Patients and their family members always have a way to reach and access their healthcare facility without any issue. Thus, as a healthcare provider, it’s your responsibility always to take their calls and maintain open communication lines.
Unfortunately, it’s common for healthcare facilities to receive nuisance and unwanted calls – disrupting and compromising the service they provide to their patients. In today’s post, we’ll show you how an excellent medical answering service can help your healthcare office screen nuisance calls.
At any healthcare facilities, incoming calls may be categorized into urgent call requests or those you want to answer without any delay; important calls or those that are still essential to your business but you can return at a later time, or nuisance calls that you don’t want to answer at all.
It’s the last classification that may often get past you that can be extremely frustrating to your clinic staff. These calls take your attention away from offering the service you wish to provide to your patients.
There are also calls that frequently try to solicit money from your medical practice. Anything from pharmaceutical sales representatives to medical equipment sales representatives. You may or may not be interested in the products they are offering. If you are, taking their calls may still distract healthcare providers – especially in the middle of a hectic workday.
As we mentioned above, healthcare facilities must always be available to take calls. However, you wouldn’t want your hospital or clinic staff talking to cold callers who are only trying to reach you to get leads. Most importantly, you must be aware of potential scam tactics in the guise of giving you various offers.
Without an answering service, your clinic receptionist or front office staff will have to answer every call – no matter who it is on the other line. While current or potential clients are always trying to reach you, that’s not always 100 percent true. You can reliably vet calls when you utilize a medical answering service provider.
With an answering service, all calls to your healthcare facility are responded to by a live operator – even after business hours. The medical answering service serves the role of a receptionist – only virtual.
The service can route calls to you in real time and following your set guidelines and specifications. You can also instruct your answering service to answer high-priority calls and keep a list of those you would instead return at a different time.
Medical answering service will triage calls coming in after business hours. They will then get the information the clinic or hospital needs if it’s an urgent or emergency. Patients calling after clinic hours may also be immediately routed to emergency services, depending on your specifications.
If you and your medical practice’s staff are not distracted by unwanted our nuisance calls throughout the day, you’ll be more dedicated to providing the care and attention your patients need.
You may still want to receive information from all the calls coming through your lines, but not when it takes you away from your patients. This is when a medical answering service will be most beneficial to your practice. The service can get this information and submit it to you. This allows you to review it send your response at a convenient time.
From providing 24/7 access to patient scheduling to whatever customized services you need, a medical answering service can offer valuable benefits to your practice. Providing healthcare and running a medical practice is already a huge challenge; you’re tasked with treating patients while at the same time running a business.
The truth is, medical schools don’t always teach would-be physicians and other healthcare providers the proper telecommunications techniques. Thus, medical answering service providers exist to help you in that regard.
No matter how you efficient you may think your practice is running, there may always be room for improvement. Partnering with the right answering service allows your clinic staff to spend more time with patients and give them the treatment and attention they need. This will be the catalyst for the success and growth of your practice.
