Apello medical answering services are ideal for group practices otherwise bogged down by heavy phone traffic. But before you jump to conclusions about the types of practices that can benefit from medical answering services, consider this: they are intended for solo doctors too.
Solo doctors running independent practices are harder to find these days. Thanks to industry consolidation and the explosion of the group practice model, going it alone is not the norm. But for those clinicians choosing to do it, the challenges of incoming phone traffic are just as real. Likewise for the benefits of contracting with in medical answering service.
What an Answering Service Does
If you are not familiar with our industry, you may not fully understand what a medical answering service does. At a bare minimum, the service provides trained staff who answer the phones during off hours. Messages are taken, emergency calls are forwarded, and so forth.
Most service providers, including Apello, go above and beyond basic service. Our fully trained staff can handle basic inquiries, provide limited support services, and triage urgent calls as they come in. Went can even interface with most major patient management platforms to fully take over scheduling and appointments.
What It Means to the Solo Doctor
It is true that hiring a medical answering service adds another monthly bill a busy practice must pay. But think of it this way: as a solo doctor, you are going to have to pay someone to answer the phones one way or another. Your choices are to hire your own staff or to let an agency like Apello take care of it for you.
Here is what hiring a medical answering service would mean to you and your practice:
1. A Big Practice Image
First impressions are as important in the medical field as they are in any other industry. If people aren’t impressed when they call your practice, they may not call back. You could actually lose patients as a result of poor phone practices. On the other hand, a medical answering service creates a certain level of sophistication and professionalism.
Turning the phones over to trained industry professionals creates consistency. It eliminates the random and disorganized impression people so often get from individual practices. In essence, bringing in a medical answering service creates a big practice image.
2. Lower Risk of Burnout
Medical practices are extremely busy environments known for heavy workloads and high-pressure conditions. Burnout is real. But guess what? Burnout doesn’t just impact clinicians. The entire office staff is subject to it.
Bringing in a medical answering service lowers the risk of burnout among office personnel. Freed from no longer having to pay attention to the phones, they can focus on other tasks. The workload goes down, the pressure is reduced, and team members are less likely to suffer burnout.
3. Better HIPAA Compliance
While HIPAA compliance is normally associated with documents and electronic record-keeping systems, the regulations apply equally to all forms of communication – including the phones. Do you and your staff fully understand what HIPAA compliance looks like?
For example, solo doctors attempting to manage after-hours calls via a personal cell phone or insecure voicemail are taking huge liability risks. With a medical answering service, this same doctor can rest assured that secure messaging and a comprehensive audit trail are ensuring his practice is maintaining compliance.
A medical answering service can be a cost-effective solution to a solo doctor’s incoming phone traffic challenges. We would appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate how. Contact Apello and let us show you how professional answering services can benefit your practice.
