The medical industry faces a plethora of regulatory and legal constraints designed to protect the patient. With concerns around cybersecurity, telehealth, and invoice and payment processing, medical professionals have to be on their game regarding patient privacy each and every day. In addition to concerns about maintaining patient privacy, those in the medical field are at constant attention. Failure to do so could be the difference between life and death.
Though many medical clinics and hospitals hire receptionists to answer their calls, it can get expensive to have enough people on hand to ensure calls are routed promptly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When it comes to medical matters, it doesn’t really matter the time of day it is. For this reason, more and more medical clinics and hospitals are turning to professional answering services for help with call answering, routing, and message-taking.
Medical answering services are a bit different than traditional answering services.
Five Benefits of a Medical Answering Service
As we have shared in the past, medical answering services provide many benefits to medical, dental, or related healthcare practices. When you leverage medical answering services to handle your incoming calls, you can rest assured that medical answering professionals will maintain a high customer service level.
If you are in the medical industry and are thinking of hiring a medical answering service, be sure to check out the many benefits that such a service can bring to your organization.
- Increase patient satisfaction – Medical providers are always under fire to provide a better service level, faster, and at a lower cost. And that is often hard to do as cutting corners in the medical industry can mean a missed diagnosis or even medical negligence. Thankfully, when it comes to a medical answering service, there is an ability to offer high-quality service at a fraction of the cost. Medical answering professionals are available at any time of the day, any day of the week, to interact with your patients and callers. Not only that, these answering professionals are specially trained to treat patients as a priority.
- Improve provider ranking – Just as customers have a choice in where they shop, patients have a choice in who they trust with their medical care. When you use a professional medical answering service, you know that your patients receive the right level of attention, all provided with genuine understanding and empathy as to what the patient is experiencing in their life. These positive and caring interactions make a big difference to patients and play a tremendous role in contributing to positive patient satisfaction.
- Enhance the relationship between physician and patient – As a medical practitioner, you want to be more than just a great doctor. Ultimately, saving lives and ensuring patients get healthy is the priority; most patients prefer a doctor who has a suitable bedside manner, and that respects them. Creating the foundation for a positive physician-patient relationship takes time, and unfortunately, this can’t be directly done outside of practice hours. Medical answering services can serve as an extension helping to bridge the gap between doctor and patient during off-hours.
- Improve patient scheduling – Patients don’t necessarily remember that they need to schedule an appointment during hours convenient for the medical practice. Often, patients don’t have time to make the phone call to plan their next appointment during office hours. Or, they are dealing with a sick child in the middle of the night and want to be sure to get an appointment as soon as the clinic opens. With a medical answering service, you can ensure that patients can call to make appointments during times that are convenient to them. And, you can rest assured that they will be treated with respect, all while maintaining appropriate patient privacy.
- Increase appointment shows – So what does this mean? Well, patients inevitably schedule appointments and then later forget that they did so. It can be very frustrating for practitioners when they experience patient no-shows. No-shows create inefficiencies in your office’s normal flow and have a detrimental effect on your bottom line. Not only does it mean one less patient and procedure you can bill for, but it also takes up a valuable slot of time that another patient might have needed. With a medical answering service, these professionals can send out patient reminders via text or email or make reminder calls. This extra effort is excellent for patient satisfaction and does a tremendous job of lowering your no-show rate.
Medical Answering Services Benefit the Medical and Dental Industries
If you are looking for medical answering services for your medical or dental practice, you have come to the right place. With a variety of call management and message delivery services, the professionals at Hartley and Associates will make sure that your team never misses a call. Contact us at (866) 918-8700 for more information on how we can help you increase patient satisfaction and improve your bottom line.
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