How Much Does a Virtual Medical Administrative Assistant Cost?

The rate is $10.00 to $12.65 per hour, and where a candidate sits in that band depends on experience, education, location, role, specialty, language, schedule, and whether the placement is full or part time. Rates generally begin around $10 an hour and may range up to approximately $12.65.

In the numbers a practice budgets with, full time at 40 hours a week is roughly $1,600 to $2,024 a month, and part time at 20 hours is about half that. Billing follows hours worked, so the monthly figure tracks the schedule rather than sitting fixed like a salary. Because this role is broad, most practices scope the hours against the heaviest queue first and widen from there.

How Does That Compare With an In-House Seat?

Medical secretaries and administrative assistants earn a median $45,930 a year, or $22.08 an hour (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025). That is the offer-letter number, and it is the smaller part of what the seat costs.

The rest is the employer load. For office and administrative support occupations in private industry, BLS puts total benefits at about 48.6% on top of wages, split across legally required benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and workers' compensation, then insurance and retirement, then paid leave and supplemental pay (Source: BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026).

Wage for Medical secretaries and administrative assistants from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Load percentages from BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026, office and administrative support occupations, private industry. Cost per hire from the SHRM 2025 Benchmarking Report. The virtual column uses 2,080 hours, a full 52 weeks at 40 hours, so it is not flattered by assuming unworked weeks. Honest Taskers does not publish a savings percentage; run the comparison on your own salary and hours.

What Is Included in the Hourly Rate?

The rate covers recruiting and screening, HIPAA training with quarterly data privacy refreshers, background checks, remote-work screening, and dedicated Customer Success support. It also covers unlimited replacement support if a placement turns out to be the wrong fit.

What it does not cover is your software. EHR seats, practice-management logins, and phone-system licences stay on the subscriptions you already pay for, and the assistant works inside them on access your practice grants and can revoke at any time. A virtual medical administrative assistant can work within a HIPAA-compliant arrangement when a BAA is signed. Compliance itself stays with the practice, because it lives in the practice's own policies and daily conduct, and no staffing company can promise it on the practice's behalf.

What Does a Medical Administrative Assistant Own for That Rate?

This is the broadest of the front-office roles, which is what makes the hourly comparison favourable: one seat covers scheduling, intake, records, and inbox work that would otherwise be split across two or three partial jobs.

On the calendar, the assistant books new and returning patients into the right provider and visit type, reschedules and cancels under the practice's own timing and policy rules, runs confirmation calls and texts, works recall and follow-up lists so patients due for care get back on the books, and backfills the waitlist when a slot opens.

On the record, the assistant handles new-patient intake forms and demographic entry before the first visit, then keeps charts updated and documents filed so the record stays current. That combination is the reason a practice buying "administrative support" is rarely buying one task. The virtual medical administrative assistant guide covers the role end to end. For the full picture, see medical administrative assistant duties and responsibilities and the benefits of a virtual medical administrative assistant.

When Does an In-House Administrative Assistant Still Make Sense?

Keep the role in house when the work needs a body in the building: greeting arrivals, running the waiting room, handling walk-ins, taking payment at a window, and managing anything paper that physically arrives.

Most practices end up running both. One on-site person owns the lobby and the in-person flow, while a virtual assistant absorbs the phone queue, the confirmations, the intake paperwork, and the filing that keeps pulling the front desk away from the people standing in front of them. That split is augmentation, not replacement, and it is the arrangement that tends to hold.

If you are comparing vendors rather than models, our roundup of the best virtual medical administrative assistant companies compares published rates and terms.

How Do You Test the Cost Before Committing?

New clients may receive a two-week working trial with their first selected candidate, subject to Honest Taskers' current service terms. The trial runs on live work rather than a scripted demo, so the comparison is against real volume.

Two weeks on a live queue usually shows the things that matter: how many calls get answered, whether intake paperwork arrives complete before the visit, and whether the filing backlog stops growing. Measure your own before-and-after rather than a national average, because the baseline that matters is your practice's.

Talk to Honest Taskers about administrative coverage for your practice.