Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | NOVEMBER 25, 2024 11 Building Ideas That Work... Building Ideas That Work... © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing ™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. For more than 80 years, Borghesi Building & Engineering Co., Inc. has provided quality and reliability with design and energy efficient construction. 860.482.7613 | BorghesiBuilding.com 2155 East Main Street, Torrington, Connecticut 06790 With an attractive design, it presents to your customers a comfortable relaxing environment to help promote sales. PROJECT SPOTLIGHT: COUNTER WEIGHT BREWING When quality finishes and an attractive functional interior are required, our fine craftsmen provide the ultimate details. ating room, on the operating table, on patients, but I was in the room … guiding surgeons on how to implant the device that I was selling," she said. Hockey stick growth While selling surgical devices, Lachance also was flipping houses as a hobby. She had gotten married (she's now divorced), and her then-husband — Paul Verrastro, former CEO of the Center for Advanced Reproductive Services in Farmington, and current senior vice president of operations and risk at First Fertility — enjoyed the process while she handled the project management responsibilities. "It was just a fun side project, I never really wanted to do that full time," she said. Verrastro also was a partner in a virtual assistant company for real estate entrepreneurs who needed extra administrative help. That partnership ended suddenly, though, so Lachance immediately quit her sales job. "We flew to the Philippines and we … established a new business," she said. They chose the Philippines because the cost of living is much lower, the main language is English, and the southeast Asian country has a large population of "really smart people that have their bachelor's degrees," Lachance said. She left Verrastro's company about six months later, because her heart was still in the medical field. But her experience with providing virtual assistants for real estate led her to believe she could do the same thing for medical practices. So, she started GMVA and hired and trained her first two medical virtual assistants. GMVA provides three weeks of training, but not everyone passes. All virtual assistants must have a degree in nursing or a related field so they have a grounding in medical jargon, she said. Her first client was the Center for Advanced Reproductive Services, which not only was led by her ex-husband but had been a long-term customer for the injectable fertility drug she once sold. Finding other clients was not so easy. This was 2019, before the pandemic struck in March 2020. Before then, medical practices were skeptical of virtual assistants. Then the pandemic hit, "and suddenly everybody realized … this is not only possible, it works really well," she said. "And so that just made a true hockey stick for growth for my company." In its first year, GMVA had just over $46,000 in revenue; this year, it expects more than $16 million, and the projection for the next 12 months is close to $19 million, Lachance said. GMVA currently has 918 remote employees working for medical offices and facilities, and new orders from clients for 120 more VAs. In an average month, the company trains about 60 new VAs. "In another two years, we'll probably be over 2,500 VAs," she said. That's remarkable, because there is a 13-hour time difference between Connecticut and the Philippines, which means the remote work is done overnight. GMVA provides its virtual assis- tants software and a private network to ensure the security of patient infor- mation. All workers also are Health Insurance Portability and Account- ability Act (HIPAA) certified. While GMVA's West Hartford office is home to the company's C-suite executives, Lachance does travel four times a year to the Philippines and has supervisory staff there as well. The company also holds a lavish annual gala for its Philippines' staff. "It's really a celebration of our VAs, because they work so hard to provide great patient care," she said. Asked whether she ever wonders how she got to this point, Lachance laughs. "At least once a week," she said. "I've been so incredibly fortunate." Still, she doesn't take all the credit. "This is not something I did myself," she said. "It would not be possible without an incredible leadership team in the Philippines. They blow me away." Beth Lachance said GMVA has 918 remote employees working for medical offices and facilities in 30 states.

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