Your Highest-Paid People Are Doing Your Lowest-Value Work

Rockstar Staff

Oct 8

4 min read

Private practice owner reviewing a weekly staff time log on a clipboard at the front desk

Your therapist spends 20 minutes on hold with an insurance company. Your office manager rebuilds tomorrow's schedule for the third time. You finish billing follow-up after the kids are asleep.

None of that work needs a clinical license. All of it gets done by the people who cost your practice the most per hour.

Most practice owners know this is happening. Few know how many hours it adds up to, or what those hours cost. A two-week time audit tells you both, and it tells you exactly what role to hire for next.

Step 1: Pick two normal weeks

Choose two weeks that look like a typical schedule. Skip holiday weeks, a week someone's on vacation, or the week you switch EHRs. Two weeks gives you enough data to catch tasks that don't happen every day, like credentialing paperwork or month-end billing.

Step 2: Have everyone log their time

Ask every person on the team to log what they work on in 30-minute blocks. That includes providers, the office manager, front desk staff, and you.

Keep the log simple. Each entry needs three things: the task, how long it took, and whether it required a clinical license.

Day	Time block	Task	Minutes	Needs a clinical license?
Mon	8:00–8:30	Called payer to verify benefits for new patient	30	No
Mon	8:30–9:00	Patient evaluation	30	Yes
Mon	12:00–12:30	Returned voicemails, rescheduled two patients	30	No

Tell your team why you're doing it. This is about where the work goes, not how fast anyone works.

Step 3: Sort every task into three groups

At the end of two weeks, sort each logged task:

Clinical work: evaluations, treatment, clinical decisions, signing notes. This stays with your providers.
Admin work that needs your judgment: hiring decisions, payer contract negotiations, practice strategy. This stays with you.
Admin work anyone qualified can do: scheduling, phones, benefits verification, prior authorizations, claim follow-up, credentialing paperwork, chart prep, social media. This is the work you can move.

The third group is usually bigger than owners expect.

Step 4: Put a cost on it

For each person, multiply the hours they spent on movable admin work by their loaded hourly cost. Loaded cost means wages plus benefits.

Benefits made up 31.5% of total employer compensation for full-time private industry workers in June 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To estimate someone's loaded hourly cost, divide their hourly wage by 0.685.

Person	Hourly wage	Loaded hourly cost (wage ÷ 0.685)	Movable admin hours (2 weeks)	Cost of those hours
Provider
Office manager
Front desk
Owner

For providers, there's a second cost: every hour of admin work is an hour they aren't seeing patients.

Step 5: Group the movable tasks into a role

Look at the movable tasks across your whole team, not person by person. The tasks usually cluster into a few natural roles:

Scheduling, phones, and patient intake point to a front desk role
Benefits checks and prior authorizations point to an insurance verification and authorization role
Claim follow-up, denials, and payment posting point to a billing role
Email, records requests, and general coordination point to an administrative role
Credentialing applications and payer enrollment point to a credentialing role

Add up the hours in each cluster. That tells you whether you need one full-time role, a part-time role, or one role that covers two clusters.

Step 6: Write the role before you hire

Before you post a job or call an agency, write down what the role actually is:

The specific tasks it covers, taken from your audit
The hours per week those tasks take
The systems it uses: your EHR, practice management software, payer portals
The skills and experience it needs on day one
The hours it needs to cover and the time zone

This becomes the job description, the interview checklist, and the standard you measure the hire against. Without it, you hire someone to "help with admin" and the audit hours come right back.

Why Rockstar designs the role before we search

Rockstar starts every placement by designing the role with you. We look at the tasks your team is carrying, the hours they take, and the systems and skills the work needs. Then we search for the VA who already has that experience.

Rockstar places vetted, highly experienced VAs in front desk, insurance verification and authorization, medical billing, administrative, credentialing, and social media roles, plus custom placements through Premium Sourcing. You manage your VA day-to-day. Rockstar handles payroll, benefits, and replacements.

FAQs

How long should a staff time audit take?

Two normal weeks is enough for most practices. It catches daily tasks and the ones that come up weekly or at month-end.

Should providers log their time too?

Yes. Providers are often the most expensive people doing admin work, and their hours are the ones most worth moving.

What admin tasks can a practice delegate?

Scheduling, phones, benefits verification, prior authorizations, claim follow-up, payment posting, records requests, credentialing paperwork, chart prep, and social media. Clinical decisions and signing notes stay with licensed providers.

What if the movable hours don't add up to a full-time role?

Combine clusters. One role can cover front desk and insurance verification, or administrative work and credentialing, if the hours and skills fit.