Finding talented, reliable and dedicated medical professionals for all positions within your medical practice, hospital or clinic is important, from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technicians, and even medical assistants. In fact, probably none of the professionals listed would be able to do their job without the help of a medical assistant.

After all, some of the duties of a medical assistant could include:

Clerical:

• Answering phones and greeting patients
• Updating and filing patient medical records
• Filling out insurance forms, coding
• Scheduling appointments
• Correspondence, bookkeeping and billing

Clinical:

• Taking patient medical histories
• Explaining a treatment’s procedure to a patient
• Prepping patients for their examination
• Collecting and preparing lab specimens and perhaps performing basic lab tests
• Assisting a physician during patient exams
• Drawing blood
• Authorizing patient prescription refills (as directed)
• Removing sutures and changing dressings
• Taking electrocardiograms

These basic healthcare and administrative duties allow other members of the healthcare team to do their jobs efficiently, allowing them to concentrate on what matters most: taking care of patients.

Medical assistants may be plentiful, but the right medical assistant is not. Who is the right medical assistant? They are:

• Outgoing – the assistant has a lot of face-to-face time with patients
• Someone who can explain medical terms and procedures in words patients can understand clearly
• Compassionate and a good listener
• Self-controlled. Patients may be in pain, have just heard devastating news – or absolutely wonderful news. While the medical assistant may be happy or sad for the patient, they have to be able to keep emotions in check in order to concentrate on what patients need.
• Well organized and proactive
• A problem solver who nonetheless knows how to follow instructions

Such traits can be hard to find in one person. So it can be difficult to find an experienced medical assistant for your Gulf Coast practice or hospital. In fact, medical assistants are in high demand today and many are moving easily from one position to another.

In addition, the demand in the field in Texas’ Gulf Coast region is higher than the national average. The Texas Workforce Commission projects medical assistant job growth in Texas as a whole to be 31.9 percent between 2010 and 2020.

So how can you find, interview and even retain these important members of your medical team? Because finding a great assistant takes a lot of time and effort on the part of your staff (placing a job advertisement, culling through CVs/resumes, preliminary interviews, face-to-face interviews, skills testing (possibly), as well as reference and educational background checking, we highly recommend that you partner with a medical staffing firm such as Team1Medical.

Unlike most staffing firms in the Gulf Coast region, we focus only on staffing and recruiting medical professionals. As a result, we are experts on how to source, vet and place these professionals. We have a large database of medical assistants whom we have already vetted at our fingertips, so if you need someone quickly, we can fill the opening for you almost immediately.

In addition, because we focus only on the medical field, we know how to keep these critical professionals happy on the job and can partner with you to focus on increasing your retention rates. Contact us today to learn more about our medical recruiting services in Houston and the Gulf Coast Region.