If your medical office is like many healthcare service providers, it is often busy and stressful. Depending on the size of your medical office, you may have multiple receptionists. Even with multiple employees at the front desk, the deluge of incoming phone calls, emails, faxes and filling out paperwork can be overwhelming.
With medical office staff being pulled in multiple directions, patient care gets compromised.
For this reason, some medical offices have turned to outsourcing their inbound phone calls using a medical answering service.
What a Medical Answering Service Does and How it Helps
Medical answering services help lessen the stress of a busy medical office by facilitating the many inbounding phone calls your office receives. Calls are received by health professionals who are knowledgeable of HIPAA laws and patient confidentiality. Outsourced medical answering service personnel can return patient calls, set up appointments, filter urgent and non-urgent patient phone calls, connect patients to appropriate medical personnel and allow them to leave messages in their doctor’s phone inbox.
With a medical answering service, your medical office will be able to give patients prompt, accurate, efficient service that is also personal.
Your patients’ calls will be promptly answered, not put on hold and filtered based on urgency. Emergency patient calls will be directly routed to a physician’s phone. The patient will then be able to speak directly to their doctor or receive a prompt call back from their doctor.
Tips for Selecting a Medical Answering Service
Outsourcing inbound patient phone calls is a good choice for most medical offices. There are some things to consider when selecting a medical answering service, including the services offered and the costs. You should know what the needs of your patients are as well as the capabilities of your medical office. You’ll want to select a medical answering service that:
- Has effective call filtering, ensuring only emergencies go through to on-call physicians.
- Accurately directs patient calls to the right doctor or medical personnel.
- Is patient focused, never allowing the patient to be on hold for a long amount of time, giving patients an opportunity to leave a message and provide prompt return of a patient’s call.
- Offer a low fixed rate that won’t increase due to additional fees.
- Is 100% HIPAA compliant.
- Offers service in multiple languages.
- Is reliable and offers superb customer support.
- Offers customizable answering service including bi-lingual service, and accommodation for unusual, challenging schedules.
Patients take their health seriously. Your medical office should care about your patients’ health as much as they do. With the busyness of a medical office, it can be hard to give each patient the undivided, unparalleled attention they deserve and expect.
With the aid of outsourcing incoming patient phone calls with a medical office answering service, your patients will feel important and heard and your office can provide quicker, efficient and more accurate treatment.
If your medical office is ready to enhance your patient’s experience, contact No More Phone Tag’s medical answering service today to start your free trial and be on your way to offering better service to your patients.