8 Ways a Medical Telephone Answering Service Can Help Your On-Site Medical Staff

The medical field is one of the few industries today that still operates with 100% open communication; even using antiquated tools like beepers and faxes in their everyday tasks. With all of these options for incoming messages, inquiries and requests, a medical office is bogged down each day and seems to be busied with more administrative tasks than medical ones. In this article, we will focus on 8 interesting ways a medical telephone answering service can help your current medical staff. 

8 Benefits of having a Medical Telephone Answering Service

1. Helping to Decrease Patient No-Show Rates

As a recent blog pointed out, “No Shows = Lost Revenue.” According to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), medical practices average a 5 to 7 percent no-show rate. While we cannot promise to completely eliminate your offices’ patient no-show rates, we can definitely help to bring it down. 

Medical answering services like A Courteous Communications can take on the task of confirming your patient appointments and providing your office with real time updates and changes to your calendar. We can provide schedule updates through a daily scheduled telephone call or electronically by forwarding your call logs and line activity via fax, email or sms text messages.

No worries about security when you hire our live medical receptionist team, we are HIPAA compliant and answer for hundreds of medical professionals and hospitals each year.     

2. Helping with Medical Record Requests

If your physician’s office or medical facility receives daily calls for requests for patients’ medical records, we have medical answering services that can help field those calls for your nurses and medical secretaries. 

Allow our HIPAA compliant medical receptionists to take down your patient’s information and specific requests. We can then forward those requests directly to your medical records department for easy retrieval and forwarding at a convenient time.    

3. Providing Answers to Walk-In FAQ’s

Our medical telephone answering service team can fully customize your account so that our virtual receptionists can provide answers to your office’s most frequently asked questions. How many calls do you receive with easy-to-answer questions like, “What days and times does your medical office provide walk-in patient services?” 

Our live medical receptionist team will be able to provide answers to these FAQ’s on your behalf and can provide co-payment/self-payment information and other administrative service answers.     

4. Telephone Messaging for Medical Billing Inquiries

Your medical billing specialist most likely receives dozens of calls each week from patient’s that either have questions or disputes about their medical invoice. Allow our fully trained live medical receptionist team to pre-screen those callers for your on-site medical billing department.

Taking into account your office’s unique procedures, we can start with a basic messaging and call handling plan as follows:

• •Take down the patient name and contact number (adhering to HIPAA rules and regulations)
• •Complete a patient message form detailing their specific medical billing inquiry.
• •Forward all patient messages to your medical billing specialist and be available 24 hours a day for any questions or further information needed by your medical staff.  
• •Provide daily call logs via fax, email, sms text or phone for patient call tracking.

5. Pre-Operation and Post-Operation Instructions

Your clinic or medical facility may have specific or general pre-operation and post-operation instructions that your patients must adhere to. We can keep your patients informed about the specific operation or surgery instructions your doctors prescribe. Simply have your medical professional team instruct us on your most popular operation and surgery instructions and we can inform each calling patient of the do’s and don’ts of your doctor’s office.

This can include specific food, medicine and hygienic requirements before or after surgery; clothing suggestions for optimal comfort levels; expected recovery times; and, information for pickup and drop off procedures.

6. Medical Insurance Policies Taken

Simply provide a list of the medical insurance plans and scope of services your doctors work with, and allow us to field your medical insurance frequently asked questions. This service is highly affordable and can relieve your on-site medical staff and nurses to be more productive with medical procedures and visiting patients.

7. Medical Professionals Need to Eat Too

Many patients think that medical industry workers are super humans and cannot understand why doctors’ offices close during the day for an hour or two. Since we have been providing medical answering services for 30 years, we understand that your staff needs time to eat and take a break.

Transfer your telephone lines to our highly trained medical virtual receptionists during your lunch hour and still have your practice operating when your in-house staff takes a break. This also means that when your nurses clock back in from their lunch break, they will not have to set aside time to go through your office’s voicemail for call backs and office visit requests. We will have already answered those patients’ questions; scheduled their office visits; and sent you confirmation of all these events through a custom call log.

8. After Hour On-Call Telephone Support

Medical after hour, emergency and on-call telephone support can be life or death situations. As such, may we suggest learning more about A Courteous Communications’ after-hour medical support team in our recent article: Physician and Doctor Offices Trust Our 24 Hour Medical Call Center.

In this referenced article, we discuss the specifics of how our medical telephone answering service can field and dispatch your late shift calls.

Our HIPAA compliant Medical Telephone Answering Service is here to help you!

There’s no time like today to have our HIPAA compliant medical telephone answering service service help with your high call volumes. Click here and request a callback today from a medical account specialist to discuss your doctors’ specific needs.