Healthcare offices have become some of the busiest work environments in the world. Today, back-end and behind-the-counter staff must juggle administrative tasks with one-on-one patient encounters daily. This can become overwhelming, and without extra backup, it ultimately leads to burnout and less quality care for patients. That’s why leaders in healthcare are turning to medical answering to offer relief for not only their staff, but their patients too. With around-the-clock relief ready to support your practice, medical answering is an essential tool for over-the-phone healthcare.
How Does Medical Answering Work?
Medical answering services offer professional call services that take your customer calls on behalf of your practice. They answer when you’re unable to take calls during peak hours, after hours when your practice is closed, or when your staff just can’t make it to the phone in time.
When a patient calls, telephone system technology forwards calls as they come into the practice to an answering service provider. A trained clinical or non-clinical professional then answers the phone on your practice’s behalf, answering questions, transferring lines, and taking detailed notes along the way. Patients calling feel heard and understood–giving your company a great reputation for quality healthcare they can trust.
The 10 Best Practices:
Medical answering is more than just answering phone calls, it’s professional, 24/7, on-demand assistance you can count on. That’s why it’s important to find the best medical answering out there–so your organization can get back to focusing on patient care. If you’re searching for a way to integrate medical answering into your practice, you need to consider some of the best practices medical answering can offer:
- HIPAA Compliance: Needless to say, professional medical answering ensures strict adherence to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This practice saves you from having to train each member of your staff HIPAA regulations. Instead, seek a medical answering service with HIPAA compliant professionals who can implement robust security measures for data protection, and ensure that your practice has the first line of defense against violations. With medical answering, you’ll never have to worry about phone call liability or patient health information (PHI) breaches. Check out more on strong HIPAA Compliant Answering Services.
- 24/7 Availability: Many patients have limited opportunities to speak with their provider due to most organizations only being open on weekdays until 5pm. That’s why 24/7 access is so essential! Around-the-clock accessibility caters to medical urgencies and patient inquiries no matter what time they occur. Medical answering provides live, remote clinicians who not only understand your practice, but promptly respond to calls, ensuring seamless transfers to the appropriate personnel.
- Advanced Technology Integration: Quality medical answering utilizes cutting-edge technology such as AI-driven call routing, EMR/EHR integration, telehealth platforms, and secure messaging systems in their everyday services. These tools enhance efficiency, accuracy, and integration with healthcare providers’ systems. Plus, it provides more opportunities to really communicate with patients when they need it the most!
- Ability to Escalate to Clinicians: In a medical crisis, every moment counts. Medical answering can also include fast, nurse triaging into your system to prioritize urgent calls. This ensures critical cases receive immediate attention from the most available clinician–while also effectively managing non-urgent inquiries.
- Professional & Compassionate Communication: Medical answering delivers immediate attention to patients. By simply answering the phone or guiding a patient towards the correct health avenue, call abandonment rates are reduced while practice and patients develop a stronger bond. With the right training, operators maintain a professional, yet empathetic tone in all interactions–displaying sensitivity when handling patients’ health concerns and communicating skillfully with providers.
- Quality Assurance: If your practice wants to improve, then quality assurance initiatives are important ways to highlight areas that might be missed. Medical answering allows providers to regularly monitor call recordings, conduct quality assessments, and provide feedback to operators and staff. This continuous training and evaluation help maintain service standards and identify areas for improvement.
- Scalability & Flexibility: Eliminating the need for extra in-house staff to answer direct calls allows your practice to scale back and spend more effectively towards improvement. Medical answering excels at providing a high level of service to your patients at a decreased cost. Services can adapt to fluctuating call volumes and flex with operations as needed, with contingency plans for peak times or unexpected increases in call traffic. Scheduling, balancing, and last-minute coverage become a thing of the past. When your practice has automation and routing available, you will both reduce stress and improve finances.
- US-Based Services: Having a US-based medical answering service ensures compliance with strict HIPAA regulations and fosters an easier understanding of healthcare guidelines. This is crucial for facilitating empathetic patient care in a landscape where healthcare literacy and language barriers are more common than ever before.
- Documentation Reporting: Maintaining meticulous records of all calls and interactions, creates a vast system that your clinicians can reference as a patient develops in their healthcare journey. Medical answering integrates data into back-end system applications for a more streamlined approach to administrative tasks. Additionally, documenting PHI accurately and comprehensively for future referrals, creates seamless reporting during a healthcare journey.
- Clinical Expertise: Finally–one of the most important best practices of medical answering is certified clinical expertise. Clinician backed and built medical answering and telehealth providers ensure informed responses to patient inquiries, prioritization towards a proper call triage approach, and connect patients to reliable guidance in critical healthcare situations they can count on.
Wondering If Medical Answering is Right for You? Choose TeleMed Today!
Whether you are a small to medium physician group, a large hospital, a busy medical clinic, a community health center, or more, TeleMed has the tools, experience, and expertise to deploy and integrate an intelligent medical answering service or medical call center solution that exceeds expectations. TeleMed medical answering services work with your practice to define a proper call workflow. We ensure that your patients are taken care of as we collect the correct information needed to progress their health journey, while relieving your staff along the way. Our highly skilled operators are located throughout the United States and are ready to assist your practice day and night. Don’t wait until the phones can’t stop ringing–choose TeleMed today!
