Patients need a reliable method and system to get information after the doctor’s clinic or office is closed for the day. There are many types of services:

• Voicemail – The answering service tells the caller’s message directly into the physician’s voice mail box, for a convenient access
• Delivering of patient’s messages via fax
• Text messages – A patient can directly send his details through his cell phone, PDA etc.

The answering services are getting digitized everyday, thus the physicians today too want to record their information in a digital format. With this method, people’s problems and other medical issues can be dealt with on time.

There is an act, which was brought into existence by the US congress in the year 1966 called the “health insurance portability and accountability act” (HIPAA). It specifies and focuses on the protection of the health insurance of an individual. It also encourages the use of electronic data interchange in the system of health care. It is also essential that all the operators using the physician answering service take a full-fledged training in HIPAA. These services provide a customized greeting for all the patients and answer the calls with no errors and full accuracy. This kind of facility is available twenty-four hours a day and they don’t need personal day offs, sick leaves etc. Such helpfulness with a great service makes people feel at ease and gives them peace of mind. Thus the doctor’s can rely on this, because they know that their patients will be taken care of even if they are unable to answer their calls.

A country can be hit with natural disasters sometime, like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes etc. that cause a power outage most of the times and many services get disrupted due to the same. Thus, some of the answering services have provisions for such emergencies with power back up and other similar facilities, keeping the situation under control.

There are many types of physician answering service available in the market but not all can provide the kind of help or service which doctor’s might be looking at. One should choose the right service because it can really make a big difference to the hospital or the medical practitioner’s organization and occupation.

A good representative would be able to provide all the right details and answer all your queries about the physician answering service.

The use of such services is becoming more popular with the medical profession because they are customized in two ways. The service is formulated depending on the doctor profile, his area of practice and the number of patients handled in a specific period. The response is also customized at the patient level where each patient gets a personal response and is not greeted with a standard message as it happens with other such providers. Such services are also planned to handle any call escalations. They are planned to filter through emergency calls, screen calls if necessary and follow custom protocol.

For patients who need the service of a doctor at all times of the day and night, doctor answering service is the perfect answer. They are nothing but an extension of the doctor’s office in terms of handling messages, handling scheduling, escalating calls wherever necessary using customized procedures. The reason for the increasing popularity of such services is because they are making a huge difference to the way a medical professional operates their practice. Under normal conditions, a doctor cannot be available to his patients at all times. He or she has a life of his or her own to take care of. They have to give a part of their time to their other interests and their family and friends. Yet each call is important and needs to be escalated in an emergency, which is made possible with such a service.

Even if a doctor has an excellent in house set up, doctor answering service can still be of immense use. Office staff and receptionists are not available round the clock. Their duty ends the moment their shift finishes or when the clinic or the office closes for the day. It can also work as a supplement service to help the staff who are unable to handle the volume of calls and thus unable to give a proper response.

Doctor answering service works best for doctors who are making rapid strides in their profession. As the calls and number of patients’ increases, the use of this service can help them organize their schedules and prioritize their activity according to the needs of the situation.

How Much You Lose

It’s important to remember that investing in the wrong kind of physician answering services can cost you heavily. Your system shouldn’t just make things convenient for you; it should make things more convenient for your patients as well. If someone calls to make an appointment and just gets put on hold endlessly or simply can’t get through, they will simply hang up and call up another doctor. What’s more, they will probably tell others about how difficult it was to make an appointment with your answering system. This is how the wrong system can end up costing you!

So, what should you look for when it comes to effective physician answering services? These systems should do far more than just relay messages back and forth. Ideally, they should notify you immediately if a patient has an emergency. If your receptionists and front-desk are back-logged, you should be able to route calls through to your service. If patients need to make an appointment or request a reminder call, they should be able to do so with your system. While all of these can be done manually, automated medical answering systems can often do a more effective job.

A World Of Advantages

Many of the advantages of automated answering services are similar to the advantages computers have over people. They are often more efficient and faster. For instance, an automated system can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means that your patients can literally call at any time to set up an appointment with you. One of the risks of having overworked staff is that mistakes are often made when people are tired. Fatigued workers can also end up being inefficient and even rude on the phone. There is no risk of this happening with an automated system. No matter how late you call, you can expect quick and efficient service at all times.

Automated medical answering services can also be updated relatively easily. This means that if you want to add new features or services, you simply need to upgrade the system. Apart from that, automated systems can handle multiple calls and data entry tasks at a time without compromising on efficiency. This is a huge benefit when compared to staff that can only do one or two tasks at a time.

Add to this the competition in this field, if your patients do not get the attention they want, they will not think twice before switching over to another specialist. Therefore, it is important for you to have a system that could answer your patients’ phone calls even during the odd hours in an easy, efficient, and cost-effective way. Following is a brief overview on how a virtual system can be a much better choice than a conventional call center.

Hold Times

People are kept on long hold when a conventional answering system is used and where everything is to be done manually. On the other hand, a virtual doctor answering service allows answering of calls at the first ring and is helpful in maximizing efficiency.

Message Recording And Delivery

Accuracy is very important in all aspects of medical field. The best system is obviously the one that records and delivers complete information accurately. At manual call centers, live support staff listens to the patients and then type their queries and concerns. This increases the chances of miscommunication or communication gaps. At times, this may result in incomplete messages being relayed. Besides, things can be very problematic for doctors if the messages contain typographical errors. Such things are not applicable to a virtual doctor answering service because everything is automatically recorded. An automated system records and delivers full messages of the patients in their own words, eliminating any chances of error.

HIPAA Compliance

As per the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), it is mandatory for the doctors to keep the medical records of their patients private, confidential, and well protected. Therefore, HIPAA compliance is an important aspect to look into when it comes to choosing an answering system. The conventional service, where everything is handled manually, may not be able to safeguard the flow of information between the doctor and the patient. An automated system, on the other hand, allows the medical records to be managed and controlled in accordance to HIPAA rules.

Manual call centers may have their advantages, but when it comes to medical profession; it is quite evident that a virtual doctor answering service is definitely a better choice.

Why Is It Essential?

Doctors are also human beings. They cannot be expected to be on call all the time. Specialist doctors are in high demand. It is virtually impossible to contact them without an appointment. Moreover, professional and personal reasons can also keep a doctor occupied and it is quite impractical for them to leave what they are doing merely to attend a call. This is where the medical answering service takes over by attending to each and every call that is made to a doctor. This professional system can take a message, assure the caller that the doctor will be notified as soon as possible, and pass on the message to the doctor.

Distinctive Features

These systems have been designed in such a way that they provide the necessary assurance to the patient, give information regarding the nearest hospital, and some basic guidelines till the doctor can revert back. The medical answering service is basically an automated machine that is highly caller-friendly. The response of the machine is almost instantaneous with the patient’s call getting picked up as soon as the number is dialed.

This feature provides instant relief to the caller and his patience is not tested. When such automated machines are installed in a hospital, their software is geared to divert the call to the right doctor without any delay. An operator driven system would not be able to work that quickly and accurately.

Minimum Chance Of An Error

Since an automated system passes on the recording of what the patient said directly to the doctor, there are no chances of miscommunication. This can happen if an operator takes down a message and then relays it to the doctor.

Doctors who do not wish to hire additional secretarial staff or those who wish to downsize their existing staff can hire a physician answering services which will contact them either by email, text message, or pager. This prompt service can save valuable lives.

In today’s world when telemedicine is becoming popular day by day, it would not be sensible to neglect the need of answering services. Here, it is important to mention that in a physician’s office a telephone can be of utmost importance. A continuously ringing telephone may lead to frustration, sometimes litigation or, worse, can become a cause of death. When you talk about a busy office, it is easy to see phones driving both doctors and staff crazy. These calls can be from patients, insurance companies, pharmacists, other doctors, and laboratories.

If you are interested in making things work more smoothly at your office, you should seriously think of acquiring automated telephone answering services. There are many reasons why these services are going to help you. For instance, with these answering machines you can enjoy benefits such as local or toll free number, 24/7 customer support, online management, outstanding reporting package, and scalable and reliable technology. Another great thing is that some providers are there that allow you to use their services with no contract commitment. It means if you think a specific provider is not helping you get top-notch services, you can always think of finding another one.

Another reason why it is of immense importance to prefer automated services to live services is that you won’t have to compromise on privacy when using automated services. In case of automated services, a patient records his message that a doctor can receive afterwards. Therefore, there is no chance of losing any information offered by a patient through these automated machines.

Hiring one such automated machine is much more cost effective than hiring and training staff to take calls from your patients. Not to mention how difficult it is to maintain privacy when a live operator is there to take all calls. On the contrary, the calls get saved on an answering machine and can be used only by the person who is allowed to do so. So, don’t overlook the need to have these automated physician answering services in your office and get your time saved for other things that are on high priority.

Fee

You should have a fair idea about the volume of calls you receive daily before approaching a service provider. The fee of a service provider depends on various factors. Some companies charge depending on the hours they work for their client, like if you opt for this service 24 X 7, you have to pay more than if you opt for a fixed number of hours in the day. Some companies charge a minimum fixed amount and if the call time exceeds a certain limit, they may charge you extra. For example, if the company has a contract for taking calls for an average duration of 300 minutes daily, then you will have to pay more if the average call time exceeds the limit of 300 minutes. Some companies also charge on per call basis. If you have a good idea of the volume of your calls, you will be able to choose the right service provider and keep your expenses low.

Services

Every company has its own set of services that it offers to its clients. You should identify your needs. What kind of services do you expect the company to offer you? Do you need physician answering services for just scheduling appointments with patients or for other things as well? These firms offer a variety of services, like some of them only schedule the appointments of the patients, some offer answers to the common queries of the patients, some forward the calls of the patients to the medical staff depending upon the situation, and some answers to calls as well as e-mails. The choice of the physician answering services depends on the average number of patients you get everyday and the scale of your medical practice.

The following are some of the advantages modern doctors answering service has over their traditional counterparts.

No Hold Up Time

In the traditional system, sometimes a patient’s call will be attended immediately. However, on many occasions, all the operators may be busy on other calls, and the caller will have to wait for a long time. In thesecases, it defeats the whole purpose of the answering service.

In the modern system, the call will be answered usually within the first ring. The caller will neither hear any engaged tone nor experience hold up time.

Conveys Correct Information

A doctors answering service should register basically two important pieces of information. The first is the details of the patient and the disease. The second is the call back number – which is the number of the patient to which the doctor would call later.

In the traditional system, an operator records the information and conveys it to the doctor. There can be errors in the recorded information. The operator may miss one or two of the symptoms or may wrongly enter a digit of the call back number. One cannot entirely discount the possibility of human error and also cannot blame an operator for such mistakes.

One can avoid such mistakes only by switching to a modern answering service. In the modern system, the patient’s exact words are recorded electronically and the audio file is provided to the doctor. There is no chance of missing some information. The call back number too is recorded automatically, and hence, there is no chance of error in that aspect too.

Personalized Service

In the case of traditional systems, operators greet the patient. If the operator is a nonnative speaker or has a terrible accent, the callers may not be comfortable in communicating. A modern answering service allows a doctor to greet the callers with his or her own recorded voice. In a modern doctors answering service, it is also possible to greet the callers with a professionally recorded welcome note.

These are mainly the basic points of difference between traditional and modern doctor’s answering machine.

If you avail such a service then whenever a customer calls your number, his or her call will be directed to the customer representatives of the service provider company. These representatives have good knowledge about the type of business that you conduct and the queries related to it. This makes it easy for them to answer all the routine questions asked by the customers and hence freeing your staff for the other more productive operations. If the customer representatives are unable to answer the query, then these calls are forwarded to your staff for appropriate action.

The virtual answering service is not only used to answer general queries during working hours but some firms also use it during non-working hours to answer the calls of their customers. Moreover such services also help in scheduling the appointments. In case, you are busy and cannot take calls but some call needs your attention then those calls can be sent to you through a voice mail or a text message. While doing all this, the representatives ensure that the customers will not be even aware of you using such services. For customers it would be like calling your company and getting a response.

In short, virtual answering service is a good way to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your staff, and at the same time providing the best services to your customers.

To understand the necessity of answering services, one has to understand what they are.

What They Are

Simply put, physician answering services offer a way to contact the doctor when he or she is not on hospital duty. Suppose a doctor works from 8 am to 6 pm in a hospital. His or her shift is over by 6 pm. However, the doctor may still have to be contacted if some emergency comes up or in the case of a complication in patients. One can contact the doctor on the mobile phone or the landline phone. In many cases, the doctor’s phone may be busy, switched off, or the call may not get answered. In such instances, it is important to have an answering service that allows the callers to record their problem in their own words to the doctor.

The answering service is also useful for doctors and hospitals that practice telemedicine. A number of callers try to call the number at the same time. The doctor has to give a patient ear to the caller who has got through. Instead of giving an irritating engaged tone, the doctors can give the other patients a pre-recorded and pleasant welcome note and prompt the patients to leave a message about their problem. Good physician answering services allow the patients to record the problem in their own voice.

The doctors can analyze the messages once when they are free. They can then call back and provide suitable suggestions and recommendations to the patients, based on the urgency of their problem.

Why Answering Services Are Needed

Modern hospitals claim to offer round the clock services. In many cases, the claim is about inpatients or the patients who come to the hospitals for treatment. An answering service is a good way to ensure that a hospital’s 24×7 service is available to all patients.

Doctors who have an independent practice also benefit from an answering service. They do not have to cut short all other engagements to remain on telephonic duty. The physician answering services deliver the messages, if any, as soon as they are received.