Communication is essential for maintaining any kind of relationship. In healthcare settings, poor communication creates problems among clinicians, support staff, administrative staff, and patients. Some of the problems can be addressed with a medical answering service.
Miscommunication in healthcare can be the result of poorly planned patient handovers. It can be related to language and cultural barriers, emotional and psychological barriers, physical challenges, environmental conditions, and even systemic issues within a healthcare organization.
Your organization may not be a large healthcare group with hundreds of offices around the country. In fact, you might operate a smaller private practice or group practice with just a few physicians. Regardless, a medical answering service could help your team avoid the communication problems that frequently lead to disruptions.
What a Medical Answering Service Does
We would be willing to wager that the majority of the miscommunication issues in healthcare are the direct result of two things: a lack of coordination and a lack of resources. In the individual and group practice, both manifest themselves in the busy reception room where limited numbers of staff are struggling under an immense workload.
A medical answering service relieves the team of one of the most time-consuming and distracting of all tasks: answering the phones. At a bare minimum, a medical answering service speaks to callers and takes messages. But most answering services go way beyond the minimum.
Apello and our competitors can also do things like:
- Forward calls and messages.
- Provide basic triage.
- Help patients make and modify appointments.
- Transfer non-medical callers to the appropriate departments.
Most importantly, medical answering services do not have to be utilized only after hours. Today’s medical offices rely on their answering services to handle all their phone calls. The answering service becomes a partner of sorts that eliminates the need for office staff to even think about the phones.
Addressing Specific Problems
As for more specific problems within healthcare communication, answering services address them in different ways depending on circumstances. Here are some examples:
- Patient Handover – A medical answering service can facilitate smoother patient handover via information sharing. Patient information can be forwarded from one provider to the next using electronic channels.
- Language Barriers – Answering services with bilingual agents can better serve patients whose first language is not English. Speaking a caller’s native tongue goes a long way toward eliminating misunderstandings.
- Psychological Barriers – Callers may be under stress when contacting a medical office. Answering service agents are trained in how to handle high-stress calls. They can calm the caller before addressing a specific problem or concern.
- A Lack of Information – Overworked office staff may struggle to gather all the necessary information pertaining to a call. Answering service personnel do not face the same kinds of pressures. Answering calls and taking information is their main priority. It is what they do best.
- Systemic Barriers – Systemic barriers, particularly those relating to administration, do not impact medical answering services as much because they are third-party contractors. Agents have the opportunity to do their jobs without any pressure related to an organization’s systemic deficiencies.
If it helps, think of a medical answering service as similar to a mediator. Because the answering service is a neutral third-party, it is able to handle everything from answering calls to gathering information in a more clear and concise manner.
Whether after hours or 24/7, a medical answering service is a necessity for the busy medical office. A competent provider offering the right services not only takes the pressure off medical office staff, but it also mitigates many of the communication problems modern offices face.
