Last updated: 2026-08-24
Honest Taskers, Proactive LTC Consulting, and Richter lead this year's shortlist of virtual medical assistant companies for skilled nursing facilities, seven firms ranked on the certification their staff hold, published pricing, commitment terms, and what each publishes about itself. The credential that decides this category is specific: AAPACN's RAC certification for anyone touching the minimum data set. Two firms here name it. Of the seven, two publish a rate and two state a signed BAA.
Disclosure: Honest Taskers publishes this list and appears at position 1. We're judged on the same five published criteria as every other company here.
At a glance
- 1Honest Taskers
- 2Proactive LTC Consulting
- 3Richter
- 4Zimmet Healthcare Services Group
- 5SimiTree
- 6Healthcare Provider Solutions
- 7Staffingly
How we chose the best companies for skilled nursing facilities
We ranked these firms on five facts, each read at the provider's own website in August 2026: the certification their staff hold, whether MDS work is a named service, published pricing, commitment terms, and the HIPAA and Business Associate Agreement position in each firm's own words. Certification leads because the minimum data set drives PDPM payment, case mix index and publicly reported quality measures at the same time, and the recognized credential for the people who touch it is AAPACN's RAC certification. Interim availability matters almost as much, because the most common reason a facility looks for help here is that the MDS nurse has resigned and the assessment schedule does not pause. Note that this list deliberately excludes generalist virtual assistant firms: a facility choosing MDS support is choosing among post-acute specialists, not among agencies that place receptionists.
The seven compared
All seven on the same columns, Honest Taskers first because we publish the list. Facts were read in August 2026 and change often, so treat them as a starting point, not a quote.
| Company | What the firm offers | Certification stated | Published pricing | Model | Notable verified facts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Honest Taskers | Administrative layer around the assessment: calendar upkeep, reference date tracking, document chasing, care plan meeting logistics, records for audits | No MDS credential claimed; pool includes licensed nurses and physicians | $10.00–$12.65/hr | Hourly, no minimum; two-week trial | BAA before PHI access; HIPAA compliance verified by Accountable; SOC 2 audit ready; 99.6% average monthly retention |
| Proactive LTC Consulting | MDS training, audits and consulting; remote MDS coding analysis for PDPM, CMI and QM accuracy; PDPM coding audits; interim MDS staffing | AAPACN RAC-certified MDS nurse consultants | Not publicly listed | Consulting plus interim staffing | Also QAPI, infection prevention, medical review and home health consulting; Evansville IN; states 90% of SNFs have missed PDPM coding opportunities |
| Richter | Outsourced revenue cycle, accounting and controller services, Medicaid eligibility, resident trust fund management, ADR and TPE audit support, QAPI, PointClickCare consulting | Named staff hold RN, RAC-CT, CPA and CGMA | Not publicly listed | Outsourced functions and consulting | Serves skilled nursing and LTC, home health, hospice and senior living; 90+ professionals; Twinsburg OH |
| Zimmet Healthcare Services Group | Reimbursement consulting covering MDS accuracy, case management and reimbursement strategy; zPAX technology | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Consulting plus technology | Skilled nursing only, with no home health or hospice line diluting focus; positions itself as "Rationalizing the SNF Economy" |
| SimiTree | Post-acute coding and documentation review, compliance and regulatory risk, cost reporting, credentialing, recruiting and interim leadership | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Outsourced services and consulting; 48-hour coding turnaround | 98% stated accuracy in coding review; AI-assisted coding suggests codes from documentation; 1,200+ experts, 16,000+ agencies served, 750+ active clients |
| Healthcare Provider Solutions | Billing, coding and clinical or operations compliance consulting, medical review consulting, consultant on call | Coders hold HCS-D; hospice coders HCS-D and HCS-H; named staff RN, HCS-D, COS-C | Not publicly listed | Outsourced services plus consulting | 25 years; 130+ agencies; 100% US-based support; 15+ EMR systems; "HIPAA Compliant & Secure"; CHAP and ACHC certified |
| Staffingly | Documentation, billing, coding, prior authorization and front office staffing | Not publicly listed | $399/wk at 45 hrs; $349 at 5+; $299 at 10+ | Flat weekly staffing | Signed BAA; SOC 2 Type II; ISO/IEC 27001:2022; $5M E&O and cyber cover (company-reported); India, Pakistan, Bangladesh; AI-assisted, human-verified |
Read the certification column first. Two firms name a credential that qualifies someone to touch the minimum data set, and one of those, Proactive LTC Consulting, offers remote MDS coding analysis and interim MDS staffing as named services. Everything else here is either adjacent expertise or administrative capacity, both of which are useful and neither of which can sign an assessment. Note also that the two firms publishing a price are the two making no MDS certification claim, which tells you something honest about what can be bought cheaply in this category.
1. Honest Taskers
Best for: facilities whose MDS nurse spends more of the week chasing documents than coding assessments.
Pricing: $10.00–$12.65/hrCompliance: BAA; HIPAA verified by Accountable; SOC 2 audit readyCommitment: Hourly, no minimumFirst hire: Two-week working trial
An MDS coordinator's week splits into two sharply different jobs. One is protected clinical work: coding the assessment and signing it. The other is coordination, and it is most of the hours. Building and maintaining the assessment schedule, tracking assessment reference dates so nothing goes late, chasing therapy notes, nursing documentation and physician orders needed for the look-back period, arranging and minuting care plan meetings, and assembling records when an additional documentation request arrives. Honest Taskers places staff who work your time zone inside your electronic health record on that second job, so certified time goes back to certified work. Staff are trained on HIPAA and data privacy under a dedicated compliance officer, a Business Associate Agreement is signed before anyone touches protected health information, and HIPAA compliance is verified by Accountable rather than asserted internally. The talent pool includes licensed nurses and physicians. Rates run $10.00 to $12.65 an hour by role, background, schedule and location, billed hourly with no minimum, and the firm reports 99.6% average monthly retention. See the remote MDS coordinator service for role detail.
Limitation: the firm claims no AAPACN RAC certification and holds no US nursing license for this purpose, so MDS coding and assessment sign-off stay with your certified nurse or one of the certified consultancies below, and Honest Taskers describes its security environment as SOC 2 audit ready rather than holding a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification of the kind Staffingly publishes.
2. Proactive LTC Consulting
Best for: facilities that need certified MDS expertise remotely, either to review coding or to cover a vacancy.
Pricing: Not publicly listedCompliance: Not publicly listedCommitment: Consulting plus interim staffingCertification: AAPACN RAC-certified
Proactive LTC Consulting is the only firm on this list built around this exact job. Its MDS support is delivered by AAPACN RAC-certified nurse consultants and covers training, audits, consulting and interim staffing, with remote MDS coding analysis aimed specifically at PDPM, case mix index and quality measure accuracy. It also runs PDPM coding audits to find assessment errors and missed coding opportunities, and states that 90% of skilled nursing facilities have missed PDPM coding opportunities. Around the MDS work sit clinical nurse consulting, compliance, facility assessment, infection prevention and control, legal nurse consulting, medical review, QAPI, rehabilitation oversight, regulatory support and reimbursement, plus home health consulting. It operates from Evansville, Indiana with remote and onsite support, and reports that 50% of its long-term care mock survey clients had a deficiency-free annual survey.
Limitation: it publishes no pricing and no compliance or security position, and lists no individual staff credentials beyond the RAC certification claim, so confirm who is assigned to your facility and get the Business Associate Agreement in writing.
3. Richter
Best for: facilities that want RAC-CT clinical expertise and outsourced revenue cycle from the same firm.
Pricing: Not publicly listedCompliance: Not publicly listedCommitment: Outsourced functions and consultingScale: 90+ professionals
Richter positions itself as a long-term and post-acute care performance advisor, and the range is why it ranks here. Named staff hold RN and RAC-CT credentials alongside CPA and CGMA qualifications, which is an unusual pairing and a useful one, because MDS accuracy and reimbursement are the same problem seen from two ends. Services span clinical consulting, additional documentation request management, targeted probe and educate audit support, QAPI consulting, outsourced revenue cycle management, outsourced controller and accounting services with monthly financials, Medicaid eligibility work, resident trust fund management, and electronic health record and PointClickCare consulting. Settings covered are skilled nursing and long-term care, home health, hospice and senior living, delivered by more than 90 professionals from Twinsburg, Ohio.
Limitation: MDS coordination is not a named service line, it publishes no pricing and no compliance position, and the model is consulting and outsourced functions rather than a coordinator embedded in your team.
4. Zimmet Healthcare Services Group
Best for: operators who want MDS accuracy treated as a reimbursement strategy question rather than a documentation task.
Pricing: Not publicly listedCompliance: Not publicly listedCommitment: Not publicly listedFocus: Skilled nursing only
Zimmet Healthcare Services Group is unusual here for being entirely skilled nursing focused, with no home health or hospice line competing for attention. Its reimbursement work explicitly covers MDS accuracy, case management and reimbursement strategy together, which is the right frame for an operator whose case mix index is underperforming for reasons nobody has isolated, and it pairs consulting with its zPAX technology. Its own positioning, rationalising the skilled nursing economy, is a planning job rather than an operational one, and that is genuinely what some facilities need before they change anything at the assessment level.
Limitation: it publishes no staff credentials, no pricing, no delivery location, no compliance position and no client numbers, which makes it the least verifiable entry here from public sources alone.
5. SimiTree
Best for: post-acute operators wanting documentation review, compliance work and interim leadership recruiting under one contract.
Pricing: Not publicly listedCompliance: Not publicly listedCommitment: Outsourced servicesTurnaround: 48 hours on coding
SimiTree brings the largest bench on this list, reporting 1,200 or more industry experts, 16,000 or more agencies served and 750 or more active clients. Its services cover revenue cycle management, billing, coding and documentation review, compliance and regulatory risk, consulting, cost reporting, credentialing and contracting, data analysis, mergers and acquisitions, and recruiting with interim leadership. That last item is the relevant one for a facility carrying an MDS or clinical leadership vacancy. Coding and documentation review carries a stated 98% accuracy rate and a 48-hour standard turnaround, with AI-assisted technology suggesting codes from the documentation.
Limitation: its post-acute focus is home health, hospice and behavioral health rather than skilled nursing, it names no coder or MDS certifications at all, and it publishes neither pricing nor any compliance certification, so confirm it has RAC-certified people before treating it as an MDS option.
6. Healthcare Provider Solutions
Best for: operators whose footprint includes home health or hospice alongside the facility.
Pricing: Not publicly listedCompliance: HIPAA compliant and secure; CHAP and ACHC certifiedCommitment: Outsourced services plus consultingExperience: 25 years, 130+ agencies
Healthcare Provider Solutions has 25 years behind it, supports more than 130 agencies, works across 15 or more electronic medical record systems and keeps its support entirely US-based. Named staff hold RN, HCS-D and COS-C credentials, its home health coders hold HCS-D and its hospice coders hold HCS-D and HCS-H. Its clinical compliance, medical review consulting, operations compliance and consultant-on-call services transfer usefully to a facility with a documentation problem, and it offers a free coding review so you can test the work before committing. For a mixed operator running a facility alongside a home health or hospice arm, one firm across the documentation and billing for both is worth something real.
Limitation: the certifications it names are home health and hospice credentials rather than MDS credentials, skilled nursing MDS coordination is not a service it advertises, and it publishes no pricing and no audited security standard such as SOC 2.
7. Staffingly
Best for: facilities wanting documented security and a flat weekly rate for the administrative work around assessments.
Pricing: $399/wk at 45 hrs, $349 at 5+, $299 at 10+Compliance: Signed BAA; SOC 2 Type II; ISO 27001Commitment: Flat weeklyDelivery: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh
Staffingly is the other published price here, at $399 a week per person for 45 hours, falling to $349 at five or more people and $299 at ten or more, which works out under $9 an hour at the top tier. It places remote staff for documentation work, prior authorization, billing and front office tasks, and it reports the strongest documented security position on this list: SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, a signed Business Associate Agreement and a $5 million errors and omissions and cyber policy, all company-reported. Delivery is from company-stated secured facilities in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Limitation: it names no MDS or RAC certification and its workflow is AI-assisted with a person verifying output rather than fully human, so keep it to administrative work and confirm what the verification step covers.
Should a facility hire an MDS nurse, use interim cover, or outsource review to a remote assistant?
Hire when the census justifies a full-time certified nurse and you can recruit one, which is the constraint rather than the budget in most markets. Use interim cover the moment a vacancy appears, because the assessment schedule does not pause and a late or inaccurate assessment costs payment and shows up in your quality measures; Proactive LTC Consulting is the only firm here offering interim MDS staffing with RAC-certified consultants as a named service. Outsource review rather than the whole role when you have a coder but suspect the coding is leaving money on the table or creating audit exposure, which is what PDPM coding audits and remote MDS coding analysis are for. And staff the administrative layer in every one of those scenarios, because it is the cheapest thing on this page: a medical secretary or administrative assistant earned a median $22.08 an hour, about $45,930 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 wage data, against $10.00 to $12.65 an hour or $399 a week flat for placed remote staff doing the scheduling, tracking and chasing. For the scope of that work, see the virtual medical assistant duties breakdown.
What are the risks of a remote assistant in a skilled nursing facility?
The minimum data set drives payment and public quality reporting at once, so errors are expensive twice over and the facility owns both.
- Who signs the assessment. A remote consultant advises; the assessment remains the facility's responsibility. Confirm the sign-off workflow before anything changes.
- Certification, verified by person. Ask for the RAC credential of the specific consultant assigned to you, not the firm's general claim.
- Coding pressure. A firm selling missed opportunities should show how a higher category is documented rather than asserted, since audit exposure follows the money.
- Assessment reference date discipline. Establish who owns the schedule day to day, because a remote reviewer will not notice a missed window as fast as a coordinator will.
- Compliance evidence. Four of these seven publish no compliance position at all. Get the Business Associate Agreement in writing before any record access.
How much does a virtual medical assistant cost?
Two firms publish a rate and neither is for certified MDS work. Staffingly is $399 a week per person for 45 hours, falling to $349 at five or more people and $299 at ten or more, which is under $9 an hour at the top tier. Honest Taskers is $10.00 to $12.65 an hour billed hourly with no minimum. Proactive LTC Consulting, Richter, Zimmet Healthcare Services Group, SimiTree and Healthcare Provider Solutions all quote on request, and consulting in this market is commonly priced per project, per audit or per day of interim cover, though none of them publishes a figure. The comparison that matters is cost against case mix index movement and audit exposure rather than hourly rate: a certified review that lifts documented acuity defensibly across a hundred residents pays for itself in a way an hourly saving never does. Rates were checked in August 2026 and change often. For staffing rate context, see how much a virtual medical assistant costs in 2026.
What should you look for in a virtual medical assistant company?
RAC certification on the named individual, interim availability, audit defensibility, and who owns the schedule.
- AAPACN RAC certification, by person. Two firms here name the credential. Ask for it on the individual assigned to your facility.
- Interim cover terms. Establish lead time, minimum engagement and whether the same consultant stays for the duration.
- Audit support included. Ask whether the firm defends its own coding recommendations if an audit follows, and at what cost.
- Schedule ownership. Decide who tracks assessment reference dates day to day, since that is where lateness happens.
- A signed Business Associate Agreement. Two firms here state one. Get the document before scoped record access is granted.
How do you get started with a virtual medical assistant company?
Separate the coordination work from the certified work, because they are bought from different places.
- Log two weeks of your MDS coordinator's time by task, splitting assessment coding from scheduling, chasing and meetings.
- Move the coordination layer to hourly remote staff and keep coding with your certified nurse.
- If case mix index or quality measures are underperforming, commission a PDPM coding audit from a RAC-certified firm.
- Get the Business Associate Agreement and scoped record access in place before any review begins.
- Re-run the time study after a month and measure both recovered clinical hours and any change in case mix accuracy.
For the hiring path on the administrative side, read how to hire a virtual medical assistant.
Methodology and sources
We read each company's own website in August 2026, recording whether MDS work is a named service, what staff certifications are stated, whether interim staffing is offered, published pricing, and the HIPAA and Business Associate Agreement position in each firm's exact wording. Wage context is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. The RAC credential is administered by the American Association of Post-Acute Care Nursing, and PDPM payment and minimum data set requirements are set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Where a company published no figure we marked it "not publicly listed" rather than guessing; audit, survey and coding-opportunity figures are company-reported and we did not audit them. Harmony Healthcare International was excluded because its domain now redirects to an education and training consultancy rather than an MDS service a facility can buy.
Related post-acute staffing guides
If the time study shows your coordinator is mostly chasing documents, the fix is delegating that layer rather than replacing the role. Our guide to tasks to outsource to a virtual medical assistant covers the scheduling, tracking and records work around an assessment, and where the boundary sits before certification is required.