I just can’t quite seem to make the connection yet where we will end up in a place where that will really be fully integrated.

Beth LaChance: But when it comes to the small, minor things of, of diagnosis that can be detected through, through AI. is fascinating. And that’s where I really could see. Absolutely. I think some a lot, a lot of people in medicine will gravitate to that and push hard for that because they’ll be able to text detect things sooner than they would have would have otherwise.

Beth LaChance: So that I can see. But when it comes to the human touch, when it comes to patient direct patient care, you know, not reading a scan, but actually having a conversation with a patient, whether it’s through text with us through email or through a conversation, Jen. We are still going to demand that, that, that human touch, [00:22:00] we’re going to demand it still.

Beth LaChance: So, I don’t see us gravitating too quickly in that direction. Sure, can we use a AI phone tree? Yep, absolutely. To get a patient to talk to a live person in the right department. Yes, absolutely. But when it comes to actually delivering results to a patient or having a conversation with the patient over, you know, what symptoms are you having right now?

Beth LaChance: And then kind of diving into more of patient care. I just that’s where the reservations really go up really big for me as a consumer, as a patient, not even just as someone in the industry. So it’ll be interesting to see how all of this kind of plays its way out. But I would be excited if, you know, if it came to you.

Beth LaChance: You know, you know, reading my mammogram every year and all of that is fed through AI and they’re able to detect things that would never be be able to be detectable at an earlier earlier stage that I’m excited about. I think that we, you know, lung cancers, all kinds of things blood lab results can be detected and early diagnosis of things.

Beth LaChance: That’s the [00:23:00] exciting part of the direction we’re headed. But again, it’s that human touch. When I call a medical practice, I want to talk to a person. Like in the end, I don’t want it to be an AI that sounds like a person. I want a real life person that has empathy and understanding and can squeeze me in at 1235 at the end of lunch when needed, right?

Beth LaChance: I mean, that’s the conversation I want to be able to have. And I know that everyone else out there as patients would, would expect and demand the same thing.

Erik Sunset: You and I see it really similarly and very well put too. You got on the soapbox, but didn’t say anything crazy. The diagnostic work for AI I think is a slam dunk. There’s a lot of really smart folks building things like that. The, unfortunately the press is around chat GPT and large language models, which just.

Erik Sunset: Seems like a hammer in search of a nail. Today, things can change quickly. So I reserve the right to change my mind.

Beth LaChance: Well, if you were back at FSU and I was back at University of Florida, I got, I I, if, if we had chat, GTP, like [00:24:00] we would be on there creating our thesis, our essays, and a heartbeat.

Beth LaChance: Right.

Erik Sunset: Oh, no question.

Beth LaChance: world, yeah. For you and me, we, we can’t be doing that now I.

Erik Sunset: Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t have that option back in college. I would have taken the easy way

Erik Sunset: out for

Erik Sunset: sure.

Beth LaChance: you’d be ill equipped for what we’re dealing with today.

Erik Sunset: Too true. Too funny. Well, Beth, as we’ve kind of worked our way through our conversation around all the value adds that virtual assistants can deliver, all of the issues practices need to face with patient experience and accessibility. What else comes to mind?

Beth LaChance: Yeah, I think inevitably just like we were just talking about the evolution of our practices, we, you know, practice managers and directors of practices just need to be very, very well aware of the morale of their staff, the direction of health care. You know, we’re seeing more patients and getting less money from insurance companies.

Beth LaChance: So, you know, what is, what is the solution, right? And [00:25:00] in the end, there are, there’s a lot of options out there for solutions, but most definitely just because I’m in this industry of medical virtual assistance, I know what an impact we make in everyday practices. And, and it’s incredible. The, the commendations we get back from our practices, from our hospitals and from our, you know, points of contacts within those facilities, but then also from our patients is pretty spectacular.

Beth LaChance: So I know that we are on the right path. We’re doing the right things. And we’re making a huge impact. So, you know, I’m excited about the continued future of utilizing remote staff, especially medical virtual assistance from from our company. And I just think that the sky is the limit at this point of where, you know, there’s still a lot of practices out there that have not even thought about utilizing any type of medical virtual assistant and there is so much room for it and it’s budget friendly and it’s possible.

Beth LaChance: So, I mean, that it’s just, it’s exciting times for this industry for sure.

Erik Sunset: Well, and as we kind of close out here, where [00:26:00] would you want listeners to be able to connect with you on social media, your website, where can, where can people get more Beth,

Beth LaChance: Yeah, absolutely. So, so exciting. So, head to our website. That is the absolute best place to go. So, it’s globalmedicalva. com. Again, that’s globalmedicalva. com. There’s so much information on our website. And then there also is a You can click to create a strategy session with someone in our, in our admissions department to have a strategy session to discuss how our services work.

Beth LaChance: And then kind of talk about your pain points and your practice and where we think we could possibly fit in with that. That is the best place to start. And then there’s a whole bunch of links and different places that you’d be able to find out some more information directly off of our website.

Erik Sunset: we’ll be sure that’s linked in the show notes and with that, we can close it out, Beth, on behalf of the entire DocBuddy team. Thank you for listening, Beth. Thank you for joining us and

Erik Sunset: be sure.

Beth LaChance: so

Erik Sunset: sure that you’re subscribed on Apple YouTube. So that you can always hear and watch the [00:27:00] newest episodes of the DocBuddy journal until next time I’m your host, Erik, we’ll talk soon.