When it comes to medical services, patient care comes first. If your clinic or practice is taking regular telephone calls from patients, it’s important that each conversation is securely and quickly handled, in a sensitive and professional way. Using a medical phone answering service, tailored for the health and care profession is one way to provide a high level of seamless support, with the added benefit of each call being properly managed and logged.
Medical practices and clinics offering patient-facing services – for example physiotherapy and chiropractic clinics, dentists and opticians – all depend on an exceptional standard of service. Working with the delicate health matters of each and every patient, they hold themselves and their service providers to the highest standards of quality and integrity. This means providing a reliable and professional service on every telephone call – no matter what the query and no matter how busy the clinic is.
So how can practices and clinics be sure they are providing the best service possible to patients and their families? The good news is that some of the front-office workload can be easily outsourced to take the burden off a busy clinic or practice. Here are three areas in which a medical call answering service can help.
Support 24/7
When you’re working in a medical practice, time really is important. With doctors, nurses and support staff juggling paperwork, booking appointments, taking consultations, making phone calls and following up with patients, time is often stretched. But what if an enquiry can be dealt with without it being put through to the clinic itself? Or what about if it’s possible to create an answering service for when the clinic isn’t open? A clinic answering service can easily be arranged to cope with many different scenarios, from providing extra support during the day due to staff shortages or holidays, to the creation of a bespoke out-of-hours service to take calls through the night or over the weekend.
Appointment Booking
One of the benefits of using a medical office answering service is having a bespoke plan made for your clinic or practice. If your practitioners are working in consultations all day, they may need extra support with handling appointments. An appointment management service, for example, can be used to ensure each appointment or consultation request is dealt with swiftly and professionally. We can link securely and directly to your diary system to manage new and existing client appointments. You can be rest assured that each enquiry is dealt with by a real person, rather than an impersonal answer machine message or an automated voice. This in turn leads to a better patient experience.
Personalised Service
No two clinics or medical practices are the same, so you will receive a tailor-made service created for your team’s specific needs. When it comes to discussing important health issues or ailments, it’s very important that your patients can interact with somebody who understands the problem and can offer the best solution in a sympathetic manner. A medical receptionist will determine which callers need to speak to which people and decide on the calls that need to be put through. Your calls will always be answered by this dedicated medical virtual assistant, who will, through training and on-boarding, seamlessly become part of your team.
Cost Savings
A big advantage for clinics and medical practices using a call answering service is that it can lead to substantial cost savings. Running a medical practice isn’t cheap, and hiring a full-time medical receptionist is expensive – especially when you consider all the extra costs associated with recruitment and employment. A call answering service can provide you with the same results but at a fraction of the cost.
At Verbatim, we can help medical practices to streamline their patient services and maximise their support offering, in the most cost-effective way. Whether you’re a local doctor’s practice or a large dental clinic, we offer a number of options to help you provide your patients with the best experience possible. If you would like to know more about our call answering services for medical practices, please get in touch with the team today.
