When you're a busy medical professional, you probably spend more time on the phone than you want to. Even if your staff handles calls to the office, your patients may need to contact you after hours, or the volume of calls you receive could be so high that your staff has difficulty keeping up with them. The solution might be to use a medical answering service. Here's how they can help.
A Medical Answering Service Can Handle Routine Calls
Your office might get a lot of calls for directions to the office, asking if you're accepting new patients, and other questions that aren't medical in nature. You can use an answering service to answer these routine calls from a script that you prepare for them. By taking this volume of calls away from your staff, the staff has more time to deal with patients on an individual basis about appointments and medical concerns.
An Answering Service Transfers Medical Calls
Questions of a medical nature can be transferred to the medical professional on call at any hour of the day or night and on weekends. You patients will always be able to reach a live person when they call so they don't feel abandoned when they're sick. Patients will always have a main number to call and then the service will transfer the call or send a notice to make a call back to the on-call person. This service is useful for patients as well as other medical professionals so you can be alerted to lab results and changes in a patient's condition right away without having to give out your personal phone number.
An Answering Service May Have Bilingual Staff
Answering services often have bilingual staff, so patients who speak a language other than English can communicate with your office. This could be a nice benefit if you have a multicultural practice, as this helps put your patients at ease and helps them feel like they are understood on the phone.
A Live Answering Service Removes Frustration For Patients
If you have a complicated answering system that requires your patients to listen to a long recording and then choose options for continuing, it can be a frustrating experience for them. Then, they may need to leave a message on your machine and be left to wonder when and if their call will be returned. Allowing your patients to reach a living person when they call shows you care enough to answer their call right away, even if it takes some time for them to get a call back for a non-emergency situation.
A medical answering service works the hours you request and handles calls in the manner you wish so they keep your patients happy and help your medical office run more smoothly.