When someone mentions live answering services for medical providers, does your mind immediately start thinking about how nice it would be to have someone else staff the phones for you? If so, that’s normal and fair. Answering phone calls in a medical setting can be a herculean task. But have you ever thought about it from the patient’s perspective?
Medical answering services are intended to benefit both medical providers and their patients. From the patient’s perspective, medical care is a service provided by a business. And they expect the businesses they patronize to satisfy their expectations.
Patient satisfaction is key to what we do and how we do it. Satisfied patients translate into a healthy bottom line for the medical provider. To that end, there are some key things to know about answering services and their relationship to patient satisfaction.
Patients Don’t Like Talking to Computers
One of the worst things modern business has ever done in relation to customer service is adopt computerized telephone systems. Study after study proves that consumers don’t like talking to computers. Patients do not like talking to them anymore.
When a patient calls a medical provider, he or she wants a human being to pick up the phone. They want to be able to ask questions of someone who knows what they are talking about. If they need to make an appointment, they want a human being to manage scheduling. Patients get terribly frustrated when they need to navigate complicated electronic menus and leave voicemail messages that may or may not be returned.
Patients Aren’t Thrilled With Long Wait Times, Either
Having to talk to computers is bad enough. Things are made worse when patients experience long wait times after navigating complex electronic menus. It goes without saying that patients are not thrilled about those long wait times.
Medical answering services can solve this particular problem by handling call overflow. An answering service can offer quicker responses to patient inquiries. It can streamline appointment scheduling and management. An answering service can minimize hold times during peak call volume.
When Triage Is Necessary
Talking to computers and long wait times are more about convenience than anything else. But there is something else to consider, something that directly impacts patient health and safety: triage. Medical answering services typically provide basic triage that ensures patients receive the right level of care at the right time.
Triage is not possible when practices aren’t answering their calls. So a patient experiencing what could be a medical emergency is not helped by having to leave a voicemail and wait for a return call that never comes.
Of course, the patient can head right to an urgent care center or emergency department. And if their condition truly is life threatening, that’s the best option anyway. But what happens when urgent care or emergency department personnel determine the issue was minor and could have been handled at home? The patient is left with an expensive bill because their medical provider was inaccessible.
A live answering service could have been the difference maker. The service could have managed call overflow and provided basic triage that might have saved a trip to urgent care or the emergency room.
Customized Service Is Available
We believe one of the keys to patient satisfaction is consistency and accessibility in the communication department. Live medical answering services are a part of that. Customized service is available, so don’t let the worry of having to pay for services you do not need discourage you from further investigation. As always, Apello is here with the medical answering services you need.
