One of the hardest tasks in providing healthcare is effectively maintaining communication with patients in a way that doesn’t undermine the quality of care given. A good solution to this is utilizing a trustworthy doctor’s telephone answering service. Be it after-hours calls, emergency response, or even appointment taking, the pertinent answering service can also ensure the seamless running of your practice.
Striking the correct answering service would improve patient care and satisfaction, but it’s the number of answering services that you have to choose from that raises the difficulty in selecting the best. These are some easy tips on how to make your choice.
Check Their Hours of Operation
When searching for doctors telephone answering service companies, the most important aspect is availability. There is a high probability that the patients are working with other specialists or, worst-case scenario, have an emergency. With such a service, the patients are assured that irrespective of the time of day, they have access to the practice.
This is most important for medical practice, which deals with emergencies such as surgery or trauma. Such patients will always need to speak to the office outside of working hours. Check how long it would take the answering service to transfer the call since it can affect the quality of service offered as well.
Selecting a service that is active twenty-four hours a day is bound to increase patient convenience and ensure that no call goes unattended. Responding to patient calls within the same day can help avoid causing the patients unnecessary stress and make them feel more attached to your service.
Ensure that the Company you are Dealing with is HIPAA-Compliant
When it comes to dealing with patient data, there should be no losses when it comes to privacy. Healthcare providers must work with medical answering services that are HIPAA compliant. HIPAA outlines policies for safeguarding patients’ private health information and noncompliance can expose the provider to serious legal and financial risks.
Before subscribing to a particular service, determine how they make sure that HIPAA is respected. This means that the call agents are competent in keeping patient information, and the systems that process the information are legal and secure by high standards. With privacy as the top priority of the service, you have to protect your practice from incidents while retaining the confidence of your patients.
Look at Their Healthcare Knowledge and Experience
Moving on, the next component of the guiding principles is the need to assess the potential firm’s knowledge and experience within the healthcare space. It would be interesting to note that an answering service will have more insights into the ins and outs of the healthcare industry. Such services educate their workers on working in the medical world, balancing the needs of the patients and the need for calls. This should be quite an important antagonism in the management of calls made by patients.
Forwarding all these healthcare practices to a specialized healthcare answering service means that a lot of processes are assisted. Such services will be for forwarding emergency calls, booking appointments, and general information about the practice. With their understanding of relevant processes in healthcare, patients will be able to get correct details and urgent issues are treated accordingly.
Pay Attention to the Technology They Employ and Their Capabilities
Last but not least, modern solving answering services feature tools and technologies aimed at enhancing communication and responding to patients’ calls. There are many tools services that you can consider such as call logging, the ability to monitor messages left, and even divergence purposes with other applications already in existence within the practice.
Call recording is one of the most useful features as it facilitates reviewing conversations for quality control and training purposes. In addition, having the capability for message tracking ensures that no patient message is left unattended, and you can follow up to ensure high standards are maintained. The appropriate technology can also assist your practice in staying organized and enabling timely responses.
For this reason, some answering services can be useful in bilingual situations, which come in handy when the practice deals with a wide range of patients. It is also important that the practice provides services in other languages as this validates the patients and their experiences with the practice.
Look Out for Customization Options
Do not forget to scout for customization services also. Every medical practice is unique and therefore, a similar answering service can’t be effective for all practices. The one-size-fits-all approach may not have the needed flexibility for the best care of patients. Approach potential providers and inquire whether they provide customizable services, including greetings, call routing, and setting protocols for calls according to the level of urgency.
Customization lets the answering service become an integral part of the workflow in your practice. For instance, imagine you would want some of the calls to be forwarded to a doctor or nurse, while other calls would have a standard reply. If you go for a service with this level of customization, you are able to offer better and more efficient care to your patients.
Conclusion
It is important to understand that deciding which doctor’s answering service to go for is not just a choice of logistics; it is all about improving the patient’s care and experience in looking for the doctor. By making sure the service is offered at all times, following HIPAA standards, having experience in the field of healthcare, being equipped with modern technology, and being customizable to your practice, one will be assured of making the practice successful.
The right service provides an opportunity to improve patient satisfaction, decreases the rate of missed calls, and allows the medical personnel to do what they do best, providing quality services.
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