Medical answering services can be an immense help to busy offices that struggle with phone calls. And yet, we know some clinics and private practices are reluctant to pay for answering services because they are afraid patients will be turned off. It is an understandable concern. Just know this: your patients don’t need to know you use an answering service.
A high-quality medical answering service can provide a seamless bridge between you and your patients, so that there is never even a hint that a patient’s call is being handled by a third party. And really, that’s the best way to approach service quality. Rather than trying to hide the fact that your office uses a medical answering service, it’s better to give your patients such a positive experience that the question never enters their minds.
How does an answering service accomplish this? Consider the following:
1. Comprehensive and Ongoing Training
Comprehensive training is non-negotiable in the call center space. It is critical for medical answering services given the nature of the calls they deal with. So right from the start, before a clinic or private practice signs on with a medical answering service, management needs to know that the service providers operators are fully trained.
Staff training should also be ongoing. As needs change and the medical environment evolves, operators need to be able to keep up. Ongoing training also relates directly to your office or clinic. When things change on your end, the service providers’ operators need to be kept in the loop.
2. An Appropriate Level of Medical Knowledge
One clinic might want an answering service that does little more than take messages. That’s fine. But another clinic expects its medical answering service to provide basic triage. In such a case, operators need to possess an appropriate level of medical knowledge. They cannot effectively triage if they don’t know how to do it.
The concept of knowledge is critical for a number of reasons. At the top of the list is patient safety. It can never be compromised by a lack of knowledge among phone operators. In addition, demonstrating a lack of knowledge is a proven way to convince patients that your office cannot be trusted. So yes, operators need to be knowledgeable based on the tasks they are expected to perform.
3. Scope of Services
Something else to consider is the scope of services the medical answering service provides. The broader the scope, the less likely a patient will have to call back or go online to get things done. The good news is that modern medical answering services are capable of doing a lot. They can:
- Provide triage.
- Prioritize calls.
- Forward emergency calls.
- Schedule appointments.
- Send appointment reminders.
- Answer basic patient questions.
As far as taking messages is concerned, there are plenty of options for that as well. Messages can be forwarded to email, an office management portal, voicemail accounts, and even forwarded via SMS.
4. Whatever Your Staff Would Do
The key to blurring the line between a medical answering service and in-house call handling is to make sure that every caller is properly taken care of. From our perspective, this means doing for clients whatever their staff would otherwise do. We tailor our services to your needs so that our operators are indistinguishable from your staff.
We encourage you not to dismiss medical answering services based solely on fear that your patients will be turned off by it. Here at Apello, we strive to provide such good service that patients never even think about asking the question.
