In this episode of the My DPC Story Podcast, host Dr. Maryal Concepcion welcomes back Justin Lam, founder and CEO of Cool Blue VA, to discuss the benefits of hiring medical virtual assistants for Direct Primary Care (DPC) practices. They dive into key questions DPC physicians face: when is the right time to hire a VA, and how do you efficiently hire and onboard one? Justin shares actionable exercises, such as time and task audits and skills gap analysis, to help doctors identify tasks they can delegate and areas requiring support. The episode highlights the cost-effectiveness of virtual assistants compared to traditional hires, and details how VAs can boost practice efficiency, revenue, patient satisfaction, and physician work-life balance.
Listeners also learn about Cool Blue VA’s free practice analysis and two-week 80 hours FREE trial, making it easy to experience the value of a medical virtual assistant risk-free. Perfect for DPC physicians exploring ways to streamline workflow, reduce burnout, and grow their practices. For your copy of Cool Blue VA's List of 90+ jobs a medical VA can do and more, stop by and say HI to Justin at the upcoming DPC Summit or visit them at coolblueva.com/2weeks to start a free trial!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Maryal Concepcion MD (00:04):
Direct Primary care is an innovative
alternative path toinsurance-driven healthcare.
Typically, a patient pays theirdoctor a low monthly membership
and in return builds a lastingrelationship with their doctor
and has their doctor availableat their fingertip.
Welcome to the My DPC Storypodcast, where each week you
(00:26):
will hear the ever so relatablestories shared by physicians who
have chosen to practice medicinein their individual communities
through the direct primary caremodel.
I'm your host, MarielleConception.
Family, physician, DPC, owner,and former fee for service.
Doctor, I hope you enjoy today'sepisode and come away feeling
inspired about the future ofpatient care direct primary
(00:49):
care.
Well, welcome everybody.
I am so excited to be joined byJustin Lamb again on the
podcast, we are going to betalking about a super hot topic
that we are going to be buzzingabout at the upcoming DPC
summit, where you'll get to meetJustin and you'll get to meet
(01:10):
one of the VAs that we'll betalking about today.
So cool.
Blue VA is an amazing company.
They have been so supportive ofthe DPC movement, and they have
been working continuously toimprove how they are pairing
virtual assistants, medicalvirtual assistants with DPC
physicians to help DPC practicesthrive.
(01:31):
So Justin, thank you so much forjoining us today.
Justin Lam (01:34):
Thanks for having me, doctor.
So happy to be here.
We had a great conversation lasttime, so I was super excited to
come back.
Yeah, I just love the DPCcommunity.
I've been to a lot of DPCconventions now, and so I just
wanted to continue to supportthis vibrant community and, this
movement really.
Maryal Concepcion M (01:51):
Absolutely.
And if you have not listened tothe episode where Justin and his
sister, Dr.
Carrie Lamb came onto thepodcast, please make sure you
check out the link in the blogaccompanying this podcast
because it's so important to notonly recognize cold blue's work
in helping the DBC movement, butalso recognizing that from the
(02:12):
story that they talked aboutbefore they.
Stand by their word because theyuse medical VAs all the time in
Dr.
Lamb's practice.
And their family is also usingmedical virtual assistants
because they have quite the, themedical community amongst the
lamb family.
So this is coming from not onlypassion to help the community,
(02:33):
but experience.
that's why I wanna make surethat if you haven't listened to
their previous conversation,take a listen to that.
But today we're going to betalking about the two big
questions when it comes tohiring a virtual assistant in
the DPC space.
And those two questions are,well, how do I know the time is
right to hire a va?
And then the second set ofquestions is going to be
(02:56):
revolving around how to actuallyhire the va.
Once you recognize that, prettymuch everybody needs a va.
So, yeah.
So with that, let's get startedon today's webinar, everything
you need to know about hiringand how you can find great help
for a fraction of the cost.
So, Justin, take us away.
Justin Lam (03:13):
Yeah, absolutely, Dr.
Mario.
And the things I'm gonna betalking about do pertain to a
virtual assistant, to a va, butreally once, what do you learn
from this?
You can really take and apply toanything really for any hiring
practice as well.
uh, I've talked to a lot of HRpeople I've hired and fired,
thousands upon thousands ofpeople now, so these are all
(03:36):
things that I've learnedthroughout the years to really
fine tune and to give you guysreally these gems here.
And if you guys are justlistening, there are slides, but
you know, we'll, we'll talk youthrough it and whatnot, so it
should be all right.
once again, I'm Justin Lamb.
I was the CO and CMO of Dr.
Lamb Coaching.
And then as Dr.
Marielle mentioned, I was alsothe CEO of Lamb Clinic, along
(03:57):
with my sister, Dr.
Carrie and Dr.
Jeremy Lamb.
And that's when we startedutilizing virtual assistance.
Really blew, blew up the clinic.
So then I came out and foundedCool Blue va, which I'm the CEO
and founder of that.
But really the core issue thatwhat we're talking about Dr.
Maria, right, is when and how doyou know what to hire a va?
(04:20):
And really the core of that iswhat is the most valuable asset
in your practice?
Or if you haven't opened apractice yet, what do you think
is the most valuable asset inyour practice here?
And really the answer to that isthat it's you, the doctor,
right?
Because there's only one doctor.
In the practice, indirectprimary care, unless you hire
(04:41):
somebody else.
But when you first open it up,really there's only you.
And so your time, you're theonly doctor in the practice.
You only have eight hours in aday, right?
Where you can see patients.
And that's really, a ratelimiting step, right?
That's what is limiting.
How fast you can grow really isyour time to do that, and the
second thing is your knowledge,right?
(05:02):
You're the only person in yourpractice who went to school to
be a doctor, and nobody else hasthat knowledge that they can
pass on to their patients,right?
So these two assets, they haveto be protected at all costs.
Because like I said, they're therate limiting step for you and
how fast your practice can growand how fast you guys can scale.
(05:23):
And it's unfortunate nowadays,we're finding that more and more
doctors are spending a lot oftime on paperwork.
There's been a couple studiesdone that, over the years people
are spending 11 to 22% more timeon documentation on their EHR.
On average, people are spendingtwo hours, two hours of clerical
work for each hour they'respending face-to-face with their
(05:46):
patients.
Right?
So that's really unfortunate.
That's a lot of your time that'sspending, that you could be
seeing patients generatingrevenue, taking care of people,
using your doctoring skills,which are actually just spending
on admin work, busy work,whatnot, not, seeing patients.
Maryal Concepcion MD (06:03):
These data points are so relatable to
probably everybody out there whohas gone through residency, who
has gone through a corporatepractice.
Because when we think about,even with the advent of ai, with
the advent of how many more,back office people, can we hire
or can the corporation hire.
It's still so ridiculous howmuch pajama time is spent on
(06:28):
charting.
Mm-hmm.
And so I I go back to my commentand my joke about who needs a
va, probably everybody.
And I, I love though that youclarified it.
These skills could be used for aperson who's in person or a
virtual assistant, but when itcomes to your time that you are
spending and not getting paidfor, typically this is where in
(06:49):
DPC it matters more because yourtime is definitely related more
so to your overhead then inunemployed role.
So I really love that youhighlighted the, ugly reality of
pajama time.
Mm-hmm.
Work that, again, most of usnever got paid for, so the thing
I love about this conversationwhere it's different than the
(07:10):
last conversation with Dr.
Carrie Lamb is that we're gonnaget a little interactive here.
So if you are driving, if youare mowing your lawn definitely,
take a listen, but keep in mindthat you can press pause and you
can rewind and you can presspause when you're in a place
where you can brainstorm andwrite things down.
But Justin's going to help us gothrough the time and task audit
(07:31):
first because if you are aperson out there who is saying I
don't think I need a VA though.
I think I can manage my time,pretty well this time and task
audit is pretty slick atactually breaking down in black
and white what you are doingwith your time.
So Justin, tell us about thisfirst exercise.
Justin Lam (07:50):
Just a little spoiler alert, if you guys
really don't want to do any ofthese exercises.
There'll be something at the endof the podcast here that will
really give you the shortcut onhow to do all this and how we
can take care of all this foryou here.
But the first exercise, Dr.
Marilyn, like you mentioned, isa time and task audit.
Really what you wanna do is.
(08:10):
Write down on a piece of paperthe top five tasks that you do
and what they are and how muchtime you spend on them a week
here, and it could be anythinglike, doctor, you say, pajama
time, like charting, if you'reanswering patient emails or
phone calls, right?
Or if you're busy ordering labsor if it's like social media and
(08:33):
you're just on social media,like posting and creating
content, it could be anythingthat you're taking your time on
and you wouldn't really, reallylist it down.
Number one, number two, numberthree, number four, number five.
I'm sure there's a hundredthings that you could list down,
right?
But just start with the top fivethat you really spend the most
time on.
And, take your time and do that.
(08:54):
Once you have those five, andyou can pause this at any time,
and see, but once you have thoselisted down, then you really
want to circle the tasks thatyou can delegate to a virtual
assistant.
And realistically, when you'rethinking about that, is anything
that you're doing on a computerthat can be delegated out.
The only thing that can bedelegated out is if you're
(09:17):
seeing a patient in person,those are the things that you
cannot delegate out.
But anything that's on a pc, ona laptop, on your phone, on your
computer, you can pretty muchdelegate that out to a virtual
assistant or to a person, right?
So circle those tasks and keepthose in mind.
'cause we'll be coming back tothem in a little bit here.
And just to bring the point homeagain, here's some other data
(09:38):
points that we had.
Physicians are spending 20% oftheir time indirect clinical
face-to-face time with patientsonly, and about almost 50% of
the time, 49% to be exact, doingEHR and desk work.
And even when they're in thepatient room, 52% of the time is
just interacting with thepatient.
And 37% of the time they'restill on a computer, typing in
(10:02):
and doing desk work in the roomwith the patient right there,
right?
So that's the unfortunatereality that we live in right
now.
And that's all stuff that's on acomputer that you could, hand
off to somebody to really helpyou out.
Maryal Concepcion MD (10:15):
And I will say here that if you're
listening out there and you'relike, but I haven't yet started
my DPC or my DPC is literally aweek old and I have zero to 10
patients, and you're like, Idon't even know what my tasks
are.
What I would say is that youhave an entire community of
people who have practicessimilar to yours in terms of you
(10:35):
might have a practice next dooror an hour and a half away that
has, somebody else who is abreadwinner in their family or
is a parent or is a caregiver,and you.
Can talk to these people becausewe are all position
entrepreneurs and we have allbeen there.
We have all been there on dayone.
So when it comes to, if youdon't necessarily know what your
(10:58):
top five tasks are, one, realizethat you can ask other people to
get ideas of what their tasksare.
And two, your top five canalways change.
So this is a nimbleconversation.
You can come back to it in amonth after you open your DPC in
two years after you open yourDPC and you're ready to hire
another staff person so Justinhere, let's keep going in terms
(11:20):
of why a doctor comes to you tostart asking Colier.
Can you please help me withanswering the question?
Do I need to hire a virtualassistant?
Justin Lam (11:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
And just to add onto a littlebit what you said, if you don't
have top five things that aretaking the most amount of time,
you could just write down thetop five things that you hate
doing, and those are things thatyou can hand off as well, right?
The things you just dread doingon a daily basis.
Yeah,
Maryal Concepcion MD (11:49):
great advice.
Justin Lam (11:51):
Yeah.
But moving on to why you need tohire really the first thing is
to extend your capability,right?
So you can only see so manypatients or return so many calls
in a day.
Like I said, your time is avaluable asset.
So in order to extend thatcapability, you need support
staff to help you, right, helpyou call patients, help you
(12:13):
return emails, help you bookappointments, all that stuff is
time that you could be seeing apatient generating income,
taking care of people.
So really extending yourcapabilities is huge.
Protecting your time.
Like I said, anything that adoctor is to do should be really
only things that a doctor cando.
So you can really focus on yourstrengths, right?
(12:36):
That's huge.
Third thing, really enhance thepatient experience.
DPC, medical practice, we don'treally think about it, but it is
a service industry.
Really, we're all about customerservice.
We're all about patientsatisfaction.
And so you wanna make sure thatthe patients that you're seeing
have a great experience.
'cause then they're gonna keepcoming back to you.
(12:57):
Right?
So timely follow ups, fastresponse times to emails, to
texts, smooth processes.
This all improves the patientsatisfaction.
That all makes the patient wantto come back, and see.
'cause that's super important inthe service industry, in the
medical industry, and thenincreased revenue potential,
(13:17):
right?
You wanna spend more time onrevenue generating activities.
You wanna spend less time onpaperwork here.
So anything that's gonnagenerate revenue you should be
doing or you should be hiringsomebody to do.
And anything that's just moreadministrative, busy work, grunt
work, I don't like to say that,but somebody has to do it.
Right.
A doctor, let's say makes like$150 an hour.
(13:40):
Like you don't need to payyourself$150 an hour to do
something that costs$10 an hourto do.
Right.
And it's just not efficient.
So you should be doing stuffthat generates the revenue.
Mm-hmm.
And to reduce burnout, I'm surea lot of DPC doctors have
already experienced this.
That's why they left, working athospitals, working at
corporations and whatnot.
(14:02):
'cause they want to have thatwork life balance.
They want to use their medicaldegree to help the community
out, help patients out andreally do what they want to
medical school for.
And then you guys didn't go tomedical school to.
Do paperwork, right?
To learn how to market right?
That's not really what you wentto medical school for.
So find people hire people thatare gonna be great at doing that
(14:25):
for you so you can once againfocus on doing what you love,
what you're passionate about,and then that's gonna reduce
burnout.
Now you know why you wanna hirepeople.
So when is the right time tohire?
As Dr.
Marielle mentioned, there's runsa gamut of DPC doctors, people
who have been established for along time, people who are just
starting out, people who arejust thinking about starting
(14:47):
out.
So when is the right time tohire?
And the first thing is there's alot of skills that you need as,
as business owner, You need tohave sales skills.
You need to have customerservice, legal, accounting,
medical mark, admin, marketing,it, web, website design, right?
Operations, human resources,this's, just naming a few skills
(15:08):
here.
So you, chances are you'reprobably already hiring somebody
to do some of this stuff andsome of the stuff that you're
taking on, which you may just bekind of figuring out how to do
on the fly or something, hiresomebody who has the skills
really to make life easy foryourself,
Maryal Concepcion MD (15:23):
But I think this is so important to
recognize like.
When you're a physicianentrepreneur and you may be
joining a clinic that's alreadyopen, but still these are the
things that are involved in aservice business, like you said.
And so it's really important torecognize that not only are
these skills going to be in aservice business to what extent
that's gonna be to determined bythe type of practice you are in.
(15:46):
But when it comes to figuringout where your skills are strong
and where your skills can behelped by other people who have
stronger skills in these areasthat you talked about.
Justin's going to be walking usthrough our second exercise.
So get ready.
We're gonna have our secondexercise focusing on where are
your skills and where is the gapbetween the skills that you have
(16:08):
and the person who can help outwith their training and their
expertise.
Justin Lam (16:12):
And that's where the skills gap exercise comes in, so
what you really want to do forthis next exercise.
Is list the skills that youcurrently have as a business
owner, for example, you're greatat being a doctor, If you worked
in hospital, you learned how totake care of patients, you have
great customer service andwhatnot.
Or you have a friend or yourspouse or significant other who
(16:36):
has a background in legal orsomething, or accounting.
Those are skills that you kindof have here.
So list the skills that youhave.
Those are skills that you don'tneed to hire for, right?
So you are pretty confident andcomfortable in those skills.
on the opposite side of that isskills that you don't have.
Like I said, everybody went toschool to be a doctor.
Not everybody went to school tobe a business owner, an
(16:57):
entrepreneur, right?
So there's skills that peoplelack.
So list down all the skills thatyou feel like you need help with
that could be improved on, thatyou're not quite sure on what to
do with in those areas here.
And those are really gonna bethe skills that you need to hire
for, right?
That's what you need the virtualassistant for to fill in those
(17:18):
gaps for you.
so now you know what skills.
That you need for to hiresomebody.
The other thing is when youdon't have time I always keep
coming back to time.
I always keep harping on that.
Right.
Dr.
Mariel.
'cause I mean, that's the onefinite resource that you know,
is, is the same for everybody.
There's only 24 hours in a day.
(17:38):
It doesn't matter if you're ElonMusk, it doesn't matter if
you're Dr.
Marriott, doesn't matter ifyou're me.
There's only 24 hours in a day.
You can only do so much.
So you only have this fixedamount of time to do everything
that you need to do.
And starting a business, is noteasy.
That's there's so much that youhave to do and there's only so
many hours in a day.
(17:59):
And that's especially true ifyou're also like juggling your
current job mm-hmm.
While trying to start your DPCthat basically cuts your time in
half or into a quarter orwhatever it is to really get
your, your practice up andrunning.
And so even if you're juststarting out, it's very
beneficial to hire somebody toget you that help.
(18:20):
And the last thing is you don'thave the energy to hire or you
don't have the energy to do anyof the work.
You have the time, but you'reburnt out.
Really.
Your health is the mostimportant thing as well, So if
you don't have the energy to, tohire, that's very important.
You need to get people to helpyou out.
Everybody thinks they can handlemore.
I find that to be true formyself as well.
(18:43):
We wanna take on becausedoctors.
A very responsible individual.
As you guys went through medicalschool, you guys studied, burned
the mid idle.
You guys worked 80 hours a week,you guys worked a hundred hours
a week.
So, you guys are capable of somuch.
But sometimes, that leads to theburnout.
That leads to just overwhelmingyourself and taking too much on,
(19:05):
and then things start to fallthrough the gaps, whether it's
patient care or whether it'ssomething else even.
And eventually something startsto fall through the cracks.
I always say hire early insteadof hiring late.
When your plate is at 50%, youshould hire somebody already.
'cause that place stacks up veryquickly, right?
And so you always wanna makesure you're handing off stuff as
(19:26):
quickly as possible.
Getting help as quickly aspossible to really, help
yourself out, help your practiceout, help your patients out.
Maryal Concepcion MD (19:34):
Yeah, great, great point.
And this is, this is going backto hashtag first world problems
when your DPC is growing andyou're like, oh my goodness, I
now have multiple patients toonboard and I have multiple
patients to get records for orto, to call CVS for vaccines,
for whatever.
I absolutely agree that thingsjust stack up and then you don't
(19:57):
even realize that the, you'regonna get a fire hose pretty
soon in a lot of cases.
Justin.
I will say that the skills thatyou listed, it might be
intimidating for some of thelisteners out there because
things like sales and legal andwebsite design, these are things
that, when we go to medicalschool, nowhere in our essays do
they ask us like, where are youand your level of being able to
(20:19):
do all of these skills that youjust mentioned?
now that we've talked about how,time is, is not infinite.
We all wish it could be infinitesometimes, but definitely when
you're looking for how to.
Maintain a service business thatis going to have, quick response
time, quality response time,quality, customer service and
(20:40):
all of the physicians andentrepreneur hats that we wear.
It is so important to keep inmind that if you are struggling
for your own time management.
If your DPC is encroaching onyour time that you're spending
with family things that youdidn't like I, I really like how
you said, you know, when you're50% full, think about hiring
(21:03):
before the, the plate stack toohigh.
If you are saying, Hey, I, I cando things like QuickBooks, but
it does not bring me joy.
If the energy that you'reexperiencing after doing all of
these tasks in your DPC isdraining, then the next question
comes and like we talked aboutin the very beginning the next
question is really how do you goabout hiring someone to help?
(21:25):
So, tell us about how one goesabout hiring a virtual
assistant, especially bypartnering with Cole Blue va.
Justin Lam (21:32):
Absolutely.
So yeah, we'll go through somebest practices for hiring staff.
Number one, you wanna write aclear job description of what
you expect for your virtualassistant to do or for your
staff to do.
So we're gonna have clear,defined responsibilities,
expectations, what tools they'regonna use, and what the outcomes
(21:54):
you expect are, and that leadsus into our third exercise.
And once again, spoiler, if youdon't want to do any of these
exercises, I'll just tell youright now, you can give us a
call and we'll do it for you forfree.
So, if you don't want to do theexercise, that's absolutely
fine, but I find it's justbeneficial to kind of work
through it, so you understandwhat you're getting into, what
you need and what your, whatyour business really needs.
(22:16):
Right?
And Dr.
Mario mentioned earlier, theseare good things to do.
On an ongoing basis really tokind of get a pulse, get a check
on the health of your practiceand how you are doing and how
you feel like your practice isdoing.
So these are great things to doon an ongoing basis.
Right now, we've alreadyidentified in first exercise
(22:37):
things that take up the mosttime, and what the tasks as a
result you should be delegating'cause they take up so much
time.
And then in our second exercise,we already identified what
skills that you lack or you needsupport with, right?
So, all of that.
Then you can turn into basicallyyour job description and what
(22:57):
you want to hire for.
So what's the job title that youhave, what you need help with,
right?
What kind of support do youneed?
That's the first thing you wannawrite down.
And the second thing is thesummary of the role based on the
top three tasks, top five tasksyou circle for delegation.
What's the main goal?
For this person, right?
(23:19):
And also another tool, like youcould put all this into chat,
GBT as well, and they'll spitout a great job description for
you as well.
And those, get you somethingreally solid as well.
So, AI is amazing to help youout too, right?
Key responsibilities is the nextthing that you want to do.
So, once again, from yourdelegation list that you, you
(23:40):
that you wrote on Exercise One,write down what the expectations
are and what you're gonna bedoing.
Next thing you wanna have isrequired tools and software,
right?
What you're gonna be using,whether you're using Jane or
Hint or you're on.
What, phone service you'reusing.
Make sure that they know whatyou're using, so that they can
(24:00):
be trained in those tasks or ifthey're familiar with it, even
better, right?
So what are the skills that theyneed and whether they're the
qualifications that they need,that's the next thing that you
want to do.
What kind of traits orexperience would make someone
thrive in this role?
So, for example, they're verydetail oriented, or they need to
know medical terminology ifthey're gonna be a scribe,
(24:22):
right?
Or they can be fluent inEnglish, or if you need them to
speak Spanish, you mean?
Or Spanish speaking community.
Those are things that you wannawrite down.
And what are the hours thatthey're gonna be working Monday
to Friday, eight to 12, one tofive.
What's gonna be on going on asfar as that goes?
How should they report to youand what the expectations are
(24:42):
for their job as well.
The more you delineate and haveclear expectations, the more.
It gonna be easier to worktogether with the person that
you do hire, right?
So, and once again, if you don'twanna do any of that, like I
said, just give us a call at KBlue Va and we'll be happy to
help you out with all of thoseexercises.
(25:03):
We do a three practice analysisthat basically it's about 30
minutes we really dive into yourpractice, or if you're thinking
about hi, starting up apractice, we dive into what is
involved with all of that.
We'll go through all thoseexercises with you and we'll
really, fine tune and pinpointwhat your needs are, what you
need help with, and then we canget you to write person for that
(25:25):
position of that job.
But the next thing that youwanna do when you're hiring is
to test the candidate.
You wanna make sure that they'requalified for the job.
A lot of people, I hate to sayit, they're gonna lie on their
resume, so you wanna make sureyou do testing, and actually I
recommend this first test calledHigh Five Test.
Great test.
Actually everybody should dothis test.
(25:47):
Doctors should do this test aswell.
Here, and I'll go into that in alittle bit here.
But a typing test, superimportant, being on an EHR, now
you gotta make sure that theytype well, that's easily
available.
You can just Google typing test.
Super easy to find spelling andgrammar.
Actually super important aswell, especially with EHR.
You wanna make sure your notesare written correctly, and
(26:09):
having a math test actuallyreally important as well, if
they're handling anything withmoney, right?
You wanna make sure they knowhow to count.
And those are very simple teststhat you can do.
Here, the, the first test, thehigh five test really.
It's online test that you cando, you can just go to high five
test.com.
They answer you a bunch ofquestions and it really
(26:29):
identifies the strengths of whatyou have here.
So for, I pulled up mine, justfor example, this is a test I
did.
And you can see I'm a chameleon.
I'm a winner, I'm an analyst,brainstormer, and a thinker.
So those are my strengths.
Those are things that I am goodat, right?
And you can see that things andit breaks down into four
different areas.
(26:49):
So thinking is one skill.
Doing is one skill, feelingconnecting people, empathizing
with them is a skill, and thenmotivating is a skill.
So you can see my strength is alot in thinking.
So I'm a great thinker.
My weakness is I don't do stuffwell, I don't execute well.
(27:09):
So I get virtual assistants tohelp me execute things that I
can't do, right?
So what you want to find foryour position then is things
that they're gonna be good to doif they're gonna be like
customer service oriented.
You wanna get people who arelike high on feeling right?
So they can really connect withthe with the patients.
If you want people to doadministrative work, you want to
(27:30):
get people who are high on doingstuff, right?
So that they get joy out ofexecuting.
They get joy out of completing,they get joy out of checklists
right?
And whatnot.
And so having a StrengthFindertest is hugely beneficial and
see to do, another thing, like Isaid, testing, spelling, and
grammar.
If you're watching the video,there's a sentence on the online
(27:50):
here that has a bunch ofspelling and grammar mistakes.
And once again, I just pulledthis off.
I actually PT you sort justwrite, Hey, gimme a sentence
that has spelling and grammarerrors, and tell me what they
are, and you can see and givethem, write it down on a piece
of paper or just print it down apiece of paper and give it to
your staff and see if they canidentify how many mistakes they
can, this was actually like, I,I'm embarrassed to say I didn't
(28:13):
identify every mistake on thisthing.
But yeah, my grammar's not thatgreat.
But you know, that's why yougotta hire people that have
really good grammar, bettergrammar than myself.
Right.
Maryal Concepcion MD (28:23):
I was gonna say that looks like when
I'm sending internal portalmessages, I'm like, that's
pretty frequent.
I'm like wow.
That I totally, that could havebeen me writing that.
Oh my goodness.
Justin Lam (28:34):
Yeah.
And then, like I said, mathtest.
Super simple.
Just put three numbers, just putit out.
I mean, you can have yourcalculator out, but they
shouldn't have their calculatorout.
And they can do basic math threenumbers out.
See if they can add it togetherso you know that they can count
money, right?
Which is really important tomake sure that you're getting
paid right.
So, once again, write a clearjob description.
(28:56):
Make sure you test a candidate,and then make sure you interview
thoroughly, for a great place tostart.
Do a virtual interview if theydo well in a virtual interview.
Then you can bring them in for aphysical interview during an
interview.
You don't wanna be asking likeyes or no questions.
Those are easy questions.
Mm-hmm.
You wanna ask open-endedquestions like, what would you
(29:16):
do in this scenario?
How do you feel about this?
Did you have an instance where,you got into a disagreement with
a patient or anything like that?
And they can kind of talkthrough it and you really see
how they have.
So, asking yes or no questionsis, is, I mean, it is good
questions, but they're, they'rekind of just yes, no, it doesn't
really bring a lot of flavor outof the personality of the
(29:38):
person, right?
So asking open ended questionsvary, important, and then very
important as well.
And you wanna check with yourstate on whether you can do this
or not, but you wanna have a, atrial period possible, so you
can observe them in real lifescenarios.
Some, states require you to paythem for a trial period, some.
(29:59):
Say you can have free for atrial period.
And so you really wanna makesure that you are working with
this person and it's gonna be agood fit for you guys.
Right?
That's always huge.
So those are some best practicesfor hiring staff.
Maryal Concepcion MD (30:13):
That's awesome that you guys offer a
practice analysis because Ithink that, again, especially
for those people who are newerto DPC, they're planning,
they're starting out.
I think that a practice analysiscan really help because again,
when it comes to skills, youguys are very skilled in pairing
a virtual assistant with thedoctor.
And When it comes to trialperiod, you guys have probably
(30:36):
one of the sweetest deals outthere in terms of you and Dr.
Kerry Lamb spoke about it onyour previous episode, and you
still have a way for people toactually do a free trial through
Cool Blue va.
And so tell us about wherepeople can go to hire a virtual
assistant.
Partnering with you guys at ColeBlue Vier.
Justin Lam (30:57):
If everything I went through sounds great, but it's
super overwhelming.
Don't worry.
We run through all of this withour virtual assistants to make
sure that you're getting thebest candidate possible.
We do a trial period with ourvirtual assistants, and on top
of that we will make sure thatyou'll get a trial period with a
virtual assistant as well.
(31:17):
So we do two weeks free whereyou can work with your virtual
assistant.
I'll work with you for 40 hoursa week 80 hours in total in two
weeks to make sure that you knowit's gonna be a good fit for you
and that you guys really vibeand gel well together.
And that's absolutely free.
You can go to, at the end I'llthrow up a, a QR code that you
(31:39):
can go to, but you can go tocool blue va.com/two.
That's the number two weeks.
And that will get you to ourlanding page, and then you can
sign up for a free trial rightthere.
Maryal Concepcion MD (31:53):
So as we keep talking, I definitely will
say here that I have I havelived this journey of virtual
assistance since before I openedmy clinic, and I do think that
this is so important what you'regonna talk to us about because
when you're in your opening daysespecially, and your budget is
tight, to be able to have help.
(32:14):
When you're not able to doeverything from day one.
That was my journey.
I think it's so important torealistically look at, how you
can actually afford help on dayone.
So Justin, tell us aboutespecially the difference
between when you hire somebodyvirtually versus hiring somebody
in person.
Justin Lam (32:34):
it's important to have both areas covered here, I
want to present both sides ofeverything so you guys get a
really good feel of what yourneeds are here.
If you're hiring a local medicalassistance according to us
borough labor statistics now.
The average hourly wage for ourlocal medical assistant is about
(32:55):
$20 and 84 cents an hour.
And typically they're gonna havea high school diploma.
They may or may not have medicalassistant certificate.
And the work experience is gonnabe really variable, depending on
what is available in your area,right?
Usually people may have one yearof experience or they may be
(33:15):
fresh out of a high school orthey just got their medical
assistant certificate andthey're just kind of looking and
need experience a lot of times,right?
And so with that, there comes alot of HR headaches and
compliance burdens.
You have to make sure everythingis like OSHA and hipaa, right?
And you never know who you'regonna be getting.
(33:38):
They may have unreliable workethic.
They have limited qualificationsor experience and it takes a lot
of time to onboard staff, and itcan be expensive as well,
especially if you're going withan agency.
Agencies can sometimes take upto 50% of the wages.
(33:58):
So instead of paying,$20 anhour, you're gonna actually end
up paying like$30 an hour.
'cause the agency's gonna take acut of that.
So it can be end up being reallyexpensive.
And in a recent study from theAmerican Board of Family
Medicine, it was actually foundout that medical assistance
locally had a really high turnrate of almost 60%.
(34:21):
It's 59% in one year thatthey're gonna leave your
practice.
So, that's basically money downthe drain, right?
That you spent training them,working with them, building them
up in terms of hours that canlead up to about,$14,000 that
you spent training this ma onlyfor them to leave.
(34:41):
So, and it's very, verydisheartening for one thing, but
it's also very expensive.
Now, that's not to say youshouldn't hire somebody
physically, locally,'cause alocal medical assistant can help
you.
They should focus on tasks andprojects that are just necessary
for the patient encounter,physically and tasks that are
(35:02):
gonna bring you revenue.
And so that's like roomingpatients, vital patients,
accepting payments locallyinjections, vaccines, things
that generate revenueprocedures, assisting the
doctors on procedures, right?
These are things that cangenerate revenue.
Then they provide value, andthen you can afford to pay them
the more expensive rates.
(35:24):
But everything else should behanded off to a medical virtual
assistant because, I mean,spoiler alert, it's only 9 95 an
hour to hire a medical virtualassistant.
And for a list of everythingthat our medical virtual
assistant can help you do, we'llbe at DPC Summit coming up here.
(35:44):
So make sure you stop by ourbooth.
We have a list of over 90 thingsthat our virtual assistant can
help you out with.
Make sure you grab that and see,or you can check out our website
as well.
And to find out a list of over90 things that a virtual
assistant can help you out withhere.
Maryal Concepcion MD (36:00):
Now Justin, can you tell us what the
difference is between a virtualassistant and a medical virtual
assistant?
Justin Lam (36:06):
virtual assistants also the real people, they have
a medical degree as well.
They can have a medical degree,so they can be nurses,
pharmacists, lab techs, reallyqualified people.
And so instead of having a highschool degree, they'll have a, a
bachelor's degree at le at thevery least, very qualified, very
well educated.
And they'll also have excellentwork experience as well.
(36:27):
We, when we're interviewing,like I said, we make sure that
they have at least, three tofive years of work experience,
real life experience.
So we make sure that they arevery qualified to work with you
and they're gonna be trained inexactly what your practice
needs, whether that's customerservice, administrative work,
scribing anything that you need.
(36:48):
We have our training programs tomake sure that they get trained
on that as well.
And we get our virtualassistance from the Philippines
because the Philippines has whatis called the Data Privacy Act
of 2012, which basically mimicsHIPAA and high tech acts in
America.
So they're very data privacyforward.
(37:09):
They're very secure about thatas well.
So, very important to hirevirtual assistants from the
Philippines.
And, just to sum everything up,again, a virtual assistant can
do everything short of touch.
A patient, customer service,administrative tasks, medical
assisting, marketing andpractice growth.
Dr.
Mario, you're saying if peoplewho are just thinking about
(37:29):
starting off, but their practiceor just open to practice, having
that marketing experience,practice growth, executive
assistant functions, to reallylighten your load, that's super
important to keep you growing.
Keep the balls rolling, keepthe, keep everything in motion,
right?
And see.
And so, if you're not sure whereto start or what you need help
(37:53):
with come visit our booth againor come see us.
That's why we do the practiceanalysis.
It's really to help you figureout what you need, where to
start, how to really get you thehelp that's gonna maximize your
time and benefit, and if youdon't have the time to train and
whatnot, that's why we gothrough all those best practices
(38:16):
for hiring.
We do the training, we do theinterviewing, we do the testing
to make sure that you're gonnaget a qualified candidate here.
And if you're not sure if thevirtual assistant, medical
virtual assistant is the rightfit, that's why we give you a
two week guarantee, a two weekfree trial to make sure that you
(38:39):
test it out, see if it's gonnabe a good fit for you.
See if you guys gel welltogether.
See if you guys vibe together.
See if it makes sense for yourbusiness, for your DPC.
So take advantage of our twoweek guarantee.
Sign up with us, stop by ourbooth experience.
How a VA can really transformyour practice, make your life
(39:01):
easier, get you home to yourkids on time, have you not miss
any soccer practices or games orrecitals or anything like that.
That's really what we want forDPC doctors, right?
Maryal Concepcion M (39:13):
Absolutely.
Justin Lam (39:14):
give us a call, 7 1 4 6 9 5 8,000.
Email us admin@coolblueva.com oronce again, the website for the
two week free trial is cool blueva.com/two.
That's the number two weeks.
and we'll be at the DPC summitsupporting the movement, so
(39:35):
definitely stop by and sayhello.
Would love to talk more.
Maryal Concepcion MD (39:39):
I wish I had a list like that before I
started.
So definitely make sure that youstop by cold blue VA's table and
meet Justin in person and grabone of those lists.
And then if you're not able tobe there in person, make sure
that you go to their website sothat you can download the list
digitally.
So that's fantastic.
that cool Blue Vivier exist.
I'm so glad that you turned yourexpertise into something that
(40:02):
can help so many other peoplethrive in their DPC practices
and 80 hours guys.
I mean, that is a ton of workthat can be done in a medical
practice, especially a DPCpractice.
And so I highly encourageeveryone to check out what can a
medical virtual assistant do foryour practice?
Again, that website is cool blueva.com/the number two weeks.
(40:27):
Thank you so much, Justin, forjoining us today, and I am so
excited for everything that youguys are bringing to the fold in
DPC through your medical virtualassistants.
Justin Lam (40:37):
Thank you.
Yeah.
See you guys in person.
Stop by the booth.
Looking forward to continuing tosupport this movement.
Thank you.
Maryal Concepcion MD (40:46):
Thank you for listening to another episode
of my DBC story.
If you enjoyed it, please leavea five star review on your
favorite podcast platform.
It helps others find the show,have a question about direct
primary care.
Leave me a voicemail.
You might hear it answered in afuture episode.
Follow us on socials at thehandle at my D DPC story and
join DPC didactics our monthlydeep dive into your questions
(41:08):
and challenges.
Links are@mydpcstory.com forexclusive content you won't hear
anywhere else.
Join our Patreon.
Find the link in the show notesor search for my DPC story on
patreon.com for DPC news on thedaily.
Check out DPC news.com.
Until next week, this isMarielle conception.
Direct Primary care is an innovative
alternative path toinsurance-driven healthcare.
Typically, a patient pays theirdoctor a low monthly membership
and in return builds a lastingrelationship with their doctor
and has their doctor availableat their fingertip.
Welcome to the My DPC Storypodcast, where each week you
(00:26):
will hear the ever so relatablestories shared by physicians who
have chosen to practice medicinein their individual communities
through the direct primary caremodel.
I'm your host, MarielleConception.
Family, physician, DPC, owner,and former fee for service.
Doctor, I hope you enjoy today'sepisode and come away feeling
inspired about the future ofpatient care direct primary
(00:49):
care.
Well, welcome everybody.
I am so excited to be joined byJustin Lamb again on the
podcast, we are going to betalking about a super hot topic
that we are going to be buzzingabout at the upcoming DPC
summit, where you'll get to meetJustin and you'll get to meet
(01:10):
one of the VAs that we'll betalking about today.
So cool.
Blue VA is an amazing company.
They have been so supportive ofthe DPC movement, and they have
been working continuously toimprove how they are pairing
virtual assistants, medicalvirtual assistants with DPC
physicians to help DPC practicesthrive.
(01:31):
So Justin, thank you so much forjoining us today.
Justin Lam (01:34):
Thanks for having me, doctor.
So happy to be here.
We had a great conversation lasttime, so I was super excited to
come back.
Yeah, I just love the DPCcommunity.
I've been to a lot of DPCconventions now, and so I just
wanted to continue to supportthis vibrant community and, this
movement really.
Maryal Concepcion M (01:51):
Absolutely.
And if you have not listened tothe episode where Justin and his
sister, Dr.
Carrie Lamb came onto thepodcast, please make sure you
check out the link in the blogaccompanying this podcast
because it's so important to notonly recognize cold blue's work
in helping the DBC movement, butalso recognizing that from the
(02:12):
story that they talked aboutbefore they.
Stand by their word because theyuse medical VAs all the time in
Dr.
Lamb's practice.
And their family is also usingmedical virtual assistants
because they have quite the, themedical community amongst the
lamb family.
So this is coming from not onlypassion to help the community,
(02:33):
but experience.
that's why I wanna make surethat if you haven't listened to
their previous conversation,take a listen to that.
But today we're going to betalking about the two big
questions when it comes tohiring a virtual assistant in
the DPC space.
And those two questions are,well, how do I know the time is
right to hire a va?
And then the second set ofquestions is going to be
(02:56):
revolving around how to actuallyhire the va.
Once you recognize that, prettymuch everybody needs a va.
So, yeah.
So with that, let's get startedon today's webinar, everything
you need to know about hiringand how you can find great help
for a fraction of the cost.
So, Justin, take us away.
Justin Lam (03:13):
Yeah, absolutely, Dr.
Mario.
And the things I'm gonna betalking about do pertain to a
virtual assistant, to a va, butreally once, what do you learn
from this?
You can really take and apply toanything really for any hiring
practice as well.
uh, I've talked to a lot of HRpeople I've hired and fired,
thousands upon thousands ofpeople now, so these are all
(03:36):
things that I've learnedthroughout the years to really
fine tune and to give you guysreally these gems here.
And if you guys are justlistening, there are slides, but
you know, we'll, we'll talk youthrough it and whatnot, so it
should be all right.
once again, I'm Justin Lamb.
I was the CO and CMO of Dr.
Lamb Coaching.
And then as Dr.
Marielle mentioned, I was alsothe CEO of Lamb Clinic, along
(03:57):
with my sister, Dr.
Carrie and Dr.
Jeremy Lamb.
And that's when we startedutilizing virtual assistance.
Really blew, blew up the clinic.
So then I came out and foundedCool Blue va, which I'm the CEO
and founder of that.
But really the core issue thatwhat we're talking about Dr.
Maria, right, is when and how doyou know what to hire a va?
(04:20):
And really the core of that iswhat is the most valuable asset
in your practice?
Or if you haven't opened apractice yet, what do you think
is the most valuable asset inyour practice here?
And really the answer to that isthat it's you, the doctor,
right?
Because there's only one doctor.
In the practice, indirectprimary care, unless you hire
(04:41):
somebody else.
But when you first open it up,really there's only you.
And so your time, you're theonly doctor in the practice.
You only have eight hours in aday, right?
Where you can see patients.
And that's really, a ratelimiting step, right?
That's what is limiting.
How fast you can grow really isyour time to do that, and the
second thing is your knowledge,right?
(05:02):
You're the only person in yourpractice who went to school to
be a doctor, and nobody else hasthat knowledge that they can
pass on to their patients,right?
So these two assets, they haveto be protected at all costs.
Because like I said, they're therate limiting step for you and
how fast your practice can growand how fast you guys can scale.
(05:23):
And it's unfortunate nowadays,we're finding that more and more
doctors are spending a lot oftime on paperwork.
There's been a couple studiesdone that, over the years people
are spending 11 to 22% more timeon documentation on their EHR.
On average, people are spendingtwo hours, two hours of clerical
work for each hour they'respending face-to-face with their
(05:46):
patients.
Right?
So that's really unfortunate.
That's a lot of your time that'sspending, that you could be
seeing patients generatingrevenue, taking care of people,
using your doctoring skills,which are actually just spending
on admin work, busy work,whatnot, not, seeing patients.
Maryal Concepcion MD (06:03):
These data points are so relatable to
probably everybody out there whohas gone through residency, who
has gone through a corporatepractice.
Because when we think about,even with the advent of ai, with
the advent of how many more,back office people, can we hire
or can the corporation hire.
It's still so ridiculous howmuch pajama time is spent on
(06:28):
charting.
Mm-hmm.
And so I I go back to my commentand my joke about who needs a
va, probably everybody.
And I, I love though that youclarified it.
These skills could be used for aperson who's in person or a
virtual assistant, but when itcomes to your time that you are
spending and not getting paidfor, typically this is where in
(06:49):
DPC it matters more because yourtime is definitely related more
so to your overhead then inunemployed role.
So I really love that youhighlighted the, ugly reality of
pajama time.
Mm-hmm.
Work that, again, most of usnever got paid for, so the thing
I love about this conversationwhere it's different than the
(07:10):
last conversation with Dr.
Carrie Lamb is that we're gonnaget a little interactive here.
So if you are driving, if youare mowing your lawn definitely,
take a listen, but keep in mindthat you can press pause and you
can rewind and you can presspause when you're in a place
where you can brainstorm andwrite things down.
But Justin's going to help us gothrough the time and task audit
(07:31):
first because if you are aperson out there who is saying I
don't think I need a VA though.
I think I can manage my time,pretty well this time and task
audit is pretty slick atactually breaking down in black
and white what you are doingwith your time.
So Justin, tell us about thisfirst exercise.
Justin Lam (07:50):
Just a little spoiler alert, if you guys
really don't want to do any ofthese exercises.
There'll be something at the endof the podcast here that will
really give you the shortcut onhow to do all this and how we
can take care of all this foryou here.
But the first exercise, Dr.
Marilyn, like you mentioned, isa time and task audit.
Really what you wanna do is.
(08:10):
Write down on a piece of paperthe top five tasks that you do
and what they are and how muchtime you spend on them a week
here, and it could be anythinglike, doctor, you say, pajama
time, like charting, if you'reanswering patient emails or
phone calls, right?
Or if you're busy ordering labsor if it's like social media and
(08:33):
you're just on social media,like posting and creating
content, it could be anythingthat you're taking your time on
and you wouldn't really, reallylist it down.
Number one, number two, numberthree, number four, number five.
I'm sure there's a hundredthings that you could list down,
right?
But just start with the top fivethat you really spend the most
time on.
And, take your time and do that.
(08:54):
Once you have those five, andyou can pause this at any time,
and see, but once you have thoselisted down, then you really
want to circle the tasks thatyou can delegate to a virtual
assistant.
And realistically, when you'rethinking about that, is anything
that you're doing on a computerthat can be delegated out.
The only thing that can bedelegated out is if you're
(09:17):
seeing a patient in person,those are the things that you
cannot delegate out.
But anything that's on a pc, ona laptop, on your phone, on your
computer, you can pretty muchdelegate that out to a virtual
assistant or to a person, right?
So circle those tasks and keepthose in mind.
'cause we'll be coming back tothem in a little bit here.
And just to bring the point homeagain, here's some other data
(09:38):
points that we had.
Physicians are spending 20% oftheir time indirect clinical
face-to-face time with patientsonly, and about almost 50% of
the time, 49% to be exact, doingEHR and desk work.
And even when they're in thepatient room, 52% of the time is
just interacting with thepatient.
And 37% of the time they'restill on a computer, typing in
(10:02):
and doing desk work in the roomwith the patient right there,
right?
So that's the unfortunatereality that we live in right
now.
And that's all stuff that's on acomputer that you could, hand
off to somebody to really helpyou out.
Maryal Concepcion MD (10:15):
And I will say here that if you're
listening out there and you'relike, but I haven't yet started
my DPC or my DPC is literally aweek old and I have zero to 10
patients, and you're like, Idon't even know what my tasks
are.
What I would say is that youhave an entire community of
people who have practicessimilar to yours in terms of you
(10:35):
might have a practice next dooror an hour and a half away that
has, somebody else who is abreadwinner in their family or
is a parent or is a caregiver,and you.
Can talk to these people becausewe are all position
entrepreneurs and we have allbeen there.
We have all been there on dayone.
So when it comes to, if youdon't necessarily know what your
(10:58):
top five tasks are, one, realizethat you can ask other people to
get ideas of what their tasksare.
And two, your top five canalways change.
So this is a nimbleconversation.
You can come back to it in amonth after you open your DPC in
two years after you open yourDPC and you're ready to hire
another staff person so Justinhere, let's keep going in terms
(11:20):
of why a doctor comes to you tostart asking Colier.
Can you please help me withanswering the question?
Do I need to hire a virtualassistant?
Justin Lam (11:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
And just to add onto a littlebit what you said, if you don't
have top five things that aretaking the most amount of time,
you could just write down thetop five things that you hate
doing, and those are things thatyou can hand off as well, right?
The things you just dread doingon a daily basis.
Yeah,
Maryal Concepcion MD (11:49):
great advice.
Justin Lam (11:51):
Yeah.
But moving on to why you need tohire really the first thing is
to extend your capability,right?
So you can only see so manypatients or return so many calls
in a day.
Like I said, your time is avaluable asset.
So in order to extend thatcapability, you need support
staff to help you, right, helpyou call patients, help you
(12:13):
return emails, help you bookappointments, all that stuff is
time that you could be seeing apatient generating income,
taking care of people.
So really extending yourcapabilities is huge.
Protecting your time.
Like I said, anything that adoctor is to do should be really
only things that a doctor cando.
So you can really focus on yourstrengths, right?
(12:36):
That's huge.
Third thing, really enhance thepatient experience.
DPC, medical practice, we don'treally think about it, but it is
a service industry.
Really, we're all about customerservice.
We're all about patientsatisfaction.
And so you wanna make sure thatthe patients that you're seeing
have a great experience.
'cause then they're gonna keepcoming back to you.
(12:57):
Right?
So timely follow ups, fastresponse times to emails, to
texts, smooth processes.
This all improves the patientsatisfaction.
That all makes the patient wantto come back, and see.
'cause that's super important inthe service industry, in the
medical industry, and thenincreased revenue potential,
(13:17):
right?
You wanna spend more time onrevenue generating activities.
You wanna spend less time onpaperwork here.
So anything that's gonnagenerate revenue you should be
doing or you should be hiringsomebody to do.
And anything that's just moreadministrative, busy work, grunt
work, I don't like to say that,but somebody has to do it.
Right.
A doctor, let's say makes like$150 an hour.
(13:40):
Like you don't need to payyourself$150 an hour to do
something that costs$10 an hourto do.
Right.
And it's just not efficient.
So you should be doing stuffthat generates the revenue.
Mm-hmm.
And to reduce burnout, I'm surea lot of DPC doctors have
already experienced this.
That's why they left, working athospitals, working at
corporations and whatnot.
(14:02):
'cause they want to have thatwork life balance.
They want to use their medicaldegree to help the community
out, help patients out andreally do what they want to
medical school for.
And then you guys didn't go tomedical school to.
Do paperwork, right?
To learn how to market right?
That's not really what you wentto medical school for.
So find people hire people thatare gonna be great at doing that
(14:25):
for you so you can once againfocus on doing what you love,
what you're passionate about,and then that's gonna reduce
burnout.
Now you know why you wanna hirepeople.
So when is the right time tohire?
As Dr.
Marielle mentioned, there's runsa gamut of DPC doctors, people
who have been established for along time, people who are just
starting out, people who arejust thinking about starting
(14:47):
out.
So when is the right time tohire?
And the first thing is there's alot of skills that you need as,
as business owner, You need tohave sales skills.
You need to have customerservice, legal, accounting,
medical mark, admin, marketing,it, web, website design, right?
Operations, human resources,this's, just naming a few skills
(15:08):
here.
So you, chances are you'reprobably already hiring somebody
to do some of this stuff andsome of the stuff that you're
taking on, which you may just bekind of figuring out how to do
on the fly or something, hiresomebody who has the skills
really to make life easy foryourself,
Maryal Concepcion MD (15:23):
But I think this is so important to
recognize like.
When you're a physicianentrepreneur and you may be
joining a clinic that's alreadyopen, but still these are the
things that are involved in aservice business, like you said.
And so it's really important torecognize that not only are
these skills going to be in aservice business to what extent
that's gonna be to determined bythe type of practice you are in.
(15:46):
But when it comes to figuringout where your skills are strong
and where your skills can behelped by other people who have
stronger skills in these areasthat you talked about.
Justin's going to be walking usthrough our second exercise.
So get ready.
We're gonna have our secondexercise focusing on where are
your skills and where is the gapbetween the skills that you have
(16:08):
and the person who can help outwith their training and their
expertise.
Justin Lam (16:12):
And that's where the skills gap exercise comes in, so
what you really want to do forthis next exercise.
Is list the skills that youcurrently have as a business
owner, for example, you're greatat being a doctor, If you worked
in hospital, you learned how totake care of patients, you have
great customer service andwhatnot.
Or you have a friend or yourspouse or significant other who
(16:36):
has a background in legal orsomething, or accounting.
Those are skills that you kindof have here.
So list the skills that youhave.
Those are skills that you don'tneed to hire for, right?
So you are pretty confident andcomfortable in those skills.
on the opposite side of that isskills that you don't have.
Like I said, everybody went toschool to be a doctor.
Not everybody went to school tobe a business owner, an
(16:57):
entrepreneur, right?
So there's skills that peoplelack.
So list down all the skills thatyou feel like you need help with
that could be improved on, thatyou're not quite sure on what to
do with in those areas here.
And those are really gonna bethe skills that you need to hire
for, right?
That's what you need the virtualassistant for to fill in those
(17:18):
gaps for you.
so now you know what skills.
That you need for to hiresomebody.
The other thing is when youdon't have time I always keep
coming back to time.
I always keep harping on that.
Right.
Dr.
Mariel.
'cause I mean, that's the onefinite resource that you know,
is, is the same for everybody.
There's only 24 hours in a day.
(17:38):
It doesn't matter if you're ElonMusk, it doesn't matter if
you're Dr.
Marriott, doesn't matter ifyou're me.
There's only 24 hours in a day.
You can only do so much.
So you only have this fixedamount of time to do everything
that you need to do.
And starting a business, is noteasy.
That's there's so much that youhave to do and there's only so
many hours in a day.
(17:59):
And that's especially true ifyou're also like juggling your
current job mm-hmm.
While trying to start your DPCthat basically cuts your time in
half or into a quarter orwhatever it is to really get
your, your practice up andrunning.
And so even if you're juststarting out, it's very
beneficial to hire somebody toget you that help.
(18:20):
And the last thing is you don'thave the energy to hire or you
don't have the energy to do anyof the work.
You have the time, but you'reburnt out.
Really.
Your health is the mostimportant thing as well, So if
you don't have the energy to, tohire, that's very important.
You need to get people to helpyou out.
Everybody thinks they can handlemore.
I find that to be true formyself as well.
(18:43):
We wanna take on becausedoctors.
A very responsible individual.
As you guys went through medicalschool, you guys studied, burned
the mid idle.
You guys worked 80 hours a week,you guys worked a hundred hours
a week.
So, you guys are capable of somuch.
But sometimes, that leads to theburnout.
That leads to just overwhelmingyourself and taking too much on,
(19:05):
and then things start to fallthrough the gaps, whether it's
patient care or whether it'ssomething else even.
And eventually something startsto fall through the cracks.
I always say hire early insteadof hiring late.
When your plate is at 50%, youshould hire somebody already.
'cause that place stacks up veryquickly, right?
And so you always wanna makesure you're handing off stuff as
(19:26):
quickly as possible.
Getting help as quickly aspossible to really, help
yourself out, help your practiceout, help your patients out.
Maryal Concepcion MD (19:34):
Yeah, great, great point.
And this is, this is going backto hashtag first world problems
when your DPC is growing andyou're like, oh my goodness, I
now have multiple patients toonboard and I have multiple
patients to get records for orto, to call CVS for vaccines,
for whatever.
I absolutely agree that thingsjust stack up and then you don't
(19:57):
even realize that the, you'regonna get a fire hose pretty
soon in a lot of cases.
Justin.
I will say that the skills thatyou listed, it might be
intimidating for some of thelisteners out there because
things like sales and legal andwebsite design, these are things
that, when we go to medicalschool, nowhere in our essays do
they ask us like, where are youand your level of being able to
(20:19):
do all of these skills that youjust mentioned?
now that we've talked about how,time is, is not infinite.
We all wish it could be infinitesometimes, but definitely when
you're looking for how to.
Maintain a service business thatis going to have, quick response
time, quality response time,quality, customer service and
(20:40):
all of the physicians andentrepreneur hats that we wear.
It is so important to keep inmind that if you are struggling
for your own time management.
If your DPC is encroaching onyour time that you're spending
with family things that youdidn't like I, I really like how
you said, you know, when you're50% full, think about hiring
(21:03):
before the, the plate stack toohigh.
If you are saying, Hey, I, I cando things like QuickBooks, but
it does not bring me joy.
If the energy that you'reexperiencing after doing all of
these tasks in your DPC isdraining, then the next question
comes and like we talked aboutin the very beginning the next
question is really how do you goabout hiring someone to help?
(21:25):
So, tell us about how one goesabout hiring a virtual
assistant, especially bypartnering with Cole Blue va.
Justin Lam (21:32):
Absolutely.
So yeah, we'll go through somebest practices for hiring staff.
Number one, you wanna write aclear job description of what
you expect for your virtualassistant to do or for your
staff to do.
So we're gonna have clear,defined responsibilities,
expectations, what tools they'regonna use, and what the outcomes
(21:54):
you expect are, and that leadsus into our third exercise.
And once again, spoiler, if youdon't want to do any of these
exercises, I'll just tell youright now, you can give us a
call and we'll do it for you forfree.
So, if you don't want to do theexercise, that's absolutely
fine, but I find it's justbeneficial to kind of work
through it, so you understandwhat you're getting into, what
you need and what your, whatyour business really needs.
(22:16):
Right?
And Dr.
Mario mentioned earlier, theseare good things to do.
On an ongoing basis really tokind of get a pulse, get a check
on the health of your practiceand how you are doing and how
you feel like your practice isdoing.
So these are great things to doon an ongoing basis.
Right now, we've alreadyidentified in first exercise
(22:37):
things that take up the mosttime, and what the tasks as a
result you should be delegating'cause they take up so much
time.
And then in our second exercise,we already identified what
skills that you lack or you needsupport with, right?
So, all of that.
Then you can turn into basicallyyour job description and what
(22:57):
you want to hire for.
So what's the job title that youhave, what you need help with,
right?
What kind of support do youneed?
That's the first thing you wannawrite down.
And the second thing is thesummary of the role based on the
top three tasks, top five tasksyou circle for delegation.
What's the main goal?
For this person, right?
(23:19):
And also another tool, like youcould put all this into chat,
GBT as well, and they'll spitout a great job description for
you as well.
And those, get you somethingreally solid as well.
So, AI is amazing to help youout too, right?
Key responsibilities is the nextthing that you want to do.
So, once again, from yourdelegation list that you, you
(23:40):
that you wrote on Exercise One,write down what the expectations
are and what you're gonna bedoing.
Next thing you wanna have isrequired tools and software,
right?
What you're gonna be using,whether you're using Jane or
Hint or you're on.
What, phone service you'reusing.
Make sure that they know whatyou're using, so that they can
(24:00):
be trained in those tasks or ifthey're familiar with it, even
better, right?
So what are the skills that theyneed and whether they're the
qualifications that they need,that's the next thing that you
want to do.
What kind of traits orexperience would make someone
thrive in this role?
So, for example, they're verydetail oriented, or they need to
know medical terminology ifthey're gonna be a scribe,
(24:22):
right?
Or they can be fluent inEnglish, or if you need them to
speak Spanish, you mean?
Or Spanish speaking community.
Those are things that you wannawrite down.
And what are the hours thatthey're gonna be working Monday
to Friday, eight to 12, one tofive.
What's gonna be on going on asfar as that goes?
How should they report to youand what the expectations are
(24:42):
for their job as well.
The more you delineate and haveclear expectations, the more.
It gonna be easier to worktogether with the person that
you do hire, right?
So, and once again, if you don'twanna do any of that, like I
said, just give us a call at KBlue Va and we'll be happy to
help you out with all of thoseexercises.
(25:03):
We do a three practice analysisthat basically it's about 30
minutes we really dive into yourpractice, or if you're thinking
about hi, starting up apractice, we dive into what is
involved with all of that.
We'll go through all thoseexercises with you and we'll
really, fine tune and pinpointwhat your needs are, what you
need help with, and then we canget you to write person for that
(25:25):
position of that job.
But the next thing that youwanna do when you're hiring is
to test the candidate.
You wanna make sure that they'requalified for the job.
A lot of people, I hate to sayit, they're gonna lie on their
resume, so you wanna make sureyou do testing, and actually I
recommend this first test calledHigh Five Test.
Great test.
Actually everybody should dothis test.
(25:47):
Doctors should do this test aswell.
Here, and I'll go into that in alittle bit here.
But a typing test, superimportant, being on an EHR, now
you gotta make sure that theytype well, that's easily
available.
You can just Google typing test.
Super easy to find spelling andgrammar.
Actually super important aswell, especially with EHR.
You wanna make sure your notesare written correctly, and
(26:09):
having a math test actuallyreally important as well, if
they're handling anything withmoney, right?
You wanna make sure they knowhow to count.
And those are very simple teststhat you can do.
Here, the, the first test, thehigh five test really.
It's online test that you cando, you can just go to high five
test.com.
They answer you a bunch ofquestions and it really
(26:29):
identifies the strengths of whatyou have here.
So for, I pulled up mine, justfor example, this is a test I
did.
And you can see I'm a chameleon.
I'm a winner, I'm an analyst,brainstormer, and a thinker.
So those are my strengths.
Those are things that I am goodat, right?
And you can see that things andit breaks down into four
different areas.
(26:49):
So thinking is one skill.
Doing is one skill, feelingconnecting people, empathizing
with them is a skill, and thenmotivating is a skill.
So you can see my strength is alot in thinking.
So I'm a great thinker.
My weakness is I don't do stuffwell, I don't execute well.
(27:09):
So I get virtual assistants tohelp me execute things that I
can't do, right?
So what you want to find foryour position then is things
that they're gonna be good to doif they're gonna be like
customer service oriented.
You wanna get people who arelike high on feeling right?
So they can really connect withthe with the patients.
If you want people to doadministrative work, you want to
(27:30):
get people who are high on doingstuff, right?
So that they get joy out ofexecuting.
They get joy out of completing,they get joy out of checklists
right?
And whatnot.
And so having a StrengthFindertest is hugely beneficial and
see to do, another thing, like Isaid, testing, spelling, and
grammar.
If you're watching the video,there's a sentence on the online
(27:50):
here that has a bunch ofspelling and grammar mistakes.
And once again, I just pulledthis off.
I actually PT you sort justwrite, Hey, gimme a sentence
that has spelling and grammarerrors, and tell me what they
are, and you can see and givethem, write it down on a piece
of paper or just print it down apiece of paper and give it to
your staff and see if they canidentify how many mistakes they
can, this was actually like, I,I'm embarrassed to say I didn't
(28:13):
identify every mistake on thisthing.
But yeah, my grammar's not thatgreat.
But you know, that's why yougotta hire people that have
really good grammar, bettergrammar than myself.
Right.
Maryal Concepcion MD (28:23):
I was gonna say that looks like when
I'm sending internal portalmessages, I'm like, that's
pretty frequent.
I'm like wow.
That I totally, that could havebeen me writing that.
Oh my goodness.
Justin Lam (28:34):
Yeah.
And then, like I said, mathtest.
Super simple.
Just put three numbers, just putit out.
I mean, you can have yourcalculator out, but they
shouldn't have their calculatorout.
And they can do basic math threenumbers out.
See if they can add it togetherso you know that they can count
money, right?
Which is really important tomake sure that you're getting
paid right.
So, once again, write a clearjob description.
(28:56):
Make sure you test a candidate,and then make sure you interview
thoroughly, for a great place tostart.
Do a virtual interview if theydo well in a virtual interview.
Then you can bring them in for aphysical interview during an
interview.
You don't wanna be asking likeyes or no questions.
Those are easy questions.
Mm-hmm.
You wanna ask open-endedquestions like, what would you
(29:16):
do in this scenario?
How do you feel about this?
Did you have an instance where,you got into a disagreement with
a patient or anything like that?
And they can kind of talkthrough it and you really see
how they have.
So, asking yes or no questionsis, is, I mean, it is good
questions, but they're, they'rekind of just yes, no, it doesn't
really bring a lot of flavor outof the personality of the
(29:38):
person, right?
So asking open ended questionsvary, important, and then very
important as well.
And you wanna check with yourstate on whether you can do this
or not, but you wanna have a, atrial period possible, so you
can observe them in real lifescenarios.
Some, states require you to paythem for a trial period, some.
(29:59):
Say you can have free for atrial period.
And so you really wanna makesure that you are working with
this person and it's gonna be agood fit for you guys.
Right?
That's always huge.
So those are some best practicesfor hiring staff.
Maryal Concepcion MD (30:13):
That's awesome that you guys offer a
practice analysis because Ithink that, again, especially
for those people who are newerto DPC, they're planning,
they're starting out.
I think that a practice analysiscan really help because again,
when it comes to skills, youguys are very skilled in pairing
a virtual assistant with thedoctor.
And When it comes to trialperiod, you guys have probably
(30:36):
one of the sweetest deals outthere in terms of you and Dr.
Kerry Lamb spoke about it onyour previous episode, and you
still have a way for people toactually do a free trial through
Cool Blue va.
And so tell us about wherepeople can go to hire a virtual
assistant.
Partnering with you guys at ColeBlue Vier.
Justin Lam (30:57):
If everything I went through sounds great, but it's
super overwhelming.
Don't worry.
We run through all of this withour virtual assistants to make
sure that you're getting thebest candidate possible.
We do a trial period with ourvirtual assistants, and on top
of that we will make sure thatyou'll get a trial period with a
virtual assistant as well.
(31:17):
So we do two weeks free whereyou can work with your virtual
assistant.
I'll work with you for 40 hoursa week 80 hours in total in two
weeks to make sure that you knowit's gonna be a good fit for you
and that you guys really vibeand gel well together.
And that's absolutely free.
You can go to, at the end I'llthrow up a, a QR code that you
(31:39):
can go to, but you can go tocool blue va.com/two.
That's the number two weeks.
And that will get you to ourlanding page, and then you can
sign up for a free trial rightthere.
Maryal Concepcion MD (31:53):
So as we keep talking, I definitely will
say here that I have I havelived this journey of virtual
assistance since before I openedmy clinic, and I do think that
this is so important what you'regonna talk to us about because
when you're in your opening daysespecially, and your budget is
tight, to be able to have help.
(32:14):
When you're not able to doeverything from day one.
That was my journey.
I think it's so important torealistically look at, how you
can actually afford help on dayone.
So Justin, tell us aboutespecially the difference
between when you hire somebodyvirtually versus hiring somebody
in person.
Justin Lam (32:34):
it's important to have both areas covered here, I
want to present both sides ofeverything so you guys get a
really good feel of what yourneeds are here.
If you're hiring a local medicalassistance according to us
borough labor statistics now.
The average hourly wage for ourlocal medical assistant is about
(32:55):
$20 and 84 cents an hour.
And typically they're gonna havea high school diploma.
They may or may not have medicalassistant certificate.
And the work experience is gonnabe really variable, depending on
what is available in your area,right?
Usually people may have one yearof experience or they may be
(33:15):
fresh out of a high school orthey just got their medical
assistant certificate andthey're just kind of looking and
need experience a lot of times,right?
And so with that, there comes alot of HR headaches and
compliance burdens.
You have to make sure everythingis like OSHA and hipaa, right?
And you never know who you'regonna be getting.
(33:38):
They may have unreliable workethic.
They have limited qualificationsor experience and it takes a lot
of time to onboard staff, and itcan be expensive as well,
especially if you're going withan agency.
Agencies can sometimes take upto 50% of the wages.
(33:58):
So instead of paying,$20 anhour, you're gonna actually end
up paying like$30 an hour.
'cause the agency's gonna take acut of that.
So it can be end up being reallyexpensive.
And in a recent study from theAmerican Board of Family
Medicine, it was actually foundout that medical assistance
locally had a really high turnrate of almost 60%.
(34:21):
It's 59% in one year thatthey're gonna leave your
practice.
So, that's basically money downthe drain, right?
That you spent training them,working with them, building them
up in terms of hours that canlead up to about,$14,000 that
you spent training this ma onlyfor them to leave.
(34:41):
So, and it's very, verydisheartening for one thing, but
it's also very expensive.
Now, that's not to say youshouldn't hire somebody
physically, locally,'cause alocal medical assistant can help
you.
They should focus on tasks andprojects that are just necessary
for the patient encounter,physically and tasks that are
(35:02):
gonna bring you revenue.
And so that's like roomingpatients, vital patients,
accepting payments locallyinjections, vaccines, things
that generate revenueprocedures, assisting the
doctors on procedures, right?
These are things that cangenerate revenue.
Then they provide value, andthen you can afford to pay them
the more expensive rates.
(35:24):
But everything else should behanded off to a medical virtual
assistant because, I mean,spoiler alert, it's only 9 95 an
hour to hire a medical virtualassistant.
And for a list of everythingthat our medical virtual
assistant can help you do, we'llbe at DPC Summit coming up here.
(35:44):
So make sure you stop by ourbooth.
We have a list of over 90 thingsthat our virtual assistant can
help you out with.
Make sure you grab that and see,or you can check out our website
as well.
And to find out a list of over90 things that a virtual
assistant can help you out withhere.
Maryal Concepcion MD (36:00):
Now Justin, can you tell us what the
difference is between a virtualassistant and a medical virtual
assistant?
Justin Lam (36:06):
virtual assistants also the real people, they have
a medical degree as well.
They can have a medical degree,so they can be nurses,
pharmacists, lab techs, reallyqualified people.
And so instead of having a highschool degree, they'll have a, a
bachelor's degree at le at thevery least, very qualified, very
well educated.
And they'll also have excellentwork experience as well.
(36:27):
We, when we're interviewing,like I said, we make sure that
they have at least, three tofive years of work experience,
real life experience.
So we make sure that they arevery qualified to work with you
and they're gonna be trained inexactly what your practice
needs, whether that's customerservice, administrative work,
scribing anything that you need.
(36:48):
We have our training programs tomake sure that they get trained
on that as well.
And we get our virtualassistance from the Philippines
because the Philippines has whatis called the Data Privacy Act
of 2012, which basically mimicsHIPAA and high tech acts in
America.
So they're very data privacyforward.
(37:09):
They're very secure about thatas well.
So, very important to hirevirtual assistants from the
Philippines.
And, just to sum everything up,again, a virtual assistant can
do everything short of touch.
A patient, customer service,administrative tasks, medical
assisting, marketing andpractice growth.
Dr.
Mario, you're saying if peoplewho are just thinking about
(37:29):
starting off, but their practiceor just open to practice, having
that marketing experience,practice growth, executive
assistant functions, to reallylighten your load, that's super
important to keep you growing.
Keep the balls rolling, keepthe, keep everything in motion,
right?
And see.
And so, if you're not sure whereto start or what you need help
(37:53):
with come visit our booth againor come see us.
That's why we do the practiceanalysis.
It's really to help you figureout what you need, where to
start, how to really get you thehelp that's gonna maximize your
time and benefit, and if youdon't have the time to train and
whatnot, that's why we gothrough all those best practices
(38:16):
for hiring.
We do the training, we do theinterviewing, we do the testing
to make sure that you're gonnaget a qualified candidate here.
And if you're not sure if thevirtual assistant, medical
virtual assistant is the rightfit, that's why we give you a
two week guarantee, a two weekfree trial to make sure that you
(38:39):
test it out, see if it's gonnabe a good fit for you.
See if you guys gel welltogether.
See if you guys vibe together.
See if it makes sense for yourbusiness, for your DPC.
So take advantage of our twoweek guarantee.
Sign up with us, stop by ourbooth experience.
How a VA can really transformyour practice, make your life
(39:01):
easier, get you home to yourkids on time, have you not miss
any soccer practices or games orrecitals or anything like that.
That's really what we want forDPC doctors, right?
Maryal Concepcion M (39:13):
Absolutely.
Justin Lam (39:14):
give us a call, 7 1 4 6 9 5 8,000.
Email us admin@coolblueva.com oronce again, the website for the
two week free trial is cool blueva.com/two.
That's the number two weeks.
and we'll be at the DPC summitsupporting the movement, so
(39:35):
definitely stop by and sayhello.
Would love to talk more.
Maryal Concepcion MD (39:39):
I wish I had a list like that before I
started.
So definitely make sure that youstop by cold blue VA's table and
meet Justin in person and grabone of those lists.
And then if you're not able tobe there in person, make sure
that you go to their website sothat you can download the list
digitally.
So that's fantastic.
that cool Blue Vivier exist.
I'm so glad that you turned yourexpertise into something that
(40:02):
can help so many other peoplethrive in their DPC practices
and 80 hours guys.
I mean, that is a ton of workthat can be done in a medical
practice, especially a DPCpractice.
And so I highly encourageeveryone to check out what can a
medical virtual assistant do foryour practice?
Again, that website is cool blueva.com/the number two weeks.
(40:27):
Thank you so much, Justin, forjoining us today, and I am so
excited for everything that youguys are bringing to the fold in
DPC through your medical virtualassistants.
Justin Lam (40:37):
Thank you.
Yeah.
See you guys in person.
Stop by the booth.
Looking forward to continuing tosupport this movement.
Thank you.
Maryal Concepcion MD (40:46):
Thank you for listening to another episode
of my DBC story.
If you enjoyed it, please leavea five star review on your
favorite podcast platform.
It helps others find the show,have a question about direct
primary care.
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