6 Signs To Tell Your Medical Answering Service Does A Great Job
An answering service is now part of managing a medical
practice. However, you have to gauge whether you are getting value for your
money.
Quality communication during after business hours is very important for
patients who might have emergencies. Your answering service should not make
obvious mistakes including inaccurate descriptions of symptoms, wrong patient
names, and delayed messages.
To avoid frustrating mistakes that might dent your
reputation, it is important to ensure that your answering service doesn’t make
other mistakes as well. These might cost you customers and delay payment
reimbursements. This article has signs to tell that your answering service
performs to your expectations.
Best care for patents
after business hours
Patients stay loyal to a practice after trusting the
physician. When they feel that their medical needs don’t get the urgent
attention they deserve, they might switch to a new practice.
This might also
happen when patents feel their questions are not answered on calling your
practice. It happens when you let callers listen to annoying voicemail. Your
callers are likely to end up frustrated and are more likely to call another
practice.
A physicians
answering service that does a
great will manifest in the increase in sales and customer loyalty. Such
customers are likely to send their friends and family to your practice for the
quality experience. The 24/7 customer service gives patents peace of mind that
they can always reach out to your practice and get the necessary assistance.
Having more time for
yourself
Patients expect to talk to their doctor whenever they need
assistance. However, some patients have minor issues that can wait. Having to
deal with all these situations is likely to burn out any physician. The benefit
of hiring an answering service is to sieve out patient situations.
The ideal
answering service should have capacity to only notify the physician when patients
need urgent assistance. This means that the answering agents should have
capacity to solve some patient issues on the phone right away.
This significantly lowers the number of calls to disturb the
physician. With less time spent to respond to minor patient issues, the
physician is like to get more time to indulge in relaxation or career building.
You will have peace of mind that your practice delivers quality patient care
without compromising the communication link with patents. This eliminates chances
of burnout resulting from frustration and inconvenience of attending to
non-emergencies during after business hours.
No chances of fines,
penalties or lawsuits
The ideal answering service should have capacity to handle
the task. Sub-contracting jeopardizes customer information since the
subcontractor might not meet HIPAA compliance
standards. This makes your practice for making it prone to fines and breach
of penalties. Additionally, your practice is likely to suffer from reputational
damage affecting chances of retaining current and potential customers.
Inaccurate on-call schedules put patients’ lives in danger.
These usually lead to the delivery of the patient’s condition to an on-call
physician at a wrong time. With the patient’s life in danger, your practice is
at risk of a malpractice lawsuit.
Apart from causing you a tangible financial
loss, your practice is likely to suffer from reputational damage. Luckily a
professional answering service usually has agents on par with all compliance
regulations to limit chances of compromised patient information.
No hidden fees
The best answering service should be upfront about their
charges. You have to ensure that you are getting what you pay for. Choose a
company with a flat fee without worry about charges for taking messages or
relaying the messages to the right physician.
The answering agency should not
have hidden fees including a fee for relaying doctor’s instruction to patients.
Additionally, the company should not have a fee for recording and logging a
conversation or each communication. All these fees might add up to a
significant amount over time
Protecting your
reputation
Patents always expect to get assisted right away especially
during emergencies. An answering service that attends to your patients right
away encourages building
a stellar reputation for your practice. It usually involves answering
agents delivering messages in a timely manner. This will lessen the chances of
the patients reaching out to other physicians for the necessary assistance.
The ability for patents to reach your practice quickly during
emergencies will build credibility in society. Using voice mail in your
practice offers patients a bad experience that significantly tarnishes your
reputation. The deal answering service should handle all communication to your
office without delays to avoid putting your reputation in jeopardy.
No need for a better
service
Perhaps you feel that you don’t need to switch to another
answering service. This shows your current answering service does a great job.
The ideal service has automated tools for eliminating human error during
after-hours communication.
Additionally, the company might be offering caller
identification protection and ability to defer all non-urgent messages to be
worked on during official business hours. This allows spending your weekend as
planned without getting regularly interrupted by calls from patients with minor
issues.
Bottom line
A quality answering service gives peace of mind that your
patents receive the best care every during after business hours. This will give
you time to relax and to focus on offering quality patient care.
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