Updated on February 24, 2021 by Jordan McGlone
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- Has your practice seen productivity drop off since staff started working more from home?
- Are you looking for ways to make your medical office more efficient?
- Are your in-house receptionists not able to keep up with the demanding amount of calls, scheduling, and admin work these days?
Table of Contents
The Problem: Working from Home Has Decreased Productivity
Working from home has caused a 40% decrease in productivity for most medical offices. Yet the cost of operations has stayed the same.
The Solution: Outsource and Get 24/7 Qualified Office Support
Under normal conditions, outsourcing answering services boosts productivity for medical offices by 40%. Plus, PatientCalls’ clients usually gain an additional 10% in efficiency on average! That means that a healthcare activity can actually gain a full 50% in productivity. Our service helps teams, just like yours, to decrease costs and deliver higher quality care.
A medical answering service like PatientCalls can help your medical practice with qualified, round-the-clock support. Not only will it help your practice to save on staffing expenses, but relying on this type of service can also make your current office staff more efficient with much less management headaches.
Key Qualifications for 24/7 Medical Office Support
Working in the health care field requires some special skills. When we are looking to hire new agents to handle patient calls for our clients, these are the qualities that are top priority.
Organized
It’s clear that organized staff are important to keeping things in the office running smoothly and upholding the reputation of your doctors. That’s why medical call answering agents should handle messages, appointment scheduling, contacting on-call staff, and recording information in the same systematic manner as any reliable receptionist.
Good at Multitasking
Busy healthcare organizations are always stretched for time, especially if they are accessible to patients at all hours. In order to handle the volume of calls coming in, paperwork, data entry, requests, complex calendars, and relaying accurate messages, a call center agent must be able to juggle multiple tasks in any given moment. And they must do this all while assuring the patient that his or her issue or request is being managed seamlessly.
Professionalism
As with everything in healthcare, protecting patient privacy is imperative. Medical office support must be knowledgeable and well-trained in HIPAA security and privacy compliance. They must know how to safeguard personal health data, insurance, and financial information whenever it is accessed, transmitted, stored, or deleted.
Compassionate
In the same way a doctor is expected to have a kind bedside manner, virtual receptionists need to be understanding for the patients on the line. Emotions can run high when worried about treatment for oneself or a child. People who don’t feel well or are having a medical emergency want to speak with someone who is both calm and empathetic for their situation.
Good Communication Skills
Call agents are essentially receiving, interpreting, and sending messages in a high-stress environment. Both medical professionals and their patients rely on the information to be clear and accurate. Being an effective intermediary requires being a good listener and having strong verbal and written communication skills.
Friendly
A receptionist is often the first point of contact that your patients have with your healthcare facility. It’s important that he or she helps your organization to make a good first impression. It requires a great deal of patience to keep a smile and an approachable demeanor when fielding calls from patients who aren’t always polite.
Technical Knowhow
When dealing with call overflow and high traffic times, there isn’t time for doing things the “old fashioned way.” As healthcare becomes increasingly digitized, call center agents must be able to keep up. This demands quick typing and a firm understanding of EMR systems from the beginning.
How Medical Answering Agents Are Trained at PatientCalls
As a director of PatientCalls, I can attest to the quality control procedures that we have in place to ensure reliable medical answering services. Our agents are personable, skilled, and confident in the service they provide. They receive comprehensive initial training regarding HIPAA regulations and proper protocol. Plus, all of our call agents must complete ongoing professional training to make sure that they maintain a high level of service.
Contact PatientCalls for more information on our medial answering quality assurance.