Company leader
Steven Kupferman
Co-Founder and Chairman
MEDVA
Steven Kupferman is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and co-founder and chairman of MEDVA, which places virtual assistants trained for medical offices. He started the model inside his own surgery practice in Los Angeles, California, LACOMS, after the paperwork of running it nearly swamped him.
Training as a Surgeon
He earned an MD from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a DMD from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and he is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He has nearly two decades in healthcare and is the founding physician of LACOMS, an oral and maxillofacial surgery practice in Century City that has grown to six surgeons.
Too Many People in the Office
As the practice grew, about ten people in its office worked full-time on insurance paperwork, and he managed almost 30 employees while operating full-time. "It hurts to think back on those dark days," he said. "There's got to be another way to do this." Through friends he found nurses and other medically trained workers in the Philippines who remoted into practices and billing companies to call insurers. "I got to try this myself," he said, and over a few years he moved much of the practice's day-to-day operations to remote staff.
Just before the pandemic, he and Omid A. Shaye, a gastroenterologist who had used assistants across Gastroenterology Associates of Beverly Hills, co-founded MEDVA so other offices could hire the same kind of assistant. When offices saw how much work could be done without patient contact, "our company took off," he said.
Home in Los Angeles
He and his wife, Danielle, live in Los Angeles with their four children. On the Everyday Oral Surgery podcast he talked about parenting and his interest in theater.