What Does a Medical Answering Service Do?

Medical answering service professional scheduling an appointment

Medical answering services can do a whole lot for your medical, dental or healthcare practice – no matter how big or small it may be. With a trusted professional medical service taking care of your incoming calls, your staff can focus its attention where it really needs to be – on your patients.

If you’re not sure if you need help with phone coverage for your medical practice, consider the following:

  • Does your medical practice have problems answering all of your calls?
  • Do you have a backlog of voicemail messages that someone on staff needs to get through each day?
  • Are you constantly getting “voicemail box full” warnings from your phone system?
  • Is your office staff being pulled away from patients in front of them in order to answer calls?
  • Is your office experiencing “over-ringing” (the phone ringing for a long period of time before it’s answered)?
  • Have you considered hiring more in-house staff to deal with incoming calls?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then a medical answering service can be a smart move for your practice.

Medical answering services and your practice

Medical answering services handle all of your incoming calls to your practice with a high level of customer service and attention to detail. A medical answering service can also ensure that you’re meeting HIPAA standards for protecting client information. They can free up the time of your in-office staff, save you money on hiring a full time on-site receptionist and make your patients feel valued.

Here’s how it works:

  • Incoming calls to your medical practice are routed to remote, live receptionists who greet callers with your practice’s name.
  • Virtual receptionists can be trained to handle basic customer service inquiries that medical practices receive – such as office hours or location information.
  • Receptionists can also be trained to make appointments for incoming patients, deliver new patient information and forward emergency calls to the right parties.
  • When callers need to reach someone in your office, your virtual receptionist can forward the call (or the important message) to the main office line, a practitioner’s cell phone or pager number, an email address or a text number.
  • Receptionists can answer calls 24/7 for your practice – which is important considering that medical emergencies don’t always happen during business hours.

A medical answering service can do so much for your practice that hiring one is a virtual no-brainer. If you care deeply about your patients, your practice’s reputation and your bottom line, you can’t afford not to work with a professional medical answering service.

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