We get this all the time, “Do you need a certificate to be a medical assistant?” While the certification is optional, that doesn’t mean that your staff can’t still benefit from the certification. Read on to learn why you should certify your medical assistant staff.
Did you know that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, medical assistants jobs are expected to grow 18% in the next ten years?
Medical assistants are responsible for many healthcare needs. They help with medical assessments and perform administrative and office work. Medical assistants work anywhere from hospitals, doctors’ offices, or various other healthcare facilities.
With such a diverse healthcare role, they can benefit from having them assist in your medical facility.
Not every state requires medical assistants to be certified clinical medical assistants or CCMA. So, what is the benefit of requiring a certified medical assistant for your healthcare faculty? Keep reading on to learn the top reasons why.
Helps Your Medical Practice Stand Out
Medical facilities are businesses too and face competition on gaining patients. It does not matter if it is a hospital, doctor’s office, clinic, or extended care facility.
Therefore, medical practices need to find a way to stand out. Certifying all of your medical assistant staff is one way to stand out from your competition.
You can use this unique requirement with advertisements to attract more patients, especially if similar healthcare facilities do not require certified medical assistants.
Requiring medical assistants to become certified clinical medical assistants (CCMA) shows that you have highly trained staff at your facility. This indicates that you have high standards for your team, which can help you gain patients over your competitor’s facilities.
Reduce Medical Assistant Turnover
The turnover rate for medical assistants is approximately 59%. This can cost a company about $14,200, or 40% of the average medical assistant salary.
High turnover rates can cost your company. Therefore, it’s crucial to find retention strategies to help keep your medical assistant staff. Requiring and providing certification for medical assistants may help with retention.
This is because medical assistants often leave their jobs for two reasons: low pay and lack of ways to grow and advance in their careers.
Increase in Pay
Requiring certification can help with low pay for hiring and retaining employees. For example, if someone is already a CCMA, you can offer them higher pay since they have additional training and certifications.
If someone does not have a certification yet, you can help pay for obtaining the certificate. Once a staff member achieves their certification, you can increase their pay.
Career Growth for Medical Assistants
Having your staff obtain a medical assistant certification can help them advance in their career. This can also help reduce turnover rates. In addition, once a medical assistant becomes a CCMA, they can perform more job duties. This allows them to take on additional tasks enabling them to grow within their job.
This is a win for both you and your employee. Since you will get a long-term employee, which will help reduce turnover costs and help you keep good team members. It will benefit the employee because they will get a pay increase and advance their career. In return, this can increase employee satisfaction.
State Requirement
Before hiring a medical assistant, you must check with your local and state requirements. For example, some states, such as South Dakota and Washington, require all medical assistants to be certified.
Some states are more lenient and only require a high school diploma or GED, such as Alaska and Alabama.
However, states such as Washington have additional rules and their own credential system that every medical assistant must follow and adhere to. So, before hiring a medical assistant, check to see what your state’s requirements are.
Well Rounded Staff
CMAs go through extensive training to learn about different aspects of healthcare. A certified medical assistant program ensures that CCMAs know a wide range of procedures. From knowing how to perform diagnostics tests to office work, a good CCMA program helps ensure that the CMA can perform many tasks.
There are several skills that certified medical assistants learn during their education. Medical skills include:
- Assessment of vital signs
- Collecting specimens
- Performing certain laboratory tests
- Diagnostic techniques
- CPR and first aid
- Pharmacology
In addition to learning tasks to provide care for patients in the office, certificated medical assistants can also have more knowledge of office responsibilities.
In addition to these valuable medical skills, CCMAs can learn office and administrative skills as well. Office skills that CMAs are taught include:
- Medical billing
- Medical coding for insurance
- Office administration basics
- Technical applications
- Recording keeping
- Accounting
- Medical laws
- Medical ethics.
Since CMAs are trained in medical and office skills, it makes them well-rounded and valuable employees.
More Advanced Care
Skills that CMA are allowed to practice depend on several factors such as a specific hospital or medical office protocols, orders, and the location of your medical practice.
With a certificate in medical assistant, some states allow medical assistants to do more invasive testing and use more diagnostic tools. Some states allow for CCMAs to perform tasks such as venipunctures and give injections.
The more tasks a CcMA can do in the office, the more beneficial they can be.
Helps Shorten Training and Orientation Time
Training and orientation are essential aspects of all jobs, but they can also cost your company money. For example, during the orientation or training of new medical assistants, you have to pay for two employees to do one job. That way, one person can teach and precept, and the other can train and learn.
Having your medical assistants obtain a CCMA certification helps reduce some aspects of training and orientation. Since specific tasks and skills needed to do their job are taught during certified medical assistant programs.
For example, your medical assistants may be expected to take vital signs such as a patient’s blood pressure. This task requires practice and knowledge to do correctly.
A medical assistant certification program will go over this skill, so less time will be needed during orientation to go over how to assess a patient’s vital signs. In contrast, someone who does not have the training to evaluate vital signs will require more orientation time to learn these skills.
Best Medical Assistant Program for Employees
It’s easier today than ever before to get a certification in medical assistant. Advanced Eclinical Training offers an online program that is self-passed and about eight weeks long.
The Advanced Eclinical Training medical assistant program educates students in diverse healthcare settings and covers everything a medical assistant needs, from office and administrative duties to diagnostic testing.
Contact us at Advanced eClinical Training today to learn about the excellent certified medical assistant program.
