Given the rapid changes in healthcare and with more patients taking control of their health and jumping providers at the smallest of slights, patient retention is now more critical than ever. To address this, you seek every advantage you can to provide a great patient experience in your office, clinic, or facility. You do everything you can to keep the patients you have. By serving your patients better, you do what you can to make sure they stay your patients.
However, what occurs after hours? What happens to your patients then? You must also give careful attention to the treatment your patients receive when your office is closed.
The key solution is a medical answering service. Here’s why:
Always Available Access
A medical answering service is always available, even when you aren’t especially when you aren’t. They’re an around-the-clock extension of your office.
You don’t want to work twenty-four-hours a day and you shouldn’t. But your patients still expect an answer to their call anytime of the day or night, any day of the week including holidays. Your medical answering service ensures this will happen.
24/7 Appointment Management
Medical answering services can also help manage your appointments. This is good for both you and your patients.
From a business standpoint you want to stay productive throughout the day and avoid gaps in your schedule. This maximizes both your efficiency and your billing opportunities. From a patient standpoint, they want to be able to set, change, or cancel an appointment when the need first arisesnot when it’s convenient for your office staff.
Don’t make a patient wait until your office opens to schedule an appointment. Let your answering service do this for you. And don’t make patients wait to cancel an appointment, either. Because they may forget. And if they need to change their appointment, let them do this right away.
With your medical answering service handling your appointment schedule after hours they can help keep you booked and your patients happy.
Peace of Mind Providers
When your patients have a concern after hours and they call your office number, what do they want? More than anything they want to talk to a real person who understands their needs, provides empathy, and truly listens. An automated system can’t do that. That just makes a worried patient even more distraught.
Nothing provides a soothing peace of mind as much as another person, especially a person at a medical answering service who understands healthcare.
Select a Medical-Only Answering Service for Optimal Results
A general-purpose answering service also handles calls for plumbers, lawyers, and property management firms. That just won’t do. In fact, even an answering service that specializes in healthcare will still fall short.
What you need is a medical-only answering service. If it’s not healthcare related, they won’t touch it, because they know it will distract them from providing you with the focused, quality service you and your patients deserve.
As specialists who handle only healthcare, they’re the perfect solution to meet your after-hours communication needs. And when you select a medical-only answering service, you have just taken that extra step to help you boost patient retention. What are you waiting for?
Learn how medical answering service from MedConnectUSA can help your practice, clinic, or facility. Then get a free quote to discover how affordable their healthcare communication services are. Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer and call center authority.
