As a doctor or a medical office or clinic manager, you know that patients may need help and support outside of standard business hours. In some cases, they just need to leave a message, but there are also times when emergency situations occur. Having a medical office answering service in place for these times is not just a good idea, it is a necessity for patients.
There are so very easy mistakes to make when choosing a medical office answering service. By being aware in advance of potential problems in some options you can avoid these mistakes, and find the perfect option for your clinic, practice and office.
Locking into a Contract
With most live person medical office answering service companies, you will be required to sign a contract, often a lengthy duration contract. This leaves you absolutely no options for changing services once you have signed on.
When you choose an automated service, you may or may not have to sign a contract. Always choose the company not requiring a contract, giving you the greatest freedom to change your service or even upgrade your features.
No Cell Phone Calls
Although the world operates on cell phones, there are still some live and automatic medical office answering service options that only call to landlines and pagers. This is not only difficult in retrieving actual information from messages, but it also limits what a doctor on-call can do.
The best systems today are fully compatible with all major cell phone networks. In addition, with an automated medical office answering service if one doctor doesn’t respond to a call, which will be placed within seconds of the patient leaving the emergency message, the system will call the next doctor on the list based on the information in the system.
This means that if the cell phone is out of range or in an area without service, the patients still have a doctor responding to their call in a matter of minutes. This is much faster than you could expect from a live person medical office answering service leaving messages and then trying to remember to complete follow-ups.
Finally, don’t pay more than a flat rate for a medical office answering service. With the new automated systems, a flat rate covers all your calls, regardless of volume, on a month to month basis. This makes budgeting and planning easy for everyone involved.
Our medical office answering service is the best in the industry. At No More Phone Tag, we can customize a system to meet your medical office, clinic, or facility and your doctors.
