If done the right way, hiring medical answering services can prove to be an effective tool to to manage your calls after work. Doing so can help you provide better healthcare and avoid the extra cost of hiring a full-time professional for the job.
However, if done incorrectly, the relationship with patients may suffer. This guide will help you choose the Med Answering Service that will work not as a vendor but an extension of your business.
Here are some important tips that your service provider must follow to give quality service to your patrons.
Share your business practice to ensure you are both on the same page
It is important that you work closely with your service provider to come up with a call script to ensure that the account instructions match the type of calls that received on your account. It is possible that your service provider is working with other healthcare businesses. Therefore, it is possible they may follow a standard script. While these scripts can be a good starting point, they may not be perfect for your business unless they are tweaked to suit your needs. So be sure to discuss this with your vendor before signing them on. Simply put, their call instructions should correspond with your processes.
Keep all the staff members informed about the call center procedures
Everyone who is involved in running the healthcare operations, such as doctors, nurses, and other office staff, should be aware of the call answering service procedure. You should tell them if their job will be affected by it and how. Doctors especially should know how the call center will contact them in case of after-hour emergency requirement. The call center reps should be aware what qualifies as an after-hour emergency. It is important to set these procedures in place before outsourcing your call services.
Treat call center as the extension of your business and keep them updated
Just the way it is important to keep people on your side to stay informed, it is equally important to update your call center reps too. When you treat them as a part of your business, you will include them when making changes that are likely to affect the way they operate. So if you are bringing changes to your on-call processes, hiring or losing doctors, or adding new infrastructure, then it is important that you apprise the call center of these changes so that they can communicate the same to the patients, if required.
Mine call center data to make improvements
All the calls handled by the call center are recorded and the data is logged for future reference. Data is always useful in some way. So mine the existing data and call records to see how you can improve your operations.
By following these tips and working closely with your counterparts can help you build a solid system that will provide you the highest level of care to your patients.