The Need for Prudence While Choosing a Physician Answering Service

After you close your clinic, there can still be a need for medical attention. In some cases it could be urgent attention.

But isn’t the good old voicemail enough to do the job?

No it isn’t. Studies have shown that 75 per cent of people who get voicemail simply hang up and switch over to a competitor.

The reason is straightforward. People want an actual human being to answer their calls. For medical professionals a physician answering service is the right answer to keep their business going.

Let’s face it. Do your clients have a horrid time trying to contact you after working hours? You as a doctor have a responsibility to take care of your patients even after your practice closes for the day. One effective way for being accessible afterhours is to hire one of the better physicians’ answering service.

As per available statistics, more than 110 million emergency room (ER) visits occur in United States every year. Admittedly, not all these visits are for emergency purposes. Far too many people visit ERs because they seek clinical advice and an ER is seen as the only immediate option.

Strictly, visits to emergency rooms should be restricted to only those cases where immediate care is needed to prevent death or incapacity.

Yet, accessibility cannot be ignored. Patients require a gateway for medical access even after clinical hours - not only to receive emergency care but also to get better medical attention for their well-being.

A survey revealed that patients expressed highest satisfaction when they received after care from their own family physician or the clinic they visited most often. In contrast, the experience patients had from emergency rooms or a walk-in-clinic was far from acceptable.

So the question naturally arises as to whether a physician answering service or an automated service suits best for a health care provider.

Yes, it is true that a live physician answering service can answer your calls after hours, but the service, if not up to the mark, will fail to forward important calls to the physician on duty.

A research published by a journal revealed that approximately 50 per cent of the calls not forwarded by physicians’ answering service to the on-call doctor could be classified as important and needing urgent medical care.

The consensus in the medical profession now is “all after-hours calls must be forwarded to the on call doctor and no triage decisions must be made by the physician answering service as this can result in erroneous or dangerous delay in medical care.”

Doctors Answering Service: A Useful Device In Modern Times

With the stupendous increase in the volume of calls, doctors answering services are also seeing an increase in demand, becoming almost a necessity for medical practitioners, physicians, and doctors.  As their aim is to provide the best possible service to their patients, this service helps in reducing their burden.

All they need to do is sit back and relax and their work will be done by the answering service company. This service It can be customized according the services offered by the doctors. Ideally, it helps in scheduling and rescheduling an appointment, taking messages, confirming the visiting time of the doctor, asking for reports, and many other such myriad tasks.

That is not all, apart from setting up appointments; the services also remind the patients of the same. The doctors answering service are mostly effective where there are a large number of departments and numerous physicians working within these departments. It helps in easily transferring calls to the concerned departments.

With a system like this, proper communication between the doctor and patient can be maintained. If the doctor is unavailable at the moment, the service records the patient's message so that the physician can access it anytime they want. As per statistics, patients would rather listen to an interactive voice program on the doctors answering service instead of a dial tone or voice mail recording.

Keeping an answering machine in any clinic or hospital is more affordable than appointing two or three persons at the reception to answer phone calls. The service is quite reasonable and works 24*7. 

Lastly, it does not require any monetary maintenance, does not involve any bonuses or increments, and works in just the same way. So, a doctors answering service helps in reducing doctors’ burden with just a minimum one-time investment.

How To Find Reliable Medical Answering Services

Medical answering services are a great help to independently practicing physicians and small or medium healthcare firms. A doctor answering service allows doctors to do what they like or know best – treating illnesses and offering medical consultation to patients.

Bridging the Communication Gap

Good communication is nearly as vital as medical know-how for the success of a physician or hospital. That is where medical answering services come handy.

Selecting an Answering Company

There is no dearth of answering services in the country. On the internet, they are aplenty. But if you do not choose a reputable and reliable doctor answering service, chances are you will regret the decision sooner rather than later.

The following are some factors to consider when choosing a healthcare answering company:

• Experience
• Professionalism
• Use of technology

Experience

Greater the experience, better will be the doctor answering service. Never choose a company that has been in existence only for a few years. There are companies that have been providing a stellar service for decades.

Professionalism

Never settle for anything less than the service of the best call executives. In this era of global outsourcing, it is important to know with whom your patients will be talking to when they call you. Make sure that the executives are thoroughly professional and sufficiently experienced.

Use of Technology

The best medical answering services use sophisticated technologies, which include:

• Reliable battery back-up
• Latest telephone and call diverting technologies
• A communication system that comprises text messaging, pager, fax, and emails.

Keeping these pointers in mind will ensure you hire the best services for your needs.

Things To Consider When Changing A Professional Answering Service

Physicians and self-employed professionals consider a change of professional answering service company for two reasons:

1. When they are genuinely dissatisfied with the service of their existing telephone answering services,
2. When sales executives from a new call answering business approach them.

In both the cases, it is worthwhile to consider the option of changing the existing call answering service. If one gets better service at the same cost, it would be foolish to not accept it.

But where is the guarantee that the new service will be better than the old one? You cannot act just by believing the words of the sales executives of telephone answering services.

As a matter of fact, no one can guarantee that the new service will be better than the old one. And that is why people who are thinking about changing their professional answering service might find this post helpful.

Here are the things one must check when changing an answering service.

Reasons

If a physician is happy with the existing healthcare answering service, there is no need to change the service – however persuasive the new sales executives are.

If a physician is genuinely unhappy with the service of existing service, it is time to change the company. Modern companies offer better services and invariably better results.

Personalized service

There are numerous telephone answering services. But only a handful offer personalized services. Patients generally feel calmer when they hear their doctor’s voice and so the greetings can be recorded in the physician’s voice.

A good professional answering service company must also ensure that the clients get the exact details they want in the precise form they prefer.

A Physicians Answering Service – The Key To Keep Your Patients Satisfied

A physicians’ answering service is believed to be the most effective means of ensuring client satisfaction. When you hire medical answering services, you can be sure your patients will never be alone in times of a medical emergency.

Why you need a physicians’ answering service:

·         Very often, doctors are unable to take patient calls which can come in any time of the night or day. During these times, patient calls are attended by these medical answering services. This ensures that the patient is attended to at once, all emergency calls are routed to the appropriate physicians, and treatment is not delayed.

·         Hiring a professional answering service is economical because it helps to cut down on overhead costs of maintaining a full-fledged administrative staff to attend to patient calls 24×7.

·         All patient messages are recorded and stored accurately, eliminating any chances of error which can arise when messages are taken down manually.

·         The system filters calls, sending the ones needing immediate medical attention to the specific doctors. It handles routine calls concerning appointment schedules or prescription clarifications on the next work day.

·         Professional medical answering services understand the importance of every call made and ensure that all callers are treated with respect.

·         These services can customize their functions according to the needs and preferences of their customers.

You can use the medical answering services for a 30-day period to test their effectiveness. If you are not satisfied with the results, you are free to withdraw their services because there are no legally binding contracts.

Medical Answering Service – Choose The Best

Telephone answering services

You might be a bit stressed out about providing your patients with the best service and care, and wondering how to do that without burning yourself out completely. After all, doctors are the most underrated professionals when it comes to the amount of time they spend looking after patients and even in their clinics and hospitals. It would not hurt if there are some professional service providers who could take it up for you when your body needs rest, or maybe when you are going on that long-delayed vacation. The best you can do is to hire a medical answering service provider who would help maintain the flow of information between you and your patients.

A medical answering service provider answers patient calls and takes and passes on messages. This simple service goes a long way in increasing worker productivity, reducing overhead costs, and improving overall patient care. To choose the best providers in this domain, one should be aware of certain factors though.

The calls that go to your office should be handled efficiently by the chosen service provider; clients should not be put on hold or asked to wait for extended periods. This is because people are not very accommodating when it comes to calling about a recently conducted diabetes test, for instance.

The service providers offering telephone answering services to the medical fraternity and even otherwise should ideally be able to offer a large range of message delivery options. Most medical practitioners nowadays carry a personal digital assistant (PDA) or a web-enabled phone. The right kind of service should be able to provide more important messages from patients in an email format, easily accessible from a web-enabled phone or a computer.

If a medical establishment is closed due to weather conditions, the medical answering service provider should ideally be able to take the messages from patients and relay them on quickly and with the least possible turn around time. This way, patients are always cared for even when a medical establishment is closed or not staffed.