What is a medical answering service?
Medical answering services (MAS) are businesses that help medical practices and providers to connect with patients. They usually handle the appointment-making portion of the process, as well as some of the more basic medical services that doctors can’t or don’t want to handle themselves.
These companies ensure they have a qualified receptionist on duty at all times, even after-hours. The receptionist will manage incoming calls and appointment scheduling and answer questions from patients who call in. The receptionist will also work with the provider’s office staff to ensure that the practice’s needs are met, including ensuring patient information is updated for existing and new patients.
Statistics prove that currently, there’s a spike of up to 46% of consumers using live telephone answering services in the healthcare industry.
In this article, we will discuss the benefits of choosing a medical answering service.
Benefits of Choosing a Medical Answering Service
A healthcare answering service can assist with your business’s phone calls and take care of the messages you don’t need to be bothered with. Whether you’re a medical office or dentist, or a veterinary clinic, there are many benefits of choosing a live answering service, including the following.
Prevent Missed Calls
Today’s healthcare practitioners are constantly on the go and can’t always answer their phones, especially when they’re busy with patient care. When a practice chooses a medical call center, they gain access to more than just secretaries who can take messages. They also have a support system that helps them save hours answering, increase patient retention rates, and improve overall practice success.
When you choose a physician answering service, they can answer your phones while you’re with patients. They’ll take down any patient information you need and send in prescription refills, so you don’t have to be interrupted during business hours. This means that you won’t have to miss any important inbound calls.
Ensure HIPAA Compliance
If you have staff answering phones and taking patient calls, you need to make sure that they are familiar with the intricacies of HIPAA. A compliant medical answering service will help you avoid a breach of your patient’s privacy, as well as ensure that you can keep up with the changing physician regulations in this area.
Answering HIPAA-compliant services can help doctors, clinics, and other medical offices ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA was established in 1996 to protect patient’s health information as it flows through electronic systems and is shared between healthcare providers.
Greater Efficiency of Employees
When you choose a medical answering service, you give your employees the time they need to be as efficient as possible. By outsourcing your medical calls to an answering service, you free up the time that would have been spent taking those calls and let it be used for other more important things, like a consultation with doctors or researching the latest equipment for your practice. This way, everything runs more smoothly and efficiently, leaving all your callers happier.
When companies choose a medical answering service over a traditional receptionist, they can also gain benefits in terms of efficiency. A medical answering service allows doctors’ offices to provide more one-on-one care to their patients while still having the convenience of answering and messaging services. This is why many medical practices and hospitals around the country have turned to medical answering services.
Provide a Personal Touch to Your Calls
You can benefit from having a personal touch on every call. Most answering service representatives are trained to be professional and courteous so that patients will be greeted with a cheerful and helpful voice. They’ll also be told about any office policies or emergency procedures they may need to know, such as regarding payment policies or if the office is wheelchair-accessible.
In addition, an answering service can provide patients who prefer email and voicemail contact with your practice with information about how to submit their medical records online. They can also manage your appointment book so that no one is left wondering when they’re supposed to come in for an appointment.
Around the Clock Support
If you’re running a practice, choosing a medical answering service is a great way to ensure that patients can reach you 24/7, even if you’ve got your hands full with other business. The assistance provided by the best medical answering service providers can be invaluable for doctors and their staff. It’s also a great way to protect yourself from getting overwhelmed by stress in an emergency or an unexpected surge in patient volume.
The best medical answering service providers can help you to maintain a calm, professional demeanor when it matters most. They’ll take messages from patients and their families, triage them appropriately and route them back to the appropriate personnel as quickly as possible.
Better Assist Patients
Patients now have the option of seeing a doctor quickly within 24 hours or less because the medical answering service has been improved. This is very convenient for patients because they are not required to make medical appointments and do not have to wait long. Also, you don’t need to keep track of your schedule, and you can choose your appointment date and time.
Busy patients who do not have the luxury of waiting too long for medical assistance stand to benefit the most from this. You can also choose the day and time that suits you best, and you don’t need to worry about missing your appointment because the medical answering service will remind you about it in advance.
Increase Revenue
A virtual receptionist can save a business up to 78% in ROI. Not only that, a medical answering service can help ensure you don’t lose money by having calls go unreturned because they were not answered promptly.
You must answer all calls as soon as possible to reduce the possibility of no-shows or cancellations, leaving you with fewer appointments and less revenue. A virtual receptionist can also help you increase your revenue by booking more appointments and reducing no-shows. When a patient calls for an appointment, they first hear a friendly voice that helps them feel comfortable and confident in their decision to come in.
Gabbyville’s Medical Answering Service is the Solution for You
These days, people are busier than ever, and they will often call a doctor’s office only to find that the doctor is not in. With our medical answering service, we will ensure that your patients can be seen when they need to be seen.
Most medical offices need a medical answering service. Most patients who call your office will have a condition requiring treatment. By using a medical answering service, you can increase revenue by ensuring that your patients can receive the treatment they need, even if you are not in the office.
Gabbyville is different from most medical answering services because we are 100% dedicated to physicians and their needs. Our service is customized to fit each individual client’s needs and schedules. We provide HIPAA-compliant communication solutions for physicians and their staff members.
Get in touch with Gabbyville to get a quote on pricing and see the difference for yourself!