Serving the Medical Professionals in Your Answering Service
A medical practice needs a reliable and caring service, capable of projecting a friendly and responsible attitude towards their patients while managing dispatch of your urgent messages with the same precision a surgeon would use. The patients' needs must be met in a courteous manner and the doctors' schedules must be respected.
The medical practice's calls need to be answered by well-trained, responsible and compassionate personnel. The staff needs to balance the urgency of the message with the doctors' scheduling and availability. They need to have and follow stringent guidelines as to how to route emergency calls. This is of the utmost importance.
There was a recent court case in which an answering service was found partly responsible for the death of a patient because of not having reviewed the proper procedure for routing a particular doctor's calls. Don't let this happen to you, it would likely destroy your business and nobody wants to be responsible for another person's death. If you are catering your answering services to the medical profession, you are in effect becoming a part of the medical industry and have a moral obligation to help people.
Your call center must be available for your client's medical office 24/7. Doctors who run a small medical practice and get overwhelmed with managing incoming calls while dealing with your patients, or have a large practice and simply need us for after hours support, need to know that you will always be there for them and their patients.
Your medical answering service needs to be HIPAA certified. This is a certification that provides you and your staff with the ability and knowledge to handle privileged information. It is not only very important to keep the patients' privacy, it is also the law!
Your answering service should also be fully equipped to manage calls for all variety of residents, doctors, medical specialists, and physicians with courtesy and accuracy at all times. This is probably the most vital part of your business and doing this well will guarantee you referrals within the medical community.
When you work with the medical community you become more than just an answering service, you become a vital part of the doctors' business, you become a critical link to health and sometimes even to life itself for the patients whose calls you take. You must be properly staffed with customer service specialists trained to meet your customers' every need. With your help, the doctors can improve their medical practice's reputation and raise their patients to a new level of medical excellence. Imagine how valuable you will be in the eyes of your customer.
With any medical practice, word of mouth is the most powerful tool to acquire new long term patients. The superior customer support you will provide is exactly what your medical clients desire to boost their patient network. Happy productive doctors will stay with your service and in turn refer new business to you. Your answering service will grow in direct proportion to the growth you give to others.
