Hire a dedicated, HIPAA-trained virtual medical assistant (VMA) working inside your EHR from $8.95/hr, trained by our certified billers to stop denials at the front desk. Live in 14 days, month-to-month, replacement guaranteed.
If verification is where your revenue is leaking, our insurance eligibility verification services cover the verification workflow in depth.
A VMA is administrative support. A VMA does not:
Clinical judgment stays with your licensed staff. The VMA prepares, routes, documents, and follows up. Anything approaching clinical decision-making escalates to your team by written protocol, not by the assistant's discretion.
Summit RCM VMA Plans and Rates
| Plan | Coverage | Rate | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essential VMA | 20 hrs/week | $9.50/hr | $823 | $9,876 |
| Dedicated Full-Time VMA | 40 hrs/week | $8.95/hr | $1,550 | $18,600 |
| Specialty RCM-Trained VMA | 40 hrs/week | $11.95/hr | $2,070 | $24,840 |
| Multi-Assistant Group Plan | 2+ full-time | From $7.95/hr | From $1,377 each | From $16,524 each |
Monthly figures use 4.33 weeks per month. Billed monthly in arrears against logged hours.
| Add-on | Rate |
|---|---|
| Setup or implementation fee | $0 |
| Recruiting fee | $0 |
| Extended hours before 7am or after 7pm local | +$2.00/hr |
| Saturday or Sunday coverage | +$2.50/hr |
| Additional hours beyond plan | Billed at plan rate |
| Bundled with Summit RCM billing at 2.99% | $1.00/hr off any plan |
| Contract term | Month to month, 30 days' notice |
| Cost line | In-house admin (full-time) | Summit RCM Dedicated VMA |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary or contracted rate | $38,000 to $48,000 | $18,600 |
| Employer payroll taxes | $2,900 to $3,700 | $0 |
| Health and benefits | $7,000 to $14,000 | $0 |
| PTO, sick leave, holidays | $3,000 to $4,500 | $0 |
| Recruiting and onboarding | $3,000 to $5,000 | $0 |
| Workstation, software seat, floor space | $2,000 to $6,000 | $0 |
| Turnover and replacement cost | $7,600 to $9,600 | $0 |
| Fully loaded annual | $56,000 to $81,000 | $18,600 |
| Annual savings | — | $37,400 to $62,400 |
We map your current workflows, separate what transfers from what stays in-house, define escalation rules, and put the scope in writing. You approve the task list before we recruit.
We select an assistant with relevant specialty and system experience. BAA execution, access provisioning, and device setup run in parallel. You interview the candidate before placement. Wrong fit, we present another.
Your assistant trains on your EHR, your templates, your payer mix, and your protocols, then shadows your staff on live workflows. Work product is reviewed against your standards before independent handling starts.
Your assistant takes ownership of the agreed task list. A Summit RCM supervisor reviews output daily for the first two weeks.
Monthly reporting on task volume, turnaround times, and quality flags. Quarterly reviews to expand or adjust scope. Full productivity typically lands between weeks two and four.
| Comparison | Summit RCM VMA | Medical Scribe | AI Assistant | General VA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary function | Admin and RCM support | Real-time documentation | Note drafting | Generic admin |
| Works in your EHR | Yes | Yes | Partial | Rarely |
| Handles prior authorization | Yes | No | No | No |
| Makes payer phone calls | Yes | No | No | No |
| Trained on denial causes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Handles exceptions and escalations | Yes | Limited | No | Limited |
| BAA and HIPAA training | Yes | Yes | Varies | Usually no |
| 2026 cost | $7.95 to $11.95/hr | $10 to $28/hr | $99 to $500/mo | $5 to $15/hr |
Athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Kareo/Tebra, AdvancedMD, DrChrono, NextGen, Epic, Cerner, Practice Fusion, ChartLogic, Modernizing Medicine, WebPT, Office Ally, CollaborateMD
Availity, Change Healthcare, Waystar, Trizetto, Office Ally
Availity, UHC Provider, NaviNet, Noridian, Palmetto GBA, and regional MAC portals
RingCentral, Zoom, Teams, Slack, Spruce, Klara, and native EHR patient messaging
System not listed? Onboarding includes training on your platform at no additional charge.
Confirm My SystemHealthcare administrative background required. General VAs are not considered.
Medical terminology, EHR navigation, payer process, written and verbal English.
Completed before placement.
Built and delivered by our certified billing and coding team. Covers eligibility, authorization, denial root causes, and documentation standards.
Documented, tested, renewed annually.
Assistants are assigned to specialties they have worked in, not assigned at random.
Supervisor review, monthly scorecards, corrective training where needed.
You get one dedicated assistant, not a rotating pool. Backup is cross-trained on your workflows so absences do not stall your queue.
Administrative workflow varies more by specialty than most staffing vendors admit. We staff against the real requirements.
Prior auth for injections, implantables, and drug screens. Auth tracking across series-based treatment plans. Coding support is covered on our pain management billing page.
Routine foot care coverage rules, at-risk documentation capture, DME coordination.
Cosmetic versus medical necessity screening, pathology routing, biopsy tracking.
Serial injection scheduling, vial tracking, immunotherapy authorization management.
Session authorization limits, telehealth scheduling, recurring benefit verification.
Product authorization, treatment series tracking, home health coordination.
Requisition management, ABN workflow, result delivery, client billing support.
High-volume scheduling, refill queues, care gap tracking.
Cross-provider scheduling, centralized authorization desk, standardized intake.
Your local business hours, any US time zone. Extended and weekend coverage available at the add-on rates above.
English required for every assistant. Bilingual English and Spanish available at no premium.
Month-to-month. Thirty days' written notice. No termination penalty.
No-cost replacement if the fit is wrong. Candidates presented within five business days.
Add hours, add assistants, or shift scope with two weeks' notice.
Monthly performance report covering volume, turnaround, and quality flags. Delivered whether you ask or not.
Send us your weekly admin volume. We return a scoped task list, a recommended hour count, and a confirmed rate within one business day. No sales sequence.
Every review below comes from a practice using a Summit RCM Virtual Medical Assistant.
We were running about 60 prior auths a week across three providers, and two staff members were doing nothing else. Our assistant took the whole queue in week three. Turnaround went from six days to under two, and I got a full-time person back on the front desk where I actually needed her.Practice Manager, Pain Management | 3-provider practice
The front office coordinator role sat open for five months. We ran two hires through it in eighteen months before that and lost both. At $18,600 a year with no benefits load and no recruiting cycle, this stopped being a staffing problem and became a line item.Administrator, Podiatry | 2 locations
We used a general VA before this. She was pleasant, and she scheduled well, but she had no idea a missing authorization number would come back as a denial six weeks later. The Summit assistant flagged three expiring auths in her first month. That is the difference between someone trained by a staffing agency and someone trained by billers.MD, Dermatology | Solo practice
My concern was training time. We run eClinicalWorks with a lot of custom templates, and I did not have staff hours to spare. She shadowed for four days and was working the inbox independently by day twelve. Total internal training investment was maybe six hours of my office manager's time.Practice Manager, Allergy and Immunology | 5-provider group
Tell us your specialty, provider count, and the tasks eating your team's week. We return a task list, an hour recommendation, and a confirmed rate in one business day.
No setup fees. No recruiting fees. Month-to-month. Replacement guaranteed.
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