What the AMA Says About Virtual Assistants in Private Practices

Administrative work is one of the heaviest costs in a private practice, and it rarely shows up as a line item. It shows up as physician hours lost to documentation, front-desk staff buried in phone calls and prior authorizations, and revenue cycle tasks that slip because there are not enough hands. Virtual assistants have become a common response to that pressure, and the American Medical Association has taken a public position on how they fit into medical practice.

This post summarizes what the AMA has actually said about virtual assistants, including overseas virtual assistants, and how a U.S. practice can apply it responsibly. The goal is to be accurate rather than promotional. The AMA has recognized virtual assistants as a practical staffing model under the right conditions. It has not endorsed any specific vendor or told practices to ship work offshore without controls.

What the AMA Article Covered

In a Nov. 13, 2024 Practice Management article, "Virtual assistants can boost efficiency for private practices," the AMA described how private practices are using virtual assistants to remove administrative burden, improve efficiency, and increase patient access to care.

The article used Green Mountain Partners for Health in Denver as its example. The practice faced rising patient demand, increasing wages, and staffing challenges while running with only one medical assistant supporting the clinic. Its response was to bring on virtual assistants to handle faxes, messages, and billing needs.

The AMA noted that virtual assistants may work locally, elsewhere in the United States, or remotely from another country, and that their popularity has been driven by rising practice costs and reduced local labor availability following the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Tasks the AMA Mentioned

The article listed a range of tasks practices may assign to virtual assistants:

• Reminder calls and scheduling support
• Scribing and documentation support
• Answering phones
• Referrals
• Laboratory orders
• Prior authorizations
• Billing and coding
• Remote patient monitoring and chronic care management support
• Remote patient monitoring data entry
• Inventory or supply monitoring
• Language-support translation

For revenue cycle teams, the strongest overlap is in billing, prior authorization, coding, claim-related support, scheduling, patient access, and general administrative workload reduction. These are exactly the tasks that pull a small practice off balance when volume grows faster than headcount.

The Stronger Source on Overseas Virtual Assistants

The 2024 article speaks to virtual assistants in general. For practices specifically considering overseas staff, the more direct source is an AMA Board of Trustees report, "Proper Use of Overseas Virtual Assistants in Medical Practice," B of T Report 30-A-24.

According to that report, AMA policy H-200.947 was adopted at the 2023 Annual Meeting and supported the concept that properly trained overseas virtual assistants are an acceptable way to staff administrative roles in medical practice, while also calling for guidance to protect physicians, practices, patient outcomes, and overseas medical staff.

The report describes the primary benefit of virtual assistants as offloading administrative duties, decreasing physician workload, and allowing more time for patient care. It lists nonclinical administrative tasks including appointment scheduling, reminders, sending and receiving patient medical records, visit note dictation, prior authorization requests, charge entry, claim submission, claim control, and follow-up. That list reads like a revenue cycle job description, which is why this matters for billing operations and not just front-desk coverage.

The report also acknowledges that practices seeking virtual assistants outside the United States may use job boards organized by geography, and it cites OnlineJobs.ph as an example of a board connecting companies with virtual assistants located in the Philippines.

How to Describe This Accurately

It is worth being precise, because overstating the AMA's position undermines credibility with the exact professionals you are trying to reach. A few careful framings:

• The AMA has recognized virtual assistants as a practical staffing model for private practices, including support for billing, prior authorization, scheduling, documentation, and administrative workflows.
• AMA policy materials support the concept that properly trained virtual assistants, whether in the United States or overseas, can be an acceptable way to staff administrative roles in medical practices, provided practices address compliance, training, data protection, patient experience, and equitable employment considerations.

What the materials do not say is that the AMA recommends offshore outsourcing, endorses any vendor, or treats overseas staffing as automatically appropriate. The support is conditional, and the conditions are the important part.

The Conditions the AMA Emphasized

The AMA did not frame virtual assistants as a plug-and-play fix. The 2024 article advised practices to consider training, working hours, appropriate pay, patient experience, and how the virtual assistant role changes the work of in-person employees. It also made a direct HIPAA point: even when a virtual assistant is hired through a third party, the practice should ensure the person is HIPAA trained on the practice's end.

That last point deserves emphasis. A vendor's annual HIPAA certificate is not the same as the practice confirming that the people touching its data understand its workflows, its systems, and its privacy expectations. Responsibility does not transfer just because the work does.

In practice, that means a few things should be in place before an overseas virtual assistant touches patient data or claims:

• HIPAA training and a Business Associate Agreement. Training that is current and documented, with the required agreement in place before any access to protected health information. See our overview of HIPAA compliance in offshore RCM staffing.
• Secure, controlled access. Access granted through the practice's own systems with least-privilege permissions, not shared logins or unmanaged devices.
• Documented workflows. Clear, written procedures so a remote team member performs tasks the same way an in-house specialist would.
• Supervision and clear task assignment. A defined reporting line and an explicit scope so the role is understood by both the assistant and the in-person staff whose work it changes.
• Quality control. Review of output, error tracking, and feedback loops, the same operational discipline you would apply to any new hire.

Why This Matters for Revenue Cycle Work Specifically

General virtual assistant work and revenue cycle work are not the same thing. Answering phones and scheduling are administrative tasks most capable assistants can learn. Charge entry, claim submission, claim control, prior authorization, and follow-up require people who understand CPT and ICD-10, payer rules, denial codes, EHR and clearinghouse workflows, and what a clean claim looks like.

That distinction is exactly why a practice should not treat a generic VA and a trained medical biller as interchangeable. The AMA's task list happens to include both administrative coverage and revenue cycle functions, but the skill and oversight requirements rise sharply once the work touches claims and payer dollars. A misrouted prior authorization or a mis-entered charge is not a scheduling inconvenience. It is denied revenue and rework.

How RCM Staff Fits This Model

RCM Staff™ provides trained, HIPAA-aware medical virtual assistants and revenue cycle specialists from the Philippines who integrate into a U.S. practice's existing systems and workflows. This is the staff augmentation model the AMA materials describe: properly trained people taking on defined administrative and revenue cycle tasks under the practice's supervision, not a black-box vendor that takes the function offshore and out of view.

That means our staff can support the same tasks the AMA highlighted, including scheduling and reminders, prior authorization, charge entry, claim submission, claim follow-up, and documentation support, while the practice keeps control of its systems, its data, and its patient relationships. Our positioning depends on the conditions the AMA stressed: HIPAA training on the practice's terms, secure and least-privilege access, documented workflows, active supervision, and ongoing quality control.

If you want to scope which tasks to delegate, explore our medical virtual assistant and prior authorization support services, see how we work with solo and group practices, or estimate the impact with our Medical Virtual Assistant ROI calculator. When you are ready, you can request a medical virtual assistant to discuss your workflow.