Virtual assistants: Hype or help?

Have you heard of virtual assistants and wondered what they could do for your clinic? Or maybe you need some type of help but not sure where to look? If so, this episode is the place for you!

On this week’s episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomes Kelly Cronin, MBA, BS, CVT, PHR, VTS (ECC), VSPN, to the show to take a deep dive into virtual assistants to see if they are really worth the hype in veterinary clinics through a breakdown of what they are, what they can do, and more.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Let's back up and just talk about the basic vocabulary. What are veterinary virtual assistants?

Kelly Cronin, MBA, BS, CVT, PHR, VTS (ECC), VSPN: Absolutely anything that you can imagine doing virtually, our virtual assistants can do. Honestly, it's one of those situations where now I've seen them in a couple different roles. I've seen virtual assistants in scribing roles, like you mentioned. I've seen them in call center roles. I've seen them do client callbacks. I've seen them do organization of medical notes, you name it, they can do it.

Honestly, we've had some virtual assistants at this point, who have even helped stand up de novo practices. So really brand new practices help them create everything from templates to PIMS to putting in charges to applying for business licenses. Crazy stuff.

Christman: So they're physically not there at the practice, just so that we are all aware about this, right?

Cronin: Right. They are online. So when we're thinking about a virtual assistant, we're really thinking about someone who is joining virtually either through a phone call, through a message channel like Slack or teams, or something along those lines, through a video chat, like teams or Zoom any number of ways. But they're not physically in the practice.

Want to hear more of the conversation? You can listen to the whole thing at the top of this article, or where ever you listen to podcasts.