Whether you’re a medical office or a healthcare facility, a medical answering service can help your staff handle calls more efficiently. By using the right provider, you’ll have live Customer Service Professionals answering your calls every day of the week, including nights and weekends. In addition, the right service will ensure that patients get the information they need.
In addition to answering calls, the best medical answering service can help you handle changes, cancellations, and appointment notifications. This can free your staff from handling phone calls so that they can focus on providing quality care to patients. They can even help you connect patients to 911 in the event of an emergency. The service can also help patients access their messages any time using web-based applications.
One of the most important functions of a medical answering service is the fact that it can keep a patient’s private medical information secure. HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was passed in 1996, and it requires that all health-related phone calls be handled in a manner that prevents the private data from being exposed to the wrong person. By working with medical answering service a HIPAA-compliant service, you’ll be able to rest easy knowing that your patients’ privacy will remain intact.
Another important function of a medical answering service is the ability to keep clear records of phone calls. This can help reduce potential liability. It can also allow you to maintain a complete record of all patient calls so that you know exactly what is happening at any given time. A good service can also help you streamline your operations. They’ll take messages and forward them to the right person.
Using the right medical answering service can save your practice money, improve patient satisfaction, and give you more time to spend on patient care. A good service will be able to keep your patients informed of new appointments, office closures, and even help you schedule visits. If you don’t have the resources to hire a receptionist or an administrative assistant, a medical answering service can provide the same functions and more.
The right service will also give you a leg up in the competition for patients. When choosing a service, you should look for one that offers value-add support such as nurse triage. Some providers will also have bilingual receptionists to help callers who speak both English and Spanish.
The best medical answering service will also be able to provide you with the ability to receive and send messages to multiple email addresses, cell phones, and even TTY (voice-to-text). Using these features will make it easy to receive feedback from patients and provide them with information on upcoming appointments. The service may also be able to send messages to patients in the event of an emergency.
The best medical answering service can also streamline your work by handling all incoming calls and incoming messages. They’ll send messages to the right people in the right way, and they’ll also be able to help you keep a log of your phone calls.