There are many professions that work in after hours, but for doctors, there are no after hours. They sometimes have to work 24hours to help their patients. When a doctor closes its door for the day, their patients turn on to their phones for medical advice. As a doctor, you have to take those calls. You try to answer as many calls as you can, unfortunately, most of them go to your voicemail. Plus, it is difficult to weed out which call is important and which is not, this why you need a service that can help you manage your calls.
What is a medical answering service?
Medical answering service is a call center that takes calls on behalf of a doctor. The professional who answers these calls present themselves as in-house staff. Medical answering services offer a wide range of services such as taking calls, messages, scheduling appointments, and more.
When you hire services from a medical answering service provider, you get to enjoy the following benefits:
1. Save Money
You hire staff to do important tasks in the clinic, but most of their time is spent on answering calls. Yes, you can hire additional staff but it will cost you more money on salary, insurance and more. This is where medical answering services come into the picture. They will answer the calls, allowing your staff to focus on important tasks at hand.
2. Decrease Hold Time
A doctor receives a countless number of calls each day and there is a limit to how many calls you and your staff can handle. Sometimes it is too much for you to handle, which results in long hold times. But with medical answering services, all the calls will be diverted to a call center, where your patients will speak to highly-trained professionals. They can take a message, schedule appointment, forward call to the doctor, and more. This helps in decreasing hold times, which also increases the patient’s satisfaction level.
3. Meet HIPAA Requirements
HIPAA has created a set of guidelines that states that all medical records should be safeguarded at any cost. If your answering service provider fails to maintain the privacy of your patient, you will be held responsible for the same. To avoid such situations, you need to hire a service provider that follows all the guidelines.
4. Keep Irrefutable Records
When dealing with sensitive data like medical records, it is important to keep your practice safe. All the calls made through the call center are recorded and time-stamped, which provides an accurate and irrefutable record.
5. Increase Profitability
When you hire medical answering services, you allow your staff to focus on more important tasks, which smooths the operation of the clinic. Plus, your patients don’t have to wait on hold for more than a few seconds before they are answered by a professional at the medical call center. This increases the overall satisfaction level, which leads to more patients, hence more profit.