Key Questions To Ask Before Locating A Healthcare Answering Service
It is not possible for doctors to attend each and every call. What if you are busy in surgery or a meeting? What if you are away vacationing in another country? What if you are examining your patients? It may not be possible for you to attend calls in such situations. And this may leave your patients frustrated; they may have to wait long just to get an appointment or get answers related to prescriptions and clinic hours. So, what can you do to help your patients avoid such instances? How can you ensure that your patients get treatment in time during emergencies? Simply hire a reputable healthcare answering service.
Now the question is what factors to consider when hiring a healthcare answering service in order to choose the best service provider. The first thing is that you should list your requirements in order to find a firm that can serve them.
Here is a list of questions you should ask before locating an appropriate physicians answering service.
1. Do you want a service for attending all your calls 24/7 or only after-hours calls?
It is not necessary that you hire an answering service to attend all calls from your patients. You could outsource only the calls you receive after clinic hours, or when your clinic phone lines are busy, or while you are away for some work. When making this decision, you should consider how many calls on an average you get during a day, if you have staff to answer the calls from your patients, how much you can spend on an answering service, and how frequently you get complaints from patients regarding the inability to contact you.
2. What kind of services can you expect from an answering service?
There are a myriad of tasks that a medical answering service can do for you, right from taking your messages to making appointments to answering the queries of your patients to billing. Depending upon your requirements, you could decide what services you want to use. For instance, if you have a well-established practice, you may be too busy to schedule your appointments. Rather than spending time on referring to your schedule to make appointments for your patients, you could outsource this function to a medical call center. This will help you save time and at the same time help your patients get better service.
3. What is your budget?
It is better to decide a budget before starting your hunt for the perfect service provider. This will help you make several key decisions and also prevent you from overspending on call center services.
A healthcare answering service offers manifold benefits, and you can enjoy them by choosing the best service agency.
Processing your request, Please wait....
