Once on the chopping block of short-cited, cost-fixated healthcare managers, medical answering services are reasserting themselves as the essential service for healthcare providers who want to meet their patients’ needs. This demonstrates respect to your patients.
In fact, patients and consumers are quick to dismiss a healthcare provider who doesn’t offer 24/7 telephone access answered by a real person. They feel disrespected. And they’ll voice their frustrations with critical online reviews and by taking their health needs to another healthcare provider.
However, a healthcare provider demonstrates the highest level of respect to patients when they partner with a quality medical answering service to provide 24/7 phone coverage. Here are some of the key outcomes you can achieve with a medical answering service.
Around-the-Clock Acces
No one knows when a medical situation will arise, or when they’ll need help. These can come anytime of the day or night, weekday or weekend, even on holidays. And when these urgent situations arise, they pick up the phone to seek help.
If they call your practice or clinic and no one answers the phone, what are they going to do? They certainly won’t wait until the next business day when your office is open. No, they’ll call somebody else. And when they reach that healthcare provider and find the solution or answers they seek, they’ll take their future healthcare business with them, leaving you not knowing what happened.
That’s why 24/7 availability is so critical to showing respect to your patients and maintaining their business.
A Personal Touch
Yes, you can use an answering machine or voicemail system to answer critical patient calls when you’re not in the office, but those impersonal solutions will only irritate your patients. When they have a healthcare need, they don’t want to interact with technology or fight with a computer. They want a real person, someone who will provide a personal touch.
Although you could staff your office around the clock to take these phone calls, that’s certainly not practical. For a cost-effective solution, only a medical answering service can provide the personal touch your patients desire 24/7.
Empathy
When patients have a medical concern, they want to know that someone hears them. They desire empathy and a listening ear.
When their need occurs outside of regular office hours, empathy starts with the personal touch that only a medical answering service can offer. Real people, interacting with your patients during their time of need, provides the compassion they desire and the respect they deserve.
Assurance
When a patient leaves a message on an answering machine or voicemail system about an urgent concern, they have no idea when someone will listen to it or how fast they’ll return their call. All they can do is waitand grow increasingly frustrated as the minutes tick by.
That’s why you need a medical answering service. Not only can the personal touch of an after-hours medical answering service offer patients empathy, they can also provide assurance. Your answering service will listen to your patients and document all the pertinent information. This gives patients the assurance that they were heard.
Next, your answering service can inform your callers about the next step. This gives a second, deeper level of assurance. Now they know what to expect and when to expect it.
Conclusion
When you have a 24/7 medical answering service, you know your patients will be treated with respect around-the-clock. They will have access to you by phone whenever there’s a need, and they’ll receive a personal touch that conveys empathy and offers assurance.
When you take this step to respect your patients, you take one more critical action to ensure that they’ll be patients for life.
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.
