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Healthcare research support without adding headcount

Whether you're a practice owner evaluating EHR vendors, a healthcare consultant building a market analysis, or a clinic administrator tracking regulatory changes from CMS, research work piles up fast and rarely fits neatly into anyone's job description. A Trusty Oak EA can take on the sourcing, organizing, and synthesizing so your clinical and operational staff stay focused on patient care. This is structured delegation—not a search engine substitute.

Fractional research support for healthcare providers

How Trusty Oak handles research for healthcare providers

A Trusty Oak EA handling healthcare research typically works from a brief you provide—a question, a decision you need to make, or a topic you need to understand better—and returns organized, sourced findings in whatever format works for your workflow, whether that's a Google Doc summary, a structured spreadsheet, or a slide-ready brief. Day-to-day, this looks like pulling peer-reviewed literature from PubMed or Google Scholar, cross-referencing CMS guidelines or state health department databases, compiling competitive intel on other practices or health tech vendors, and flagging anything that needs your clinical judgment before a decision moves forward. Your EA uses tools like Notion, Airtable, or Excel to keep findings organized and traceable, and they'll flag sources so you can verify anything that matters. Your role is to review outputs and make the calls—the EA handles the hours of digging that precede that decision. Your dedicated Client Success Manager helps scope the research workflow during onboarding so your EA isn't guessing at what level of depth or format you need.

What your EA takes off your plate

The most common mistake first-time delegators in healthcare make is handing off a vague topic instead of a specific question—'research telehealth' produces a 40-tab browser session, while 'find the top 5 telehealth platforms used by independent psychiatry practices under 10 providers, with pricing and HIPAA compliance status' produces something you can actually use. Before your first research task, write down the decision you're trying to make or the document you're trying to produce, and work backward from there to define what your EA actually needs to find. That framing takes five minutes and saves hours of back-and-forth.

1

EHR and Health Tech Vendor Comparison

EA researches and builds a side-by-side comparison of EHR platforms (e.g., Epic, Athenahealth, Kareo) based on your practice size, specialty, and integration requirements.

2

CMS and Payer Policy Monitoring

EA tracks updates from CMS, MAC contractors, or specific commercial payers and summarizes relevant reimbursement or compliance changes that affect your billing or operations.

3

Clinical Literature Sourcing

EA pulls and organizes peer-reviewed studies from PubMed or similar databases on a specified condition, treatment protocol, or clinical question, formatted for quick review by a clinician.

4

Competitive Landscape Analysis

EA researches other practices, health systems, or digital health companies in your market—pulling data on services offered, patient reviews, pricing signals, and positioning.

5

Healthcare Conference and CE Opportunity Research

EA identifies relevant industry conferences, CME or CEU opportunities, and speaking or sponsorship prospects based on your specialty and goals, compiled into a prioritized list.

Tools our team works with

We adapt to your existing stack — no forced migrations.

Apollo.io
SEMrush
SimilarWeb
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
G2
Statista

...and many more!

Trusted by healthcare providers

Trusty Oak supports healthcare providers including Assisting Hands Home Care, Infant Feeding Care — handling everything from research to broader operational support.

What research support costs for healthcare providers

Drag the sliders to build a monthly plan that fits your workload.

Executive Assistants
~$35/hour
10 hours $350
Specialists
~$50/hour
20 hours $1,000
Fractional Executives
~$95/hour
0 hours $0
Your monthly budget
$1,350

Starting at $1,000/month. One-time $300 onboarding fee includes your Strategic Delegation Plan.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Trusty Oak EAs are not covered entities and are not positioned to handle PHI as part of research tasks—this service is best suited for operational, market, regulatory, and clinical literature research that doesn't involve patient data. If your research workflow touches PHI, that portion should stay in-house with appropriately credentialed staff.
During onboarding, your Client Success Manager helps establish source standards for your specific use case—whether that means sticking to peer-reviewed journals, official CMS publications, or specific industry databases. Your EA works within those guardrails, and anything requiring clinical interpretation gets flagged for your review rather than summarized as a conclusion.
It's an honest number—Trusty Oak has logged 36 research time entries across all industries, which means this is a proven workflow but not one with hundreds of healthcare-specific case studies behind it. What that means practically is that the delegation model is well-tested, but you should expect to invest a session or two early on calibrating the depth and format of outputs to your specific needs.

Put your next research project in better hands

Trusty Oak matches healthcare businesses with US-based EAs who can start handling research tasks within your first billing month. Onboarding includes a Strategic Delegation Plan so your first research brief is scoped correctly from day one.