You are a dedicated medical professional, committed to caring for your patients. Your patients might need you 24-hours a day, but your office is only open from 8-5. How can you provide the kind of exceptional care your office is known for providing? Hiring a traditional medical answering service is one solution; however, some callers require immediate assistance or simple advice, and waiting for a call back from the doctor is not the best solution for their problem. This is where it would be beneficial to employ a triage nurse. Though paying a nurse's salary to tend to the telephone is not financially sound for your practice, you would be better suited to aligning with an answering service that offers a built-in nurse triage division.
Callers will feel comfortable speaking with a nurse, instead of the standard answering service operator. The added professional advice of a triage nurse will not only attend to your patients needs, but will also take some of the burden off of your on-call doctor. Callers will be able to leave detailed messages, and depending on the service, may even be able to leave personal voicemail messages for you or your staff. Sounds like what you've been looking for, but how can you be certain you are hiring the right answering service for your practice?
When you begin your search for a medical answering service, it is important to make a note of all that your practice will require of such a service, and see to it that each of those requirements is assuredly provided. For example, what kind of guarantees do they offer? What happens if an unforeseeable devastating event befalls your office? Does your medical answering service offer disaster recovery solutions? A modern medical answering service can arrange to access information on your computer networks remotely. Remember that your answering service might be located anywhere in the country, and not necessarily near your office, so having a backup of your patients' records is crucial for HIPAA compliance, and ensures the integrity of your practice.
Although some things are a given, like HIPAA compliant phone operators with a detailed knowledge of your practice, there are certain other important things to consider. When deciding which answering service is right for you, ask questions like average hold-time for callers, standard procedures for handling calls, and how many operators or nurses will be handling your incoming calls. What you don't want is to have one patient on hold while a telephone answering service professional goes back and forth between callers. This is frustrating to your patients, and will contribute to a negative image for your practice. Also, if you can find a service that is bi- or multi-lingual, your foreign patients will feel that much more secure knowing you are their doctor.
All in all, there is a great deal to consider when it comes to hiring the proper medical answering service and nurse triage service for your busy office. Of course you want to adhere to your budget, but do not sacrifice quality and exceptional customer care in the process. Not only will the right service do wonders for your reputation, but your patients will be the recipient of that kind of specialty care you pride yourself on providing.
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MPC Call Center offers inbound call center and outbound call center services, help desk solutions, order taking, lead generation, appointment setting, call center services and sales support. We are a U.S. based live operator call center for small, medium, and large companies.