Doctors and Nurses

What You Need to Know Before You Hire a Medical Answering Service

If you run a modern medical office, chances are you’ve looked into partnering with a medical answering service to take care of your initial inbound calls. A team of offsite virtual receptionists can save your office time and money with reduced human resource expenses and a greater ability to focus on administration and care provision—the reason your office exists in the first place.

At the same time, there are so many options available when it comes to medical answering services that the task of choosing one can be quite daunting. Here are a few tips to help you select the best answering service for your medical office, getting the cost and efficiency benefits you need to help give your patients the best care possible.

Find a Flexible Answering Service for Your Medical Office

Not all medical offices have the same inbound medical call answering needs, and not all answering services provide the same options and flexibility when it comes to purchasing a plan. Determine your average call volume, and look at inbound call patterns—do you experience spikes at certain times? Do more of your calls tend to come in at a certain time of day, or on certain days of the week?

Whatever your inbound call patterns are, you want a plan that can adapt to them. You don’t want to end up paying for a lot of calls your medical office never receives, and you don’t want to pay substantial overage charges if your call volume exceed what you’d expect. Knowing your office’s answering pattern will help you narrow down your medical answering service choices.

Check Your Answering Service’s and Medical Expertise

You don’t want you answering service providing unauthorized or inappropriate  medical advice to your callers, but you do want them to have enough expertise to now when a call needs to be put through immediately to a doctor or nurse at your facility, when an in-person appointment should be made, or when a follow-up call should be scheduled to answer patient questions and handle concerns. This requires specialized training, and the virtual receptionists working for your medical answering service should have it.

How Responsive is Your Medical Answering Team?

Lastly, make sure your medical answering service is able to quickly answer calls even during periods of high call volume, and that they have a track record of quickly and accurately transferring calls as needed. Speak to some of their current clients, whenever possible, and ensure you and your patients will get the level of service you deserve.

Answering Services For Medical Office

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