Comparing Medical Answering Services: What to Consider Before You Decide

Medical Answering Services

You can’t be everywhere all at once, especially if you are running a medical clinic. You have patients you need to see, bills that need to be taken care of, and other things that just can’t wait. One thing that can help is a medical answering service to answer the calls you can’t get to. You can make sure that no calls are missed if you have this resource.

A medical answering service can assure your patients are heard and that appointments can be made. Finding the right one can be a daunting task, and it is something you must put a lot of thought into. You don’t want to choose the first one you come across; you want to choose the one that is best for your clinic. You want to make sure that they can do the job that you need them to do.

There are many resources you can choose from, but you need to be careful. Make sure that you read all the reviews you can find. All services are going to have at least a few bad reviews, but good ones will have more good reviews than bad. See if the resource you are looking at has addressed the bad reviews.

This article will help you to choose a good resource for your clinic. It will give you things to consider before you choose. You can also do more research for the information you need.

Things to Consider

1. 24/7 – You need to consider a company that has 24/7 service. You want someone that can answer your phones when you aren’t there. You want them to be available evenings, nights, and weekends. This shows your patients you are always there for them.

2. Make Sure that the Service Represents Your Company – An answering company can make or break your clinic. You want them to represent your company the way you want to be represented. You need to see professionalism at its best so that callers know that you care about them. Companies that aren’t professional can ruin your business.

3. You Need Personalized Service – When patients call you after hours, you want them to have the same experience they would have if they called during hours. You want personalized services for your patients, not generic answering that could come from anyone. You want your patients to think that they are calling your office, not some random service. Choose a service that is willing to do that for you.

4. Budget Smart – Know the cost of the service and what each charge is. There are two main types of billing – bill by the minute, or bill by the call. Per minute billing usually works like a cell phone bill. You are billed by the minute but can have a bundle of minutes that are charged each month.

5. Check the Features – Check out all the features before you buy into the service. See if they offer a free trial period so you can do this. Do some test calls to see how they are answered and then make updates if there are any problems. You can also test some of the other features you might have so you can offer critique on those.

6. You May Need an Online Interface – You want to have email, text, and faxes from your answering service. You want to be able to get all the messages easily, as well. You will need a customer portal where you can get a log of all the messages, the ability to listen to the messages, access to call handling, on demand access to your reports, and the ability to upload and manage your on-call schedules. This will help you to get all your messages in a timely manner.

7. Dispatching for Emergencies – As a medical office, you want to make sure that emergencies are dealt with in a timely manner. If there is a situation where your office needs to be called immediately, you want to make sure the service can handle that. You need to make sure that they are available 24/7, you can make updates when you need to, that you can upload your schedule on your own, and most importantly, that they are HIPAA compliant. If these things aren’t possible, it would be time to look for another service.

8. Making Things Easy – You want it to be easy to use and easy to update on your own. If you have trouble with making changes to the script, making simple changes such as a new number, updating your on-call schedule, or other changes, you should find another service. These are simple things you should be able to do so that things can run more efficiently. You want the service to make things easier for you, not more difficult.

9. 3^rd Party Application Compatibility – You need to remember that the service needs to be compatible with your computer system and the programs you use on it. Some programs don’t like to play well with others, so you need to make sure that yours work well together. It would be best if the service already has the compatibility you need. You want them to be able to update in real time so that it cuts down on the work your staff needs to do.

10. Security – You can’t forget about security with your system and information. HIPAA is an important security issue you need to deal with in the medical profession: https://www.kiteworks.com/hipaa-compliance/hipaa-compliance-requirements/. You don’t want the people answering your calls to give out personal information.Make sure that they are PCI compliant so that they can accept any payments you might want them to take.

Conclusion

You need to investigate many different medical answering services before you choose one for your clinic. You want to be sure that they can handle the job with security and the ability to keep private information private. You also want a service that is compatible with what you already have so you don’t need to do anything new. This can help you make your clinic more patient friendly.