Your patients may be like family, and when they’re in need, you want nothing more than to make things better.
Unfortunately, you have a big family and the sheer number of patients in your care make it really difficult to ensure that each of them gets the perfect patient care that they deserve. You and your staff are always torn between patients in the office and patients on the telephone, it’s really a situation that’s unfair to both you and your patients.
What is a medical professional to do?
HIPAA-Compliant Answering Services Can Act on Your Behalf
Maybe you didn’t know it, but you can get some help with that ringing phone in the form of a HIPAA-compliant answering service.
No matter who calls, or when they call, they can be routed to the answering service who can handle the caller just like your in-house staff would. This type of answering service is trained regarding all the latest HIPAA laws and will follow your instructions to the letter when it comes to caller care.
These are some other ways you can up your patient care with an answering service:
- Improving appointment scheduling and handling. When you’re setting your own appointments, among a laundry list of other tasks, it’s easy for patients to slip through the cracks or to double-book a few here and there. It’s an annoyance for you, but it can be a big problem for patients who may have to make arrangements for medical transport or other help just to get to your office.A dedicated appointment setting queue can solve this problem fast! Using software that integrates with your own, your appointment setters can handle all the patients who call for appointments and you can set the few who want to schedule while they’re in the office.
- Freeing front desk staff up for in-office patients. A constantly ringing phone means that your front line staff are often forced to be short with your patients, the very people that your office depends on to keep running. But what if your office staff didn’t have to answer that ringing phone?They could be significantly more pleasant, take a little more time to listen and reply to patients and deliver better patient care from the front desk. Patient care starts from the moment that patient walks in the door, after all, not from the time they enter the exam room..
- Reducing paperwork errors by eliminating telephone juggling. Paperwork errors happen, but they should be very minimal. You never know when a tiny paperwork error will become something that ultimately injures a patient.Multi-tasking was long ago proven to be the best way to do many things poorly, so when your staff is starting and stopping because the phone is ringing, you can expect that there will be consequences. Your HIPAA compliant answering service can handle those calls that can’t be answered because your staff is focused on doing one thing quite well.
A HIPAA-compliant answering service is an ideal partner for any medical office, both because they can help tone down some of the wild flurry of activity that goes on day to day and because they can grow as your office does. When choosing one, make sure they invest in their staff and stay abreast of any changes to HIPAA and you’ll be set for a long, happy relationship.
