A common element among healthcare providers is having a medical answering service take calls after office hours and even provide office-hours support. Some business managers view their doctors answering service as an expense that they must seek to contain or even eliminate, if they get overly aggressive. Other business managers cite their medical answering service investment as a way to increase the overall quality of their patients’ healthcare and improve the future of their operation.
Which is it? Is this a business expense to curtail or an astute medical answering service investment to make for now and the future?
Medical Answering Service Expense
Though healthcare is concerned with patient well-being, the reality is that it’s a business. To stay in business—and continue to meet patient needs—the business must run efficiently. This is truer today than it was ten years ago or even last year. Healthcare providers face pressure to do more and do it for less. This puts strain on every single expense a doctor or healthcare facility incurs. Spend too much or bill too little and they won’t be around tomorrow.
With these industry dynamics, it’s easy to see why healthcare business managers seek to cut or even eliminate every possible cost. This includes the invaluable services provided by their doctors answering service. Although a medical answering service costs a small fraction of what it would take to hire just one receptionist, it’s easy for an overzealous manager to lose sight of this.
As a result, they scale back the scope of the services provided by their medical answering service, causing patients to suffer an overall decrease in the quality of their care. This also inflicts an inconvenience among staff. In a worst-case scenario, these penny-pitching managers eliminate the personal touch of their answering service and force patients into using impersonal technology solutions that they hate and only serves to drive them away.
Medical Answering Service Investment
While remaining fully aware of the financial ramifications, wise managers take quite a different view of their medical answering service. They don’t see it as an expense. Instead they treat it as an investment, one they expect will offer a nice return in the future, paying huge dividends throughout the lifetime value of each patient.
When patients call for assistance after regular business hours, they often have a health concern that can’t wait. They may be anxious, and the last thing they want to do is try to interact with an obstinate computer that will offer them no empathy and not much practical help either.
However, a doctors answering service will treat these patients right and respond with understanding to their concerns. The listening ear and compassionate voice of the answering service are exactly what most patients need when they call. Making this medical answering service investment will help keep patients happy. This indirectly elevates their overall quality of care and helps retain patients, thereby maximizing their lifetime value to the practice or healthcare facility.
Let your medical answering service serve your patients with excellence after hours, and this will help address their healthcare concerns and keep them as your patients.
Summary
Some healthcare business managers overlook the value of an answering service and treat it as an expense to control. However, wise healthcare business managers view their medical answering service as an asset to their practice or facility. This is an expenditure that offers a great return on investment (ROI).
If you haven’t already done so, make your medical answering service investment today.
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