Virtual Medical Assistantsfor Doctors,Starting at $10/Hour

Jennifer: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Ask the Doc. I’m your host, Jennifer Filsen, and today I have with me Sanju Zachariah of Portiva. Welcome, Sanju.

Sanju: Thank you, Jennifer. It’s a pleasure.

Jennifer: I’m so glad you’re here. So tell us all about Portiva and what you guys do.

Sanju: Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me. A little background about Portiva: my name is Sanju Zachariah, and I’m the owner and CEO of Portiva at this point. We’re a medical staffing company, and we’re based in Philadelphia. We started back in 2009, and we had a different focus back then. We were engaged in back-office operations for doctors. We serve healthcare practitioners in general, so we have some dentists, some veterinarians, and so on. Back in 2009, we were focused on back-office operations, doing a lot of medical transcription. That was the main bread and butter of the company.

That continued until the pandemic hit. That’s when things shifted a bit because we started getting calls from our clients asking for more help, especially with front-office operations. We had a situation where people couldn’t come into the office anymore, like the medical assistants, because of restrictions. Doctors were strapped, managing everything themselves. So that’s when we started getting calls from doctors asking, “Do you have people who can help us with phone calls, scheduling, billing, and so forth?” That’s when we started our virtual medical assistant service. We added that to Portiva’s portfolio. That’s how it all began.

Jennifer: That is amazing, and you’re absolutely right. We’re already seeing that doctors are busy doing what they do, practicing and seeing patients. But to also be the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker within your own practice, running the back end, running the front desk, doing all the paperwork, and making sure everything’s sterilized, that’s a lot for one person to handle. So it’s great that you guys are providing a service that gives them the help they need. I’d imagine that with the labor shortage we’re currently seeing, you really are a blessing to a lot of these doctors and practices because it’s hard to find help these days. So are you doing temporary staffing specifically for this, placements that end once they’re no longer needed, or is it more of a headhunting model where you’re placing people permanently in these roles?

Sanju: It’s a permanent placement model. Basically what we do, and I don’t want to call it “disruption,” maybe that’s too harsh or extreme, but we’re looking to disrupt the traditional medical staffing industry. In the old-school way, doctors typically reach out to a medical staffing firm and say, “We need a medical assistant or certified medical assistant,” and they’d have to wait weeks, these days even months, because it’s hard to find people who want to work in an office. A lot of people have retooled because of the pandemic. They’re not going back into offices. Every industry is going through this, restaurants, hospitality, travel. People are having a hard time finding good people willing to work on-site. They’d rather work online.

So basically what we do, Jennifer, is maintain a roster of pre-vetted candidates with medical backgrounds. A lot of them are former nurses, and everything can be done remotely using voice-over-IP and conferencing technologies. A medical staff member gets interviewed and, depending on the doctor’s needs, whether it’s billing, medical scribing, patient scheduling, or other specialties, we already have candidates ready. They go through a process we call “Portiva University,” where they receive rigorous training and testing. Once they’re ready to be placed, they go into a queue. When a doctor reaches out to us, we provide a list of candidates, typically two or three, and ask the doctor to choose the one who resonates best with their practice.

Once that happens, they come on board, and we’ve had a wonderful experience so far. Doctors really like them. They’re logged in when the doctor comes into the office and typically log out when the doctor leaves, though sometimes they’re doing follow-up work even after the doctor leaves, like documentation and catching up. The great thing is that we become an extension of the doctor’s office, and it saves the doctor a lot of time. We have doctors who love their virtual assistants because they’re not taking up physical space in the office. We handle all the benefits, including health insurance, retirement plans, and everything else. The doctor just pays a flat hourly rate.

In the worst case, if the doctor doesn’t feel it’s the right fit after a month or so, which does happen sometimes, we can immediately provide another set of candidates. Compared to the traditional model, where a doctor has to wait weeks, go through interviews, and then start all over again if it’s not the right fit, with Portiva we already have candidates lined up and ready to go. We can typically place a doctor with a trained candidate within hours. We also have doctors’ offices that need more than one virtual assistant, or VA. Those are some of the benefits of the service we provide.

Jennifer: Amazing. Oh my gosh, I love your business model. You’re doing some great work, Sanju, truly. Now, we’re running out of time, but I tell you what, we’ll have to have you come back in the future and tell us a little more about your origin story. In fact, let’s do a quick 30 seconds right now. How did you get into this?

Sanju: Yeah, no, it’s a good question. Portiva started back in 2009, and I’m an engineer by trade, but I have family members and friends in the medical field, some of them doctors. The idea came about because of a bad experience I had at a doctor’s office before 2009. I waited about 45 minutes to be checked in because my primary care office was so inundated, with the staff juggling so many different things. That’s when the idea originated. I felt like doctors need help managing their practice. As good as they are, and they truly are medical professionals, their time should be focused on the patient, not on administrative tasks. That’s how it all started, and that’s how the idea originated.

Jennifer: I love it. You didn’t just complain, you found a solution, and now you have a very happy business because of it. I love that. Well, we’ve run out of time, but truly, thank you, Sanju, for being here. And everyone, thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed hearing about the good work Portiva is doing. If you want to find out more, please go to BuzzTV.iab-buzz.com. Thank you so much for watching, and we’ll see you next time. Bye.