Most people get into healthcare to help patients. Yet to accomplish this, there’s a business side to healthcare. While a practitioner may look at a health need or a treatment arc for a certain condition, the business person looks at the billable value of that transaction and the lifetime value of the patient.
To enable healthcare providers to do the job they’re called to do, the organization behind them must remain viable. One way to do this is to track the patient lifetime value. Increasing the lifetime value of a patient generates more revenue for the healthcare organization. However, if the lifetime value of a patient is cut short prematurely, future revenue suffers.
Healthcare providers and their staff are the primary sources to maximize patient lifetime value. However, after hours, this task falls on the answering service. A medical answering service stands as a healthcare provider’s primary way to maximize patient lifetime value after hours. Here’s how.
Enhance Customer Service
It starts with a simple task of answering the phone, but not by just any means. First it requires that a real person answer instead of technology. Next it needs a customer service professional who understands healthcare, knows how to listen to patients, and can express appropriate empathy. That’s why wise healthcare organizations don’t force their callers to endure impersonal technological solutions after hours. And that’s why they forgo economy answering services, instead insisting on using a professional medical call center.
One botched after-hours phone call can lose a patient. And that patient will take with them the lifetime value of their healthcare needs. That’s why selecting the right medical answering service is so critical.
Capture More Appointments
Scheduling an appointment is how your existing patients engage with you so you can provide them with more healthcare assistance and realize the associated financial component. Use a medical answering service to take appointments for you 24/7. Merely taking a message for the office to call back is no longer enough. By the time you’re already-busy office staff can find time to return the call, your patient has already scheduled their appointment with another provider, taking their lifetime value with them.
Increase Appointment Adherence
Once they’ve scheduled an appointment, you want to minimize no-shows, which serve to decrease your productivity and billable work, as well as failing to provide the healthcare services your patient desires. Any steps to increase appointment adherence will minimize these three negative side effects of no-shows.
Your medical answering service can remind your patients of their appointments. This can include a personal phone call, a quick text message, or a ubiquitous email. Often a medical answering service will use a combination of all three approaches to obtain the best results.
Maximize Patient Lifetime Value
Of course, the overall professionalism and effectiveness of your medical answering service will play a major role in retaining patients to maximize their lifetime value. Yet the three leading components of success come from a medical answering service that can offer enhanced customer service, capture more appointments, and increase appointment adherence.
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.