Apex Healthcare Solutions

Remote medical assistants run from Dallas

Apex Healthcare Solutions provides virtual medical assistants to physicians' offices and healthcare facilities. The company is based in Dallas, Texas, and was founded by a physician who wanted to cut staff burden and cost while improving patient care. Its management team, based in the United States, says it has run actual medical practices for more than a decade, and that its people have set up and managed facilities since 1995. The company began providing medical staffing in 2005 and added virtual assistant services for small and medium-sized facilities in 2012.

Who the assistants are

The company says it hires the top 3 percent of nurses and allied medical graduates who apply, and that a third of the team holds a US nursing registration, a US coding certificate, honours or a graduate degree. It states that it assigns only trained employees, never temporary staff, part-timers, freelancers or contractors. Candidates go through a five step process: auditions, a boot camp, cognitive tests, background checks and a specialized internship.

What they do

• Call handling: answering patient calls quickly. In one project the company says it brought average hold times under a minute and cut the transfer rate from 60 to 25 percent by taking over recurring tasks.
• Insurance verification: hundreds of checks a day by phone, portal or electronic medical record, at scheduling, three days before a visit and 24 hours before it.
• Practice start-up help: support with credentialing, finding a clinic or sublease, phone set up and records systems.
• Accreditation and events: documentation help and site visit preparation for national accreditation, and logistics for medical education events.
• EMR work: experience with several electronic medical record systems, including selecting, implementing and migrating between them.

Hybrid teams

The company argues that cloud practice management and records systems make hybrid practices possible, where on-site and virtual assistants work together under HIPAA privacy and security rules. Such teams can grow and shrink with the seasons. Its clients span neurology, sleep medicine, urgent care, chiropractic, optometry, psychiatry, family practice, gynecology and counseling.

Apex Healthcare Solutions provides remote medical assistants to doctors' offices and healthcare facilities. The Dallas, Texas company was started by a physician, and its US-based managers have run medical practices themselves; most of its virtual staff are nurses who pass training before being assigned.

Services

• Virtual medical assistants: remote staff who answer calls quickly and handle front and back office tasks.
• Insurance verification: high volumes of daily eligibility checks.
• Medical billing and clinical processes: billing help and support for practice workflows.
• Medical office staffing: on-site and virtual staffing, including help setting up a new practice.
• Event support: logistics for medical education events, from registration to CME accreditation applications.

Who it works with

Small and medium-sized medical practices and facilities in the US, as well as business offices.

Key facts

• Based in: Dallas, Texas
• History: staffing since 2005, virtual assistant service since 2012
• Staff: mostly nurses, only full-time trained employees
• Support: quality assurance, daily reports and IT help for each assistant