How Does the After-Hours Message System Affect Patient Care?

Posted by Olovanderson on April 11th, 2018

One of the first things to understand in the medical field is that every details counts from the décor of the office and examination rooms to the staff’s interaction and communication with each and every patient that comes in. Individuals are most often nervous and stressed when coming to the doctor’s office because they expect to hear bad news and if the experience is less than friendly or helpful then this just makes the situation worse.

While the doctor can control the environment through proper hiring and hands-on visualization of what is going on there is still the need to have an after-hours protocol setup that gives the patient confidence and assurance. The best med answering services are those that provide quality control checks for their system, complete record of calls for analyzing and enhancement along with custom features including multi-language prompts, on-call routing and HIPPA compliance in every step.

Patients who need to call when the office is closed typically either have an emergency or want to ask a related question so they can get a response as quickly as possible instead of waiting for the office to open first. The best med answering services use easy to follow prompts so that urgent calls are routed immediately to the correct process for paging the on-call doctor on their preferred device. This is important because patients have the impression that medical personnel should be available any time of the day or night so if your practice has no option for contacting doctors when the office is closed then patients could see this as a limitation and find someone else.

Of course, doctors and staff members don’t need to be answering non-urgent phone calls during their time off so these are held and sent to the designated location at the appropriate time to be reviewed and returned per the office workflow and organization. The automated system is more reliable than a ‘live’ answering service because it removes the human factor for possible error, misunderstanding, miscommunication or HIPPA violations which can result in fines and judgments against the practice. Call records are a great way to keep track of how the system is being used, peak times and periods and unique situations that may need to be handled in a different way through the review and analysis of documentation.

Patient care is about the comprehensive experience that includes what happens when the lights are on and staff members are present to when everyone has gone home for the day and yet emergencies and questions still happen. Go online and check out the best med answering services to see how they compare with one another in cost (flat rate or per call), features (limited or custom) and flexibility (contract required or not). No two medical practices are exactly the same so it is important that whatever system you choose to work with meets the standards and expectations of quality customer care that you have set up in all other areas of the office.

If you want to know how much do answering services charge before hiring the facility, then the author of the article recommends Nomorephonetag.com