5 Reasons Every Doctor Needs a Medical Answering Service

Updated on June 3, 2021
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Doctors from every discipline dedicate many hours to treating and attending to their patient’s needs. For many doctors, office hours don’t stop when the clinic closes its doors for the day. Dealing with the needs of patients after hours often falls to the phone and messaging system.

During the age of COVID-19, doctor’s offices were overrun with phone calls with patients requesting information and advice to avoid coming into the clinic. As the world begins to reopen, doctors are looking for more efficient ways to handle their call volume while still maintaining the highest level of service.

When an office relies solely on staff members to answer patient calls, it can be challenging to prioritize the level of need or even address any call. By signing up for a service to help you handle medical calls automatically, you can efficiently handle all of your calls and create a prioritized system that routes patients to the care that they need. Let’s look at a few important reasons that every doctor’s office should be using a medical answering service.

Save Money

When your staff spends endless hours on the phone taking care of patient calls, it is often taking away from time that could be spent in clinical work. While it’s possible to add more staff to deal solely with the needs of your patient calls, time and money could be wasted on staffing costs. When you add a medical answering service to your office, you can save money in various ways. You won’t have to hire staff that is paid hourly but instead only pay for calls that are answered by your service. You can also benefit from the irrefutable record-taking services that can help reduce liability issues that can cost you a potential fortune.

Decrease Your Hold Time

A busy doctor’s office generally has a high volume of calls, most of which will need to be placed on hold before being addressed. Your patients are busy and need quick answers in some cases. Medical answering services can help filter and sort your patient calls in terms of priority and reduce the amount of time they are waiting for answers.

HIPAA Compliance

Maintaining patient privacy and confidentiality is a critical aspect of any doctor’s office and is closely regulated by the government through HIPAA. When you use a HIPAA-compliant answering service, you can rely on the integrity of your clinic being upheld, and all privacy issues remain compliant.

Patient Satisfaction

When you use a medical answering service, your patients will have access to better care and quicker service. Keeping your patients healthy is as important as keeping them happy. Building a trusting relationship with your patients involves making them feel like they are a priority and that you have their care in hand.

Protect Personal Time

After the dozens of long hours that doctors put in every week, enjoying some personal time away from the clinic should be a priority. Using an answering service can eliminate the need to constantly answer your phone while you are off the clock. Patient calls are prioritized through your service, and you can customize what calls you want to take.

Using a medical answering service for your clinic can improve your patient experience, release your staff from endless phone calls and give you the time to enjoy your privacy so that you will be at your best for your patients. 

The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.