Tips for Choosing Top Medical Answering Services for Your Practice

Choosing a reliable and efficient answering service is key to the success of a growing medical practice because it takes care of one of the toughest areas of your practice – dealing with calls from patients. There are many companies offering medical answering services but you must know how to choose the right one for your type of practice to get the best results.

The best medical answering services offer various types of call answering services including after hours answering service, weekends answering service, or answering calls only during lunch hours. These services ensure that the calls are answered professionally. The call agents generally follow a script approved by the doctors so that callers do not know their calls are being answered by an outsourced agency.

Is Their Track Record Good?

Choosing telephone answering services that are professional and prompt can help you deal with the problem of handling the calls from your patients better. You must research the main players in the field and find out their track record before you sign up with them. You must analyze the way they collect and use patients’ data.

Compliance with HIPAA and HITECH regulations is imperative for a qualified answering service. They must make sure the personal information of your patients is kept confidential and not shared with anyone without the permission of the concerned person or authority. The operators undergo regular training to be current with the latest regulations applicable to the medical call answering industry.


Are They Offering Customized Packages?

Choosing a call answering service that offers customized packages to meet the specific call answering needs of your medical office will help you cut down the costs substantially. They will be able to offer you only those services and features that you need. You won’t end up paying for something that’s completely useless to your practice.

Any medical answering service is as good as the technology it uses. The industry has seen rapid changes in the technology employed to deliver the best results. It is now easy to handle very high call volumes with relative ease and deliver high quality voice quality and call experience to your patients using the latest machines and techniques available.

The best medical answering services are those which are backed by outstanding customer service. It is important to handle calls from your patients with a lot of compassion and understanding. Companies with long years of experience in handling hundreds of calls daily will know how to treat calls of diverse nature from various types of patients.

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.

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.

Key Factors To Consider When Selecting A Doctors Answering Service

A reliable doctors answering service could greatly help you in running your practice efficiently and can also save your patients from spending long hours just making appointments or getting answers to questions related to your clinic, like where it is located, what its working hours are, and when a concerned doctor is available. However, to fully take advantage of the benefits of medical answering services, it is important that you choose one carefully, keeping the following important factors in mind.

Features – Some call centers offer plain services that involve simply taking messages from patients and then forwarding them to the concerned medical practitioners. And, there are some medical call centers that do much more, like scheduling appointments, answering queries related to prescriptions, and offering complete assistance during disasters. You should first list your requirements depending upon your specialization and scale of practice and then look for appropriate service providers.

Charges – The charges of a doctors answering service depend upon the quality of services offered and the kind of services you use. You can choose from packages varying in duration from one month to one year. However for newbies, it is best to go for small packages of one month in order to enjoy greater flexibility. In case you are not satisfied with the service, you do not have to worry about refunds, and you can easily switch to a new service provider.

Backup Systems – It is important for the call center to have proper backup systems to keep operating without interruption even in the event of power outages, system breakdowns, and natural disasters like cyclones and earthquakes.

A reliable doctors answering service can help you save your time and money immensely. However, the key is that you choose the right service provider and clearly communicate your requirements and expectations so that there is no conflict of interests.