Using a medical answering service can be a great way to streamline your work, free up your time and enhance the patient experience. Medical facilities are often busy and there is little time to handle the volume of calls. A medical answering service is staffed by HIPAA certified professionals who know how to handle incoming calls, as well as cancellations and emergency situations. This will save your practice time, as well as money, by handling the influx of calls.
Most medical offices have a voicemail system to handle after-hours calls. While this can be a great way to cut down on call volume, patients can get frustrated by voicemail greetings. Having to leave a voicemail message can also cause scheduling conflicts.
If your office is receiving a large volume of calls after normal business hours, hiring a medical answering service may be the solution you need. A professional answering service can take messages in real time, relay them to the correct person, and even reschedule appointments. In the event of an emergency, a physician will be contacted.
An answering service will also keep a record of every phone call. These records will help to reduce the risk of liability. They can also be accessed anytime via web-based applications. Online reporting systems are also useful for enhancing patient care. They can be easily scaled to operate in a virtual server environment.
In addition, a medical answering service can also help your practice to protect patient information and confidentiality. Some services provide live ASL video chat, as well as IP Relay for the hearing impaired. This medical answering service will allow patients to receive feedback from your doctor and help to build trust. Patients also deserve a prompt response to their questions and concerns.
Some medical answering services even have bilingual receptionists, who can speak both English and Spanish. This will make callers more comfortable and allow for faster service. This is important because most patients have busy schedules and expect a prompt response to their call.
Physicians often spend most of their time in the office, not on the phone. This can be a huge burden for many providers. However, it is not a good idea to leave the phone on auto-dial. This can be a costly mistake. Instead, you should focus on making appointment setting easier for your patients. Then, you can focus on caring for them instead of answering the phone.
Using a medical answering service can reduce your practice’s liability, while providing patients with the high level of customer service they expect. By choosing a medical answering service, your practice will be able to save time and money by eliminating the need to hire a full-time receptionist. It will also help to improve your practice’s reputation. The best medical answering service for your practice should have dedicated employees, as well as external quality checks and emergency message delivery.
Most medical answering services provide 24-hour live support. While this can be a great benefit for your practice, there are many services that offer plans based on talk time. This can help to decrease your monthly costs and ensure that you have a medical answering service that is customized to fit your practice.