The need for a receptionist in a medical clinic is undoubtedly undeniable. However, having an in-house receptionist can cause a few major problems, for instance, if the receptionist suddenly resigns from all the responsibility, the doctor needs to start looking for another one. The process is a bit intricate since it involves creating ads, investing time, and effort to hire the top talents. After all, a doctor can’t trust a tyro to handle all the responsibilities including answering patient’s calls in times of emergencies, taking appointments for doctors, reminding patients of upcoming appointments with the doctor, etc. A receptionist in a medical clinic is responsible for handling the critical scenarios at times. Especially if there are gynecologists or any other specialists who handle emergency situations, then the person who handles the calls should be trained enough for the job.
For a doctor, it’s a constant struggle to answer his buzzing phone throughout the day. Sometimes it becomes disturbing especially when he is treating other patients. It creates distractions and medical professionals can never allow distractions during their operation. So, it’s time to think of an alternative to traditional receptionists and hire medical answering services. A medical answering service provides a range of solutions that allow doctors to simplify their clinical process. Since a medical clinic requires seamless interaction between front office staff, back-office operation, clinicians, doctors, patients, it should be handled by professionals.
The medical answering service is specially geared towards the medical industry to simplify the lives of the doctors. They handle all the important tasks including answering phone calls, taking messages from patients, answering calls after the clinic is closed, handling overflow of calls, identifying important and unimportant calls, setting up appointments, processing payments, etc. However, not every answering service provides the best quality service to the doctors. It requires physicians to follow the pro tips to land on the best answering services. Let’s take a look at these pro tips below,
- Check Their Availability
Medical professionals should be reachable at any time of the day and night. But, for an individual, it’s not possible to provide 24*7*365 services to satisfy the patients. This is the prime reason why it’s required to check the availability of medical answering services. The top doctor answering service provides round the clock services to manage all the clinical operations. If the patient calls at midnight, someone will virtually be there to answer the calls. So, doctors can live a balanced life instead of a messy one.
These professionals are trained enough to answer the calls professionally and filter the calls whenever it’s an emergency. It means they will screen the calls before it finally reaches the doctor. Sometimes, patients call for trivial things like an update on the test reports or to check the availability of the doctors. In these cases, the professional will keep the doctors free from answering such trivial queries. But, it’s crucial to check their availability as the doctors need someone to answer the calls for 24 hours.
- Check for HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA compliance is compulsory for any professional medical answering service to have. It may require additional expenses to hire these HIPAA-compliant medical answering services but if the doctors want to save their reputation in the long run, it’s a wise decision to consider this factor. A standard medical answering service is always HIPAA compliant which means they won’t violate the confidential information of the patients. These medical clinics deal with millions of confidential data on a daily basis and any violation can cause penalties on the clinic. This is the reason why it’s important to check this factor to ensure the successful operation of the medical clinic.
- Consider Their Industry Experience
Well, medical calling professionals need to know the rules of calling and should have significant experience to handle the intricate scenarios. This is the reason why it’s important to spend a few extra hours investigating the number of years that the service provider has experience in the field. If they have dealt with a lot of calls in the past, the chances are that they will provide a standard script to the doctor to check if that fits his instructions. It’s important to have the cooperation between the two parties while working with a medical answering service otherwise, the doctors will never be able to yield the utmost benefits of medical answering service.
If people end up hiring a novice for the job, the doctors will have to invest his precious time in training the people too virtually which can be a messy task. In fact, the purpose of hiring the calling services will never be fulfilled in this case. So, it’s always best to consider the experiences of the medical answering professionals before finalizing the decision.