Practices lose measurable staff and provider hours to phone coverage gaps, prior-authorization paperwork, and front-desk turnover. Here is what published industry data says about where that time and cost goes, and where a trained remote support model can reasonably be expected to help.
These are third-party industry benchmarks, not a promise, guarantee, or claim about results for any specific practice. Your practice's actual costs, call volume, and administrative burden may be higher or lower. Sources cited below.
Prior authorization alone consumes an average of 13 hours of combined physician and staff time every week, according to the American Medical Association's 2025 Prior Authorization Physician Survey - and 40% of physicians surveyed employ staff dedicated exclusively to that task. That is before counting scheduling, insurance verification, referral follow-up, and inbox management. A trained Virtual Medical Assistant is scoped and trained specifically to take defined pieces of that administrative load off your team's plate, under the access and permissions you approve. Payers still make final authorization decisions in every case.
Administrative tasks that currently compete with patient care move to a team trained specifically for that scope.
Trained backup for calls, scheduling, and inbox management while your practice is open, without adding fixed in-house headcount.
A defined scope of work replaces the variable cost of overtime, temp staffing, and front-desk turnover and retraining.
Onboarding is scoped around your systems - not a multi-week search-and-train cycle for a new employee.
| Area | Typical In-House-Only Reality | With Virtual Medical Assistant Support |
|---|---|---|
| Front-desk coverage during peak call times | Limited to available in-house staff and their schedules | Trained remote support scoped to your defined call and scheduling workflows |
| Prior-authorization follow-up | Often absorbed by already-stretched front-desk or clinical staff | Handled within a defined administrative scope, with payers still making final decisions |
| Staffing cost exposure | Base pay plus payroll taxes, benefits, overtime, and turnover/retraining costs | A defined, scoped support arrangement instead of an added fixed headcount |
| Ramp time for new support | Typically weeks of hiring, interviewing, and training | Onboarding follows a defined five-stage process - see How Onboarding Works |
| After-hours or overflow messages | Risk of messages sitting until the next business day | Task and inbox management support scoped to your approved hours and workflows |
It is worth it when the hours it frees up cost you more than the service does. A simple test: take the weekly hours your team spends on calls, scheduling, intake, insurance checks, prior authorization paperwork and referral follow-up, multiply by your loaded hourly cost, and compare that with the virtual assistant rate for the same hours. Our staffing starts from $9.99 per hour, based on workload. A complimentary workflow assessment gives you the numbers for your own practice.
No. The figures on this page are third-party industry benchmarks, not a guarantee for any individual practice. Actual results depend on your current staffing, call volume, payer mix and which services you use.
The prior-authorization figures are from the American Medical Association's 2025 Prior Authorization Physician Survey. The front-desk pay range is from Payscale's 2026 compensation data. Neither source is affiliated with Virtual Medical Assistant or Mednex Group LLC.
It can reduce how much in-house admin work you need, but that is your decision. We do not start by removing people. With your practice administrator, we map each workflow, then move the repetitive work (confirmation calls, intake paperwork, insurance checks, recall lists, referral follow-up) to a trained virtual assistant. If you have hired more admin staff than the workload needs, this shows you where the hours are going and lets you scale your team up or down. Clinical staff and clinical decisions always stay with your providers.
Yes. During the complimentary workflow assessment our trained team reviews how work moves through your practice, then recommends what should stay manual, what a virtual assistant can handle and what can be automated, such as appointment reminders, intake prompts, recall triggers and task routing. Automation covers administrative steps only. Your team approves every workflow before it goes live.
Start with a complimentary workflow assessment, a 20 to 30 minute call that needs no patient information. Then we agree on scope and system access, train your assistant on your scripts and workflows, and go live with clear escalation rules. A 30-day review follows. See how onboarding works or use the Book Consultation button on this page.
Many practices are live within 12 hours of confirming their scope and access agreement. That is a typical timeline, not a guarantee, because it depends on scope, access, training and workflow complexity. Results show up first in call coverage, scheduling and follow-up. We suggest tracking a few numbers for the first 90 days. See how onboarding works for the full process.
Our staffing starts from $9.99 per hour. The final rate depends on workload, hours, specialty, language needs and scope, and we confirm it after the workflow assessment.
No. This page covers administrative and scribe-support ROI: calls, scheduling, intake, insurance and benefits checks, prior authorization paperwork, referral follow-up and documentation support. Medical billing, coding, claims and revenue-cycle management are measured differently (collections, days in accounts receivable, denial rate) and are handled by a separate Mednex Group brand, Practice Revenue Partners. The two connect: errors at the front desk, such as wrong insurance details or a missed authorization, often turn into denials later, so fixing the administrative side first can make billing results easier to improve.
Practices usually see the quickest return in repeatable, high-volume work: appointment confirmations and reminders, insurance and benefits checks before visits, new-patient intake, prior authorization paperwork and referral follow-up. These tasks are rule-based and easy to review, so you can judge the quality within the first week.
Sources: American Medical Association, 2025 Prior Authorization Physician Survey. Payscale, Medical Front Desk Receptionist - Hourly Rate, 2026 data.
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