Delivering the best patient care is the objective of every healthcare professional and practice. One of the most important tasks in offering top-quality service is being accessible to patients at all hours of the day and night. This is impossible to manage alone or with a staff that works normal business hours. However, an efficient doctors answering service manages this need by acting as a virtual front desk receptionist to those who need to get in touch with you. Before hiring a medical answering service, it is important to understand more about what they offer and why you should go this route.
Choosing a Medical Answering Service
A doctors answering service can help you overcome the issue of the patient attempting to contact you or other medical professionals at your practice when unavailable. These highly trained professionals can answer basic questions and contact you if the issue a patient is having meets your emergency criteria. A medical answering service can also take appointments and send patients a reminder of upcoming commitments to lower no-shows and last-minute cancellations. This provides a better customer experience while improving your employee productivity.
Furthermore, the best answering services can also accept debit and credit card payments for copays or past-due balances. Most importantly, all these activities deal with sensitive patient data, so the best medical answering companies are HIPAA compliant to ensure they are gathering and storing information according to the law. These activities can all occur as an overflow service during the day, instead of an in-house receptionist, around-the-clock, or just overnight after hours. These customization options make an answering service more appealing to medical practices.
Most Common Services
A doctors answering service can offer many basic tasks in emergency and non-emergency situations. These trained professionals can manage the following activities with efficiency and ease to ensure all patients are serviced in a timely and effective manner which generates positive word-of-mouth recommendations and retains patients to your practice.
- Appointment scheduling, reminders, and confirmation calls.
- Call answering, screening, processing, and dispatching.
- Customer helpdesk services.
- Inbound customer service calls during or after regular business hours.
- Paging doctors and nurses in emergencies.
- Receptionist services.
In addition to these basic medical functions, an answering service can also provide the following:
- A messaging center to dispatch and record messages.
- Call reporting and documentation to judge performance.
- Message access via mobile devices, email, PDA’s, fax, or voicemail for medical professionals.
- Web access to maintain and update patient data and information.
Medical emergencies and general questions emerge at any time of day or night and your patients should be able to get the support or answers they require. This does not mean you and your staff must work around-the-clock. By outsourcing to a doctors answering service, you can put your mind at ease that any issues will be managed effectively and efficiently.