The medical profession is inevitably one of the most demanding, where each aspect of a doctor’s practice is critical. That includes their occupied telephones. When it comes to the healthcare field, people have unlimited queries and concerns.
Whether it is a situation that needs immediate attention or general consultation, your medical practice or facility must answer the patients’ questions appropriately and promptly.
Medical staff is often bombarded with extra work duties and clinic hours. They don’t always have the time to respond to every single call, which is why a lot of them go on voicemail. While you want to provide your patients with the best possible care, it can be challenging at times for you to handle everything by yourself.
Having to choose which calls are top priority and which can be avoided can be an exhausting process, and there is always a risk of missing a potentially urgent call. Fortunately, with the help of medical answering service, you no longer have to pick between your patients and compromise your patient care quality.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has increased the number of calls people are making to healthcare centers. Patients suffering from acute or chronic ailments are making calls not to book an appointment but rather getting medical advice or prescription to avoid visiting the hospital and prevent the contraction or spread of Coronavirus.
Medical practices and physician clinics, in particular, have a myriad of challenges and need all the help from the technology they can get. Not only patients but healthcare providers also need to call the patients to confirm appointments. Since the Coronavirus was declared a pandemic in March 2020, people are mostly making calls to know about the signs and symptoms of the disease and what precautions to follow.
Here are some of the many benefits provided by a medical answering service for both patients and healthcare are professionals.
Improved Patient Satisfaction
As healthcare providers are constantly struggling with balancing the quality and speed of their patient care and the reimbursement rates, it is easy to lose perspective of what is important. Patients are the central force in the medical industry. Your medical practice wouldn’t be of much use without any patients.
A patient might have some query after visiting your medical facility, and an answering service enables them to have their questions answered immediately, for instance, if they forget their dosage for a certain drug.
When the patients know that they will be able to get some assistance without an appointment, they are discernibly more satisfied with the provided services. They feel more appreciated and cared for as real people listen to their concerns and provide an appropriate response.
Availability & Quality Service
There is no set time for medical emergencies. Having a medical answering service available 24/7 puts the patients at ease, knowing that they would be able to speak to a medical professional right away in case of urgency.
When the patients are put on hold for a long time, they become frustrated and dissatisfied. Responding to patients promptly is an important attribute to have in the medical world. As a healthcare provider, you must feel confident that your medical answering service is taking precise notes and operating quickly to get the information to you.
Being able to answer all calls promptly and effectively will yield positive feedback for your medical facility. A trained and knowledgeable medical answering team will make sure that all your patients are satisfied. This helps improve the quality of patient care offered by your practice.
Patient Follow-Ups and Appointment Reminders
Having a patient miss an appointment can be annoying for you as well as your staff. It leads to inefficiency and can add a glitch to the normal flow of your medical facility. Streamlining appointments is quite essential in seamless operation and maximizing the chance of getting payments from medical billing. Missing or canceling an appointment means one less chance of making a billable transaction.
With accurate and precise notes collected by medical answering professionals, you can contact patients for follow-ups and send reminders for their upcoming appointments.
With a skilled medical answering team, you can be certain that each patient's information is being recorded properly. A medical answering professional will provide an optimized service to the patients as they have no task other than call answering.
Integration with Management Software
Most of the innovative and modern-day medical answering services easily integrate the data in the medical billing and revenue management installed by the medical practice. The calls are recorded according to particular days, dates, and times that make for an excellent record and analyze any medical claim rejected by the insurance provider.
Minimizing Cost
There is a lot of pressure on the healthcare industry to contain expenses. Effective medical answering services can work well within your financial capacity and help you develop a solution that works without jeopardizing quality.
Time is money, and every second that your medical staff spends on taking patient calls could be spent somewhere more important. Recruiting and training new staff for medical answering will cost you more money, time, and resources.
A dependable call center trained in medical answering has organized systems and processes to ensure the job is done effectively and on time. Using medical answering services will ultimately lead to reducing employee costs and decreased liability.
HIPAA Compliant Answering Service
Patient confidentiality is incredibly important and closely monitored by the government. According to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), all patient medical information must be closely protected and regulated.
Medical offices and healthcare practices that deal with Protected Health Information must acquire a HIPP compliant answering service. It is there to protect the patients’ confidential information and data.
If your answering service violates the HIPAA criteria, you will be held accountable for the breach of privacy. Avoid such violations by selecting a HIPPA-compliant medical
answering service that you can trust with your patient data.
Improve Your Patient-Provider Relationship
All healthcare providers want to develop a good doctor-patient relationship, create trust, earn respect, and deliver empathy. Whether it is seeing patients in your office or making rounds around the hospital, you want to provide the best possible care to your patients.
Laying the foundation for an effective provider-patient relationship requires effort and time. You can supplement this effort by keeping a steady communication flow even when your facility is closed. Your doctor’s answering service handles a huge part of this communication.
When selecting a suitable patient answering service, do not simply go for the first available option or the cheaper one. Instead, pick a service that provides quality and that will help you enhance your patient-provider relationship.
Final Words
Having a proficient medical answering team take the lead in managing your after-hour communication is an effective way to offer tangible benefits to your patients that they will greatly value and appreciate.
Whether it is scheduling a doctor’s appointment, following-up on an appointment, transferring a lab report request or answering a patient query, you can be certain that all your patients’ concerns and requests are well taken care of.
A less waiting time, a medical staff who isn’t overburdened, and increased availability will create a patient experience your clients would want to share with other people.
