This is part 2 of our previous blog post about HireBiz Med’s co-owner Yuval Naveh’s interview with Dr. Steven C. Zielinski, MD, the President and CEO of Zielinski Medical Technologies · Texas Spine & Neurosurgery. The article below talks about how the services of our medical VAs differ from others.
UV:
You know how many roosters I hear with work-from-home VAs at the beginning. Like each one of them has a rooster in his backyard and you can literally hear in the calls. So here, no roosters, no baby crying, and good internet and electricity and that’s what I think differs us from our competitors. That’s basically the biggest difference.
DR Z:
Meanwhile, while we don’t have power here; in the Philippines, all the works are being done, all my calls are being answered, all the messages are being taken care of, new patients are being booked, everything’s being taken care of.
One of my best employees, she manages a lot of stuff and she’s working from home and she’s good, she’s actually getting stuff done but I’m calling her saying “Hey we gotta switch these patients†and in the background, I hear this and I say “What’s that noise in the background?†and she says “Oh it’s Bluey in the televisionâ€.
But the work from home, it’s a great theory. The reality is…
UV:
Yep, has lots of challenges.
DR Z:
Even if it’s your business and you’re doing it for you, and you purposely get out from your PJs and do it from home, it’s not the same thing as even walking across the street and going into a separate office.
Now we got a group of people and if somebody isn’t busy with their stuff, let’s say today is a slow day with the phones, they can help others out. They are all interacting, working together, helping each other out, cross-training, and doing what you would like to see in a good office.
HireBiz Med Is Not Just Providing One Medical VA, But an Entire Team
UV:
The employees come with an account manager, with an IT support, it comes with a trainer, and now Candy’s doing your QA. So basically, the fact that I have 4 team members who are like doing each one of his own role, that’s the difference. The IT for example, that’s crucial.
DR Z:
Oh, it’s super crucial… Healthcare positions are not dumb people, you can’t be dumb to get through medical school or residency or nursing school or getting an MBA or run a practice… But they’re very smart and very focused on one thing. I’m a little bit different because I like neuro spine but I like delving into other stuff, other practices are relying upon an old model and most hospitals are like this too, that a group of doctors would have a practice manager. They would practice medicine and the practice manager would manage the practice – but not anymore, that’s where the problem is.
Relying on that to manage the business for you is no longer an option and that’s why a lot of this is spiralling and non-functional. What you’ve done is created not just a labor solution but a management solution and an IT solution because all of them come together. 5 years ago, this wouldn’t be possible because the technology prior to COVID was not there and being able to interact and work together seamlessly as if we’re 3 feet away.
It makes a huge difference because I’ll have Teams meetings and we will do work and I will have on the screen employees of mine who are downstairs in this building and employees who are in the Philippines and functionally, there is zero difference because you’ve set up the IT infrastructure to be that way – that’s the key.
The Cost-Effectiveness of HireBiz Med’s Medical VA Team
UV:
I can find people and I can pay them 10 times as much as other people and that’s from my perspective, as the owner of a Filipino company, that’s something that sometimes American clients don’t understand and also the difference between the pricing but the bottom line is the most important, I want you also to talk about this – your savings.
DR Z:
I want to point this out. The level of the difference of the quality because right now, I’ve got 2 pools of employees, and it’s not even like a virtual assistant anymore. In my mind at this point, I got my Filipino office and I’ve got my American office. These are my employees from the Philippines and these are employees in the United States, that’s the way I’m seeing them exactly.
And cost-wise, even before we get there, the quality of the work here, if you look at the average employee versus here and don’t forget, we cherry-pick who we hire and we have some good management people here, but if you look at the vast majority of people that I hire right now, the quality of this one (pointing to the hand he previously referred to as the Filipino employees) is right here and the quality of the other one is down here. Forget about salary for a second. We’re dealing with this.
The cost, when you have someone who is out of country like that, you are not paying for healthcare, which is a big deal. That’s a lot of expense, no unemployment insurance and no paid time off and no holiday days… no issue here.
There’s a huge amount of costs. Here I have to pay even before they get in the door to recruit them, in advertising and stuff for jobs and then when they come in, we have to pay money to train them while here (pertaining to HireBiz), they are pretty much pre-trained. We have to train them on how to do our stuff but they actually have an idea what they’re doing, and then you have a trainer and on top of this. Over here we have to do drug screens and background checks and all this and I don’t have to worry about this here.
The no call no show, they are not entitled to unemployment insurance, they file for it anyway…
All these issues, they’re gone, it evaporates into thin air.
So you have an employee at a desk here. You have a computer and a phone that you have to worry about here. You have air conditioning, you have this and that.
IT support, keyboard, wear and tear on this and that… the toilet getting blocked up because someone flushed down the toilet they were not supposed to – that’s 200 dollars to get the plumber to come over here.. you know, stupid stuff that starts to go away.
Another thing, if I think I need an extra person, as we were going through this, I had 4 employees and I think “Oh man I need to add another one for the phones in the office†‘cause I’m realizing there’s a lot of phone calls and 1 person can’t handle it because there will be calls coming in while he or she is on the phone and in the back of my mind, I was going thru this PTSD moment, “Oh man I’m gonna have to go online and put a job search in, and that’s gonna cost me so much a week. I’m gonna have to deal with people who have no experience with healthcare or whatsoever and they want 3 times what they’re worth and I’m like wait a moment, I’m just gonna text Mars and say I need another personâ€. The next morning, “Hey Dr. Z, would you like to talk to this person, they’re ready to go.†I was like (shocked face) solved! Problem solved. It’s just easy.
The final part of this interview will be published in our next blog post, so stay tuned!Â