Choosing the Right Assisted Living Facility

Posted on: 5 December 2019

A doctor should regularly use a medical answering service in the office for many reasons. Plenty of patients will call into the office each day, but there may not be enough staff members available to handle the calls because they are handling many other tasks. With a convenient medical answering service, calls get answered and patients are far more satisfied with their experience.

Reduce the Workload for Employees That Already Have a Lot to Handle

When staff members are hired to handle the work in a doctor's office, things can quickly become overwhelming. Nurses, medical assistants, and receptionists are often handling calls, keeping track of medical records, handling medical coding and billing tasks, and working directly with the patients. When a physician has a lot of patients or when multiple physicians are providing medical services in a single practice, the phones can ring all day long, causing the employees to feel stressed. If employees are always feeling stressed, it is going to be hard for them to do their jobs well enough to keep the satisfaction rate high among the patients.

Give Patients a Chance to Speak to a Person

When patients call into the office, it is usually for one of the following reasons:

• They would like to make an appointment for a checkup
• They are not feeling well and would like to make an appointment for an examination
• They need a refill of their prescription and would like to have it approved by the physician
• They have a medical-related question

When calling for any of the reasons mentioned above, a patient would naturally feel annoyed and frustrated if that person were put on hold for 15-30 minutes at a time before being able to speak to someone. It would be even more frustrating if the patients did not get the chance to speak to someone because the ringer is turned off in the office due to a major influx of calls. It would lead to a lot of disappointment for the patients. They might even decide to look for a different doctor. If the office uses a medical answering service, they can make sure that patients will get to speak to someone when calling in. While the physician may need to call them back for certain things, such as providing answers to medical-related questions, the staff that operates the answering service can help with the basics and even put in appointment requests for patients.

The medical answering service can make things easier on the employees that have a lot of work to handle each day. It can also make patients more satisfied because they will get to speak to a real person who can help them.