Quality matters, right? It matters whether you are talking about patient outcomes in a medical setting or customer service in retail. It matters to us as a medical answering service. It should matter to you as a medical provider looking to take care of your patients as best you can.
Are you looking to partner with a medical answering service for the first time? Do you have an answering service you are looking to replace? If you answered ‘yes’ to either question, remember that your choice of answering service matters. Your patients deserve quality. So does your staff. With that in mind, here are the key characteristics of a quality medical answering service:
1. Professionalism at Every Level
Healthcare is serious business. It deals with matters of health and wellbeing, matters that sometimes involve life or death decisions. Patients want and expect professionalism at every level. A medical answering service should offer nothing less.
Professionalism is maintained through proper training and policy implementation. It goes without saying that all operators tasked with answering medical calls need to be trained in emergency assessment, triage, call forwarding, etc. Likewise, call center policies should be aligned with patient safety and satisfaction goals.
2. Around-the-Clock Availability
A medical answering service’s value is limited if it is not available to answer the phones nights and weekends. Indeed, around-the-clock availability is part-and-parcel of the whole answering service concept. It really makes no sense to partner with a service incapable of handling your calls 24/7. This is not to say that you will utilize them around-the-clock, but the option should still be available.
3. Fully Trained Operators
The sensitive nature of the medical environment demands that all operators be fully trained. Operators need to know and understand basic medical terminology. They need to understand what the law requires of them. Operators need to know how to perform proper triage, even under highly stressful situations. Staffing the phones with untrained agents risks patient health as well as a medical provider’s credibility.
4. HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA compliance applies as much to phone calls as it does face-to-face interactions. Medical providers have every right to expect that they are answering services practice strict adherence to all privacy regulations and data security protocols. At the end of the day, protecting sensitive patient information is not optional.
Note that compliance is as much about policy as it is practice. A quality medical answering service has written policies in place to guarantee HIPAA compliance. Medical providers should not be afraid to ask to see such policies.
5. Appointment Management Capabilities
A fair number of calls coming into a medical office are scheduling calls. In fact, scheduling assistance is one of the reasons many of our clients have invested in a medical answering service. They want us to handle scheduling so that their staff can concentrate on other things.
Answering service operators should be able to schedule and modify appointments. They should be able to manage cancellations. Ideally, an answering service should even be able to send reminders of upcoming patient appointments, thereby reducing no shows.
6. Multilingual Support
Given the diverse nature of American culture, a quality medical answering service offers multilingual support. Such support lends itself well to helping callers regardless of their native tongue.
Apello continually strives to provide quality answering services to the medical industry. If you are looking for a new medical answering service, we would appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate what we can do for you. We offer flexible services provided by fully trained staff who do their jobs well. Why not put us to the test?
