As a medical professional, your routine would be quite busy. And imagine losing your receptionist at this stage. Finding another receptionist would be a knee-jerk task and one that will take time and effort. You sure would not want to face such a situation. So, how can you overcome this situation and ensure that such a problem doesn’t happen again in the future? Think out of the box and look for a medical answering service.
What is a Medical Answering Service?
Medical answering service is like having a virtual call centre dedicated to doing all the tasks that your receptionist does, and even more. What makes it better is that where you rely on a single receptionist for support, the medical answering service is provided by a fully dedicated team, so there is a seamless continuation of service without any interruption no matter what.
What to Look for in a Medical Answering Service?
It Should Do More Than Answering Calls
As medical answering is more than just taking calls and passing messages, and can do a lot more than a receptionist, so you have to look at all the possibilities that you can achieve:
- Manage all the inbound calls
- Register patients
- Take messages and pass along to the doctor
- Prioritize calls and ensure the emergency calls are answered by the doctor immediately
- Schedule appointments
- Follow up with patients about their appointments
- Conduct patient outreach
- Pass on confidential messages
- Provide basic suggestion and support to patients whenever needed and possible
- Be available to take all the calls, messages 24/7, and provide after-hour support to doctors so they have the much-needed rest from the rigorous schedule
- And more
The Staff Should be Fully Trained
The medical answering service would be as efficient in handling the above-listed tasks as trained and qualified they would be. When you are looking to hire a medical answer service you would expect them to be all that a receptionist is, as well as capable and experienced in doing much more as required from their job profile.
The Service Should be Compliant
In the medical process, there are certain procedures and requirements which have to be met considerably. So, you would want the service provider to be fully compliant with all the standards and regulations.
Hiring a medical answering service does make sense to manage your periodic overflow as well as patient interaction and much more.