In the changing world of today, many healthcare companies are turning to telephone medical answering services. If you aren’t a large medical corporation then you might employ a smaller staff that isn’t able to readily answer customer calls on top of balancing other responsibilities. Whatever the case may be, your practice can always benefit from medical answering services.
What is a Telephone Medical Answering Service?
To really understand all the improvements received by a medical answering service, you first need to understand how it works.
Medical answering services take customer calls on your behalf. They answer when you’re unable to take calls during peak hours, after hours when your practice is closed, or when your staff just can’t make it to the phone in time. Telephone-augmented answering services catch calls as they come into the practice. A trained professional then answers the phone on your behalf, answering questions, transferring lines, and taking detailed notes along the way.
The Benefits
Call services are essential for healthcare providers because they initialize your practice to focus on the business of healthcare instead of the in-betweens. Here are some of the advantages of medical answering services.
Staff Focus— In healthcare every moment counts. Whether you are urgently treating a patient or taking the extra time to create patient engagement, each moment you spend means something. Medical answering services reduce staff workloads. By handling call services, call overflow, after-hours patient calls, and appointment scheduling—telehealth services allow your practitioners to target the needs of your patients.
Increased Customer Satisfaction— When you employ a medical answering service you automatically improve your patient’s experience and overall satisfaction. It is well known that every patient should be treated with compassion, so why pass out on an opportunity to guarantee this? Telehealth services deliver immediate attention to patients who call with concerns. By simply answering the phone or guiding a patient towards the correct health avenue, medical answering services not only eliminate abandonment rates but develop a stronger bond between practice and patient.
Minimize Call Wait— If you do have a patient reaching out for medical services, the last thing you need is for them to be put on hold. When healthcare businesses push back the importance of patient needs it weakens the reliability of the practice. Call overflow services allow patient calls to be automatically forwarded to a medically trained staff. Each patient-made request can be processed according to whatever instructions your practice predetermines. Instead of waiting around, your patients will feel reassured that your practice is the right decision.
Decrease Infrastructure Cost— Saving money is always beneficial. By eliminating the need for extra in-house staff to answer and direct calls, your practice can spend more funds bettering other aspects of itself. Medical answering services excel at providing a high level of service to your patients at a decreased rate. Scheduling, balancing, and having to cover for absences can all become a thing of the past. Once your practice has automated responses and channeling available, you will be saving on both stress and finances.
24/7 Patient Access— Convenience is becoming the language of today. Since most average adults work 8-5 jobs, the only time they really have time to call a practice would be during their small lunch break or after hours. With practices only being open during the week until around 5 pm, this doesn’t give many patients ample opportunity to speak with their provider. That’s why around-the-clock accessibility is so essential. Medical answering services provide a remote receptionist duty that handles any questions or needs your patient has whenever they decide to call. This technology assures that you and your staff don’t have to worry about what happens when you lock the doors.
Choose TeleMed for your Medical Answering Service Needs
Telemed answering services work with your practice to define a proper call workflow. We ensure that your patients are taken care of and get the information you need. Our company will document the onboarding process and outline how we will communicate with you and your staff as we work towards reducing call overflow.
TeleMed was originally founded in 1986 in Atlanta, GA and we maintain a medical answering center there still today. However, we provide nationwide call answering and have operator answering centers in Johnson City, Tennessee and Wise, Virginia. These three interconnected centers provide backup for one another. That enables us to ensure quality telecommunications and medical answering solutions for doctors and medical centers across the country no matter what unforeseen disaster may occur.
We are now a national company servicing doctors in every region of the United States and the three operator centers are the foundation that allows us to handle the incredible diversity of our customer base. So don’t wait until the phones can’t stop ringing. Choose Telemed today!
