Staffing the Virtual Front Desk with HIPAA-Compliant Healthcare Virtual Assistants

[00:30] [Music] hello and welcome back to BBC Global

[01:00] Services our webinar series that we have been doing and we're extremely excited to have you here today BBC Global Services is your go-to source for HIPAA-compliant healthcare virtual assistance and today on the show we have got an amazing guest along with myself Nathan Bush I am your host we have got our guest Karl Karl how are you Karl is the co-founder Karl Kolbeck is the co-founder and managing member of

[01:30] Rose City Physical Therapy hey Karl and welcome thanks for joining us today thank you I appreciate you having me on yeah yeah exciting exciting times I mean it is amazing that technology is revolutionizing and changing the face of physical therapy practice not from the physical therapy and the mechanical standpoint but from the administrative assistance standpoint and the way that we can do things uh just today I know that uh uh you've been working with BBC Global Services for some time and so you

[02:00] are a client of ours but I I before we get into that why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself your background and kind of how you got into Physical Therapy oh god I've been doing this a long time I've been practicing for 32 years I've been in the uh outpatient Physical Therapy Arena the whole time about the first 15 years of my career were in clinic full clinical practice uh spent extensive time working on manual therapy certification and my fellowship and then I had an opportunity after about 15 years practice to start

[02:30] to uh teach and I was teaching with the North American Institute of Orthopaedic Manual Therapy for a while and then I branched off and formed my own continuing education division and was teaching uh nationally shoulder girdle rehab basically on the continuing education circuit for about 10 years oh wow and that that market started to change the online education component started to take off quite a bit and there was a big softening in

[03:00] around 2012 2013 of attendance to Brick and Mortar courses and I was considering building an online platform I got some RFPs from some developers to build a nice platform and get into the online educational aspect but then my wife at the time was working at the uh practice we now own and the gentlemen at the time who owned it were looking to retire and they talked to her about buying the practice it's a large single site practice it's a busy practice and she

[03:30] didn't want to do it alone so I shifted gears and um we bought the practice from them in June of 2014 it'll be 10 years into this coming June and I kind of segued out of teaching and put my time and energy into managing and owning a practice uh jointly with my wife and being more in the community and less on the road and it's been awesome that's incredible so I mean it seems like a dream come true working with your wife how's that been like how's that how's that relationship work when you

[04:00] work all day with somebody and then you're also with them at home all day for me that would be like heaven spending all that time with my wife how is it for you what the right that's the right answer you know it works really well uh we don't see each other about an hour a day besides when we're sleeping and our eyes are closed uh but um we we tend to come to work about the same time we leave about the same time sometimes we have little different schedules but we are together a lot and we do a really good job I think balancing the ownership of a business as a married couple and

[04:30] then still maintaining a balance in our personal life outside these four walls I I will say after about the first two years of business ownership as a married couple we we are both very tenacious and and we we didn't have a good delineation of our roles and we got some business coaching and we took some a battery of tests skill set tests and strength tests and our coach really defined Sasha's strengths versus mine and fortunately

[05:00] they were really quite opposite of each other so it was easy then to delegate and say okay who who's head of this division who who's in charge of the financial division of the business who's in charge of the HR human resource division so Sasha wears a couple hats that are not my strengths nor my interest it worked out very very nicely after we got our coaching and then I wear a couple hats that aren't her strengths interests so that really helped balance us and give us Lanes to stay in and give our staff lanes and

[05:30] direction of who to who to go to for what question concern problem issue it really helped balance just the sense of organization in the company yeah that's incredible I've done a lot of research and reading with a gentleman by the name of John Maxwell he wrote The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth and a series of other books and he always talks about equipping leaders and he when he talks about equipping he said he did a lot of counseling which was focusing on people's weaknesses but what he loved

[06:00] about the concept of equipping people was that was focusing on their strengths and so it sounds like the coach that you worked with was able to separate out what your strengths are versus what her strengths are and get you guys working in your vein your zone of Genius uh so that you could be more productive within your business well exactly it it was extremely helpful for the whole the whole team here just for everybody for us definitely as business owners and then for us as husband and wife outside these four walls it was healthy on all fronts it was just fantastic awesome so

[06:30] Karl what's what was the problem you had then prior to enrolling with BBC Global Services HIPAA-compliant Healthcare virtual assistant program and combining it with a virtual uh Sally technology we had Virtual Sally on the show a couple weeks ago and so I'm interested to know what what was the problem you were having before combining BBC Global Services with Virtual Sally well like any post pandemic the the thing that

[07:00] piqued our interest with regards to Bringing virtual reception on board was the labor shortage Staffing shortages in the labor market we were going through challenges like every other business in the in the in the in the world um healthcare has had challenges uh above and beyond other businesses in some regards so we had to look at solutions to get our front desk staffed we've got a rockstar at the front desk he's he's an amazing amazing front desk person customer service delivery he just uh I don't know how keeps it together

[07:30] sometimes because he was he was doing the job of two people uh we we had another uh staff member there who got pregnant and she was going to take her maternity leave and then and then and rightly so and we completely supported chose to be a stay-at-home mom so that left us staffed with one FTE at the front desk when in reality we should be at 2.5 so we were blessed to have Josh on board because he kept us afloat with regards to that but also it's just you can't do that forever so I was at the Private Practice Section in Denver two

[08:00] years ago and Virtual Sally was there at their kiosk as another one or two vendors and it just sort of piqued my interest I'm not an early adopter of technology I I'm really uh quite wait a few few few years before the next great thing comes out but I started to look into it a little bit and when I got back from PPS that was in 2022 I talked to my wife about these virtual reception platforms and and we we we set up a call with Virtual Sally we set up a call with a couple others and we learned of them

[08:30] and they did demos and we entertained questions and we we really did a lot of due diligence and then we once we decided to go with Virtual Sally platform we had to say okay now we need virtual reception how are we going to do this and and you can orchestrate it anyway you want we could have hired our own train them they could work from home locally we could offshore we hired a us-based company we use BBC Global we we did due diligence just like you did with the virtual reception platform the hardware software platform we did our

[09:00] due diligence in choosing our service vendor if you will of the virtual receptionists and from the first moment we met with the group with Mike and the rest of the group at BBC Global we knew we were going to go with BBC Global their customer service was great they weren't pushy in sales by any means uh they they wanted to learn our business they wanted to learn the job description of what we need they asked us for the job description the hat if you will of the the front desk coordinator position

[09:30] no other service vendor asked that they didn't seem as invested in what we're looking for and finding somebody who could fit our culture and the job description we need and they vetted our candidates based on that and that really with us so the real problem I'm hearing you say and the real challenge was is that you had people that were out in this front desk roll and you still needed to be able to fill that role filled with quality talent and a good

[10:00] candidate and it's was was it difficult for you to find people was it was it becoming frustrating with like a turnover situation what was your specific issue that why you needed a solution for that front desk it was challenging to find people uh it was you know a couple years post pandemic with Big labor shortage and the escalation of costs the the expense to bring on a virtual or excuse me expense to bring on an in-house front desk person got pretty cost prohibitive uh because the the

[10:30] hourly rate increases were escalating above what we could afford um healthcare reductions are occur in are occurring you know and operating costs with the Consumer Price Index the last two years have escalated exponentially for our lease space supplies Etc so with all these escalating costs and increases in the the demands that people are looking for with regards to a front desk reception position and reduce health care cost it became very cost prohibitive and that's one of the main reasons we

[11:00] also started to look into virtual reception is because there's a big Cost Containment with regards to um offshoring our virtual reception yeah so the next question I' have for you I appreciate you joining on the show if you're just watching for the first time uh we are talking with Karl Kolbeck who is the managing member and founder of Rose City he utilizes the Virtual Sally technology and also the BBC Global Services virtual assistant Pro program a hipa compliant Healthcare

[11:30] virtual assistant and he's been uh a wonderful client of ours and he just explained to you his problem that he was having was finding people at affordable prices post pandemic it was very difficult and maybe you're having that problem maybe you're having that challenge if you're having that problem or challenge I just encourage you to reach out to us and if this program is interesting to you at all or this information is interesting to you at all I highly encourage you to reach out to BBC Global Services and just check us out see if this would be the right fit for you so moving on Karl why did you

[12:00] choose to sign up and enroll with BBC Global Services then for your HIPAA-compliant Healthcare virtual assistant specifically BBC there was other organizations you said you vetted what was the Difference Maker uh customer service and they truly had a vested interest in us uh from the first time we contacted them they're expeditious in reaching out they're always very personable and as I mentioned they they had a vested interest in us and what type of candidate we were looking for to fit our role just weren't looking for a

[12:30] virtual reception we were looking for someone that that understood our core values and fit our core values even though they're remote and we were looking for someone who could fit the job description we needed and BBC Global asked for that job description so they could vet people and send us video vignette interviews of self-introduction so from the gecko there was a vested interest in BBC and that really was the preliminary decider to go with them and just the engagement from the whole team everybody keeps in really good communication so that was a big factor also what's a

[13:00] good core value that you have that we BBC Global Services helped you identify well we got five core values uh first F first and foremost is being useful and we wanted to have somebody who would be engaging and be able to be helpful on the screen face to face with patients as they're checking in and and scheduling Etc but someone who is willing off the screen when they're not active with patient to take on another administrative roles so not only does our receptionist engage with patients

[13:30] and schedule patients and and check patients in they process co-pays typical front desk activity but we have a business Enterprise Edition of Google suite and that's a HIPAA-compliant so we have shared folders and we scan a lot of information into a shared folder and our virtual receptionist on the background is doing a lot of administrative support tasks when he's not directly engage with patients to help with getting the proper documents attached to patients chart IDs um

[14:00] insurance cards Etc and now starting to schedule patients for us too so this is going to be a little bit more of a tough question to answer uh because I'm going to require you to think about things as if this relationship never happened so as a result of implementing the Virtual Sally technology and the HIPAA-compliant Healthcare virtual assistant through BBC Global Services what has been the outcome that you've received so far and what do you where do you think you would be if you had not enrolled in the BBC Global Services Program

[14:30] Karl that's a good question um had we not brought on BBC's services and virtual reception through them I don't I'm not too optimistic we would have been able to hire especially hire a viable good candidate for our Front Desk position there continues to be labor shortage and and Staffing shortages in a

[15:00] lot of friends healthcare uh clinics on the administrative side of things so I think we'd still be struggling with finding a good candidate someone willing to to work uh much less any potential candidate at all and then the risk of that is Josh who like I said was with us as a 1.0 FTE for about a year and a half by his own filling a 2.5 FTE role I don't think he could have hung on much longer he's a rock star he's got a lot of fortitude but to ask that of him to

[15:30] fill a 2.5 FTE role by himself or much more than the year and a half I I think eventually something would have gave and I I would completely understand why he wouldn't have been able to continue on his own at that capacity and quite personally probably would have looked for something else and that would have been a big risk and a big loss to us because he's a glue to our front desk yeah turn make making sure we maintain and retain those people long term is incredibly important and having the

[16:00] ability to provide additional support and resources for those people especially across platforms and different locations like Virtual Sally gives the option for um and to have all of the additional administrative support that comes with having the virtual assistant there like they can interact with patients and speaks English well and does all these things I would imagine it's pretty critical to not burning out your staff and making sure that your team members enjoy what they do but you can't afford anymore order to hire somebody in a entrylevel position

[16:30] and afford to pay them what's required in order to bring somebody even in entry-level into your organization anymore it almost seems like that entry-level position is almost moving towards more of a virtual assistant virtual receptionist how do you feel about that I completely agree I completely agree we still have one guy up front actively but we're in a unique situation um I have talked to a few clinics that have maybe a smaller operation a two or three FTE type Clinic which is solo and freestanding and

[17:00] they're completely virtual we and I'll elaborate on that we have Josh here still present physically at the front desk but we're in a a three-story medical complex where the Second Story second floor is a Day Surgery Center Orthopedic Day Surgery Center the third floor is an orthopedic surgeon group and then we're on the fourth floor we're all independent businesses but we have a fantastic working relationship and it's not uncommon where midday we'll get patients walking up that were just down to see the orthopedic surgeon and they're coming up with a script to

[17:30] be started ASAP they're coming up with a script to physically handing us one and sometimes we have to go down to the second floor to do assisted device fitting crutch training discharge planning for patients who had day surgery so they can go home safe so the the need for someone physically at our front desk is really to be tangible and available for when people the the staff from second or third floor come up Flor come up and are looking for one of the

[18:00] therapists to be able to come down and help them so it's a unique situation in that sense where our virtual receptionist jwa who's a rock star he's awesome um he wouldn't be able to coordinate and orchestrate those types of services in this unique situation yeah yeah that's incredibly important that you have that support then and your building specifically um before we go too much further and I know that your time is valuable but I would

[18:30] like to know the answer to this question because we have a lot of people who are thinking about utilizing Virtual Sally in BBC Global Services so if there's anyone on the fence about enrolling in BBC Global Services HIPAA-compliant Healthcare virtual assistant program and they're watching this program right now what would you tell that person about their decision I would highly encourage it and I had this I had dinner last night with a a friend who's a a multi a

[19:00] partner in a multic clinic practice in the Portland metro area and um I told him we onboarded virtual reception about a year ago and and sung Virtual Sally praises and sung BBC Global praises and talked about the experience and he really piqued his interest and in fact he's going to stop by one day and just check out the system and watch it in Action a little bit so if anybody's on the fence about it I highly encourage exploring this I think it's a fantastic opportunity uh to bring your Staffing up the par if

[19:30] you've got you know multiclinic settings the platform can provide services where you can manage multiclinic settings I was just really impressed with that aspect of the software that Virtual Sally has and then the quality of candidates that BBC Global forwarded to us after they learned our job description and what we're looking for we got some really good candidates they sent in three or four minute little self- introductory emails talked about themselves how they could help us why

[20:00] they could help us what their experience was and we were able to select the candidates we chose from and then meet with them virtually uh via a virtual interview and feeli our questions to them and get a feel for them and and how they respond and do they fit so ultimately we got to make our decision using BBC Global so you're not just provided a virtual receptionist you don't know G is here at 6:45 a.m. opening the clinic and he's entertaining patients until he's done at 3:15 p.m.

[20:30] Monday through Friday he's part of our staff and we recognize him when we give our core values at our monthly meeting if gwa goes above and beyond jwa shouted out and mention in our core value stories so even though he's not hired by us per se and we Outsource to BBC Global we feel he is so part of our staff and BBC did a fantastic job vending the right people for us and it made it really quite seamless so I I just encourage people to explore this I think it's a fantastic Avenue for many reasons

[21:00] yeah during my conversation with margan Wendy from virtual s they actually were talking about the human side of the technology that they had put together meaning that they really made a piece of technology that created a opportunity for people to interact with that piece of technology but it be a human that they're having the interaction with so there's an authenticity to it and a technology G pce to it and so the Human

[21:30] Side they were telling me about a couple of stories they might have happened in your clinic or not of some of the things of where the person was able to participate as part of your team um what are some of the human stories from your virtual assistant and excuse me what was his name again gwa gwa that's right tell me some stories about gwa and how he's became part of your team and how he's interacted with the staff and the patients in a team approach in a humanistic way that it's not a virtual person sitting behind their there's a real live person interacting and helping

[22:00] patients in this Virtual Sally correct correct oh a couple examples and you know it's it's first of February now and so the holiday just came and went we had a handful of patients asking us how they can get a gift to giwa for Christmas you know they bring in treats they bring in cookies they bring in little thank you appreciations for the staff and and J's in the Philippines and he's not tangible it's like how can gwa share in this and and gwa I want to bring you something how can I send you something so patients just want to they Embrace him and we were a little worried about that you know it's like okay how are patients

[22:30] going to embrace this especially maybe the elders that maybe aren't quite so techsavvy well the interface is so easy to use it it doesn't take you know a challenging there's no challenges to engage gwa whatsoever any virtual reception with the platform yeah so patients just in that regards they feel he's like just part of being at the front desk you know he's a live person every once in a while a couple people have said is he virtual you know I mean AI virtual and a couple people have asked that uh but but no he's not by any

[23:00] means and and part of it's in just because AI is such a big thing right now so that's it and then you know G's on our website he's got a presence on our website as our patient care coordinator virtual receptionist and gwa was featured in our newsletter that we send to our staff we do a staff highlight when we hire a new staff and and in our print newsletter goes out to about 3,000 of our members every month of our past and present patients GOI was featured in there and then that gets transferred into the digital email newsletter so

[23:30] he's really part of our team and we promote him as that and patients I think really Embrace him by that and they miss him when he's not there today he's not there he's got a nice family obligation and so he's not there so we got a signage up please check in at the front desk G's got a day off and they call I want to see gwa I want to check in with gwa it's like well okay I'm what am I mince meet that's so funny that's good yeah so patients have really embraced it now he's very Charming he's got just the the the personal engagement that you

[24:00] would hope from somebody who's really he's as much a face of the business now as Josh is when you walk in off the elevator you know whoever's at your front end is really so much the impression of your business and and our virtual receptionist gives us an amazing first impression he's part of us and people know him and like him and and they he's he's their go-to and they check in yeah whe I mean whether it's dressing up for Halloween or participating in the breast cancer campaigns or just being a friendly face

[24:30] it's so important to understand that there's a personal people component when you utilize a healthcare virtual assistant who's HIPAA-compliant through BBC Global Services this isn't AI this is a human this is a body this is somebody that cares about your patients that cares about you and really what I love about BBC Global Services and working for the organization is it's not just we find you a person and hand them off there's a managerial backbone there's a reporting backbone that we've got involved in the situation there's

[25:00] also this program that we call an augmented Leadership Model meaning your leadership skills with your team members matter it's not just assign tasks and responsibilities to somebody and then forget that person exists the same way that Karl's talking about how you incorporate them on your team and make them feel like they're a part of something is the same way that you incorporate your leadership with them on the daily meetings or the weekly meetings or the huddles or the calls or the feedback that you give your team member and Karl uh before we wrap up here we got just a

[25:30] couple of minutes what are some final thoughts that you have based upon the conversation and things that we've talked about about BBC Global Services and Virtual Sally and your program that you have in your in your offices um I'm glad we adopted early I think we're early adopters of this technology uh and and I tend to not be an early adopter as I mentioned before and without reservation I'm very glad we adopted early and I can you know share

[26:00] my experience with people who have that interest my wife and I we do a lot of due diligence when we look at new equipment when we do hiring uh when we bring on services and if anybody is questioning a selection of choice you can lean on me for questions you can always reach out but uh trust we did a lot of due diligence I would just really promote just go straight to BBC Global and I think you'll have a great experience save a lot of time energy doing a lot of the painful work we did and you can just

[26:30] trust my recommendation on BBC for that and the Virtual Sally platform also uh it's just been a fantastic melding of of two vendors a software Hardware aspect with the provider of the virtual receptionist in the human connection aspect well Karl I have to say thank you very much for being on the show today thank you for taking time and thank you for being here with us wow thank you for having me appreciate it it was nice to meet you guys if you are looking for a HIPAA-compliant medical virtual

[27:00] assistant look no further than BBC Global Services on today's show we talked with Karl Kolbeck we talked all about his problem that he was having before finding the right staff member in order to be able to fill that front desk role post pandemic and so we saw the labor shortages we saw the increase in wages and he needed to make a decision he made a decision to select uh Virtual Sally with BBC Global Services is his solution for that in that he feels that he would have lost critical team members had they not gone through the process of

[27:30] selecting BBC Global Services and Virtual Sally and lastly uh with him and his wife as they continue to build Rose City the clinic and to build that into the Juggernaut that it is uh from the physical therapy standpoint he really appreciates and loves the human connection and interaction with patients and staff and uh adding additional team members and support through BBC Global Services uh who participate on his team as a team member they just happen to work get their paycheck from BBC Global Services

[28:00] uh however they are servicing the clients and the staff and on the team of the physical therapist and so if you need that please reach out go to BBC Global Services.com that's www.BBC Global Services.com and check out a HIPAA-compliant Healthcare virtual assistant with Virtual Sally and see what we can do at BBC Global Services for you thank you very much guys appreciate you tuning in for our webinar today if you have any questions go ahead and post those in the comments

[28:30] uh we'll be happy to get back to you on any of those questions that you have from today's show and once again thank you to Karl Kolbeck and his wife with Rose City uh and Virtual Sally for making this whole program possible today thank you guys very much have a good afternoon