Doctor Call Center

A cautionary tale: Choosing your answering service

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 by Susan Linton

The following is an excerpt from a review posted on Insider Pages:

"I tried calling but his answering service was the WORST! I tried asking a simple question about whether during business hours the service answered...the service wouldn't actually listen, kept interrupting, put me on hold, and was so condescending it was disgusting...I would never see someone who hired such rude people to handle his affairs."

The reviewer gave the physician one star because of her service with his live answering service.

The lesson to be learned here is that your answering service is a reflection of your practice. While some call center operators may show patients the compassion they need when they are experiencing discomfort after hours, some might not. And with high turnover rates, it's hard to be confident that your patients will be treated with respect on every call.

By using a call center, you place control in the hands of the call center. They are the ones that have immediate access to your patients and their calls, and they can do with them what they please. They're also in control of when the message is relayed.

An automated voice answering service can provide a good next best solution to having the doctor's home phone number. Unlike a live answering service, each call is handled courteously and efficiently.

How an automated answering service works

An automated voice answering service functions as a virtual office receptionist. When you think about it, most after hours calls are about a handful of issues, so an automated answering service can easily take messages, organize messages and send out message notifications, while offering the convenience of reliable, courteous phone coverage no matter what time of night the patient calls.

When you use an automated medical answering service to handle after hours calls, the on-call physician receives the message quickly and is able to listen to the patient's message, think of a response and call back.

Live vs. automated answering services

Automated answering services are superior to live answering services because they:

Immediately notify the on-call physician and offer the unmatched accuracy of hearing the patient’s recorded message
Let the on-call physician make the decision about which callers require immediate attention
Provide a consistent caller experience with no grumpy operators to contend with
Make it easy to save recording of call to patient’s electronic health record
Save money

For additional information on automated answering services, please visit Webley.

Audioconference for Small Medical Practices Tomorrow, May 26

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 by Susan Linton

Keeping with this week's topic, the future of small medical practices, I thought I would mention a 90 minute audioconference called Can Small Group Practices and Solo Doctors Survive in Today's Marketplace? What Are Your Options? The conference counts for 1.5 continuing education hours for the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) and takes place tomorrow.

Conference description:

"In this audio conference, practice executives and physicians will learn strategies to help their practices position themselves and prepare for the future during this transition time."

Conference date and time: May 26, 1 - 2:30 PM Eastern

Visit the registration site to attend or order the CD-ROM.

Be sure to also check out the practice management courses offered by the American Academy of Medical Management, Massachusetts Medical Society, Medscape Education, and others.

I'm currently watching some online free videos produced by the Center for Practice Innovation at the American College of Physicians which takes a look at small medical practices in America. They visited 30 practices.

The first one I'm watching is about how patients would like to hear from their physicians via email and how some small practices have successfully adopted email communication with patients. Some of them charge for email consultations. The staff finds that email communication increases their efficiency. They interview patients too, who talk about how pleased they are by the convenience, the end to phone tag, better accessibility, etc. The next video is about adopting EHR for small practices. One practice talks about their problems with the telephone (e.g., too many incoming calls, staff overwhelmed). It sounds like they could have really benefited from a virtual medical receptionist. Interesting!

Provide better service to your patients without hiring additional staff

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 by Webley MD

Just about everyone owns a cell phone and has an email address these days. These new technologies have markedly changed how most people communicate today. Patients expect greater convenience and they're used to self-service features such as ATMs, check in kiosks at airports, online banking and more. It's certainly time to consider how your practice can start or enhance its use of technology to provide greater convenience and better service to your patients.

Just think about it. Does your patient really want to spend more than 20 seconds on hold? Moreover, do you want your patient spending more than 20 seconds on hold? Do you want patients getting a busy signal when they phone your office? Is your staff too busy to spend much time with patients? Technology makes it possible to avoid these situations.

As a patient, it is nice to be able to phone your doctor day or night and know that you will get a message to them. Sure you could use a live answering service, but how confident are you that they'll treat your patients with the respect and compassion that they deserve on every call and that they'll get the message to your on-call physician in an accurate and timely manner? A quick response to an urgent after hours call increases patient satisfaction and shows that you really care about your patient's health.

It may be time for you consider an automated healthcare call center because this type of service can:

screen calls
send new message notifications to an on-call doctor right away
let your practice quickly and easily change the on-call doctor without relying on someone at a live answering service to make the change
eliminates inaccurate transcription problems that you have with a live answering service
organize your messages by creating different voicemail boxes

You'd be surprised by how many patients love the automated answering service. It's convenient and it can reduce hold times.

A virtual office phone answering service also helps doctors make their patients feel safe and secure as the messages are recorded and conveyed correctly to the doctor. Technology enables automated answering services to provide greater convenience and reliability than live answering services and this technology is affordable for practices of all sizes.

Virtual office receptionists are reliable, discreet and courteous

Thursday, January 27, 2011 by Webley MD

Our health is a highly personal matter. Consequently, it can also be one of the most difficult subjects to discuss with others. Anyone who deals with patients knows this to be true. And yet many physicians think little of using a live answering service to handle after hours calls. How many of the patients who call after hours enjoy talking to a stranger, a call center employee? When the patient calls after hours looking for clinical advice, he wants reassurance. He wants to hear a friendly, familiar voice. He may feel awkward about describing his symptoms to a stranger.

If asked, your patient would probably prefer to have the on-call physician's home phone number and expect him to answer the phone when called. But this would be too much to ask of physicians. While many patients might respect the privilege of having the physician's phone number, a few could abuse the privilege.

An automated voice answering service can provide a good next best solution to having the doctor's home phone number. First, the service may offer the ability to record your own custom greetings - so the voice of someone at your practice can greet after hours callers. Second, a clear greeting that thanks the caller, stresses the importance of the call, asks the person to leave a message and gives the person who is calling for clinical advice a sense of how long it will take for the call to be returned can be extremely reassuring and satisfying to your patients. New message notifications go immediately to the on-call physician and the physician can call in to hear the patient's message as well as have that audio file sent to an email address.

An automated voice answering service functions as a virtual office receptionist. When you think about it, most after hours calls are about a handful of issues, so an automated answering service can easily take messages, organize messages and send out message notifications, while offering the convenience of reliable, courteous phone coverage no matter what time of night the patient calls.

To learn more, visit Webley.

Bell, Welles, and Willy: What your practice can learn from 3 innovators of yesteryear

Wednesday, October 6, 2010 by Webley MD

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received United States Patent No. 174,465 patent for his invention, the telephone. The first automatic answering machine was developed in 1935 by Mr. Willy Muller. It would not be long until Orson Welles would broadcast his infamous War of the Worlds over the radio airwaves, sending much of the population into a widespread panic, in October 1938.

What do these three innovators of yesteryear have in common? You may not know it, but they all want their innovative spirit to impact your office and save you money.

These three men could probably only imagine an advanced technology that would answer telephones and organize digital messages and then transmit them to a specific person who needed those messages instantly. In 2010, it's no longer a dream. The technology is here and it's called a virtual office answering service.

The virtual office answering service can replace your expensive after hours call center and do what your receptionist can when your practice is closed. A virtual answering service answers each call promptly and treats each caller courteously. It guarantees your on-call doctors get their messages and automatically captures the phone number of the caller. And it can send new message notifications to the on-call doctor's pager, cell phone, home phone, e-mail, etc.

It's time to embrace innovation and consider a virtual office receptionist.

Automated vs. live call center solutions for medical practices

Tuesday, September 21, 2010 by Webley MD

For many medical clinics, after hours are more stressful than normal business hours. Some practices have hired a call center to answer phones, direct patients, and keep things organized for the on-call physicians. This means that when a physician is on-call, they have to rely someone they do not know and usually has no medical background or training. Detailed protocols help but are no substitute for a physician's knowledge.

In some cases when a patient needs medical advice after hours, talking to a call center is almost as unhelpful as leaving a message on an answering machine and waiting until the morning for an answer.

There is a better way to serve your patients after hours. With an automated doctor call center, on-call physicians will never have to worry about call centers losing phone numbers and messages, misinterpreting patients' requests, and being disorganized.

An automated doctor call center or virtual medical receptionist is similar to an answering machine, only far more useful. When a patient calls, they are greeted by a friendly recording, then presented with a menu of options for service. They are asked to leave their own, detailed message and may flag their situation as urgent. Then, the on-call physician can listen to the message himself, interpret the tone of voice and details of the situation, gather his thoughts, and quickly call the patient back with helpful advice.

There is no need to keep paying a call center to bungle your after hours service. Start using an automated call center today and you will reap the benefits of an efficient after hours service for both patients and physicians.

Eliminate stress from after hours call coverage

Thursday, September 16, 2010 by Webley MD

As a medical practitioner, you are well aware of the detrimental effects of stress on the human body. If you are not using an automated healthcare call center (or a highly trained and expensive live call center) your after hours call coverage is likely disorganized, stressful, and inefficient. Your physicians dread being on call because they have to rely on call centers to get their messages.

If your physicians are stressed about after hours work, then your patients probably are stressed after hours as well. Sometimes it may take hours for the on-call physician to return calls. Sometimes patients never get a call back at all and they are left feeling devalued. Even if they may not know it, you know that the real reason they didn't get a call back is that your after hours call coverage is inadequate.

It is time to show your patients that they are important. Implementing an automated healthcare call center will allow you to take back control of your after hours messages. With an automated after hours system, you control of how your patients are treated. Each call is handled courteously. There is no middleman to lose messages or convey the wrong message. Patients can leave a message confidently, trusting that their problem will be handled by the best person for the job, the doctor on call.

Physicians benefit from an automated healthcare answering service as well. They can change their own on-call status with a quick call and not have to wonder and worry about whether the operator remembered to make the change. They can receive immediate notification of new messages from patients who need clinical advice.

For additional information, please visit Webley.

"Hire" a virtual receptionist for a helping hand around the office

Wednesday, September 15, 2010 by Webley MD

For your medical office to run smoothly, it takes a lot of hard work, organization, and multi-tasking from some very talented people. Yet no matter how your office staff excels at their jobs, they could probably still use some extra help.

The solution is to "hire" a virtual office receptionist, a on-demand software application that simplifies your office routines and saves you money every day. She's not Rosie from The Jetsons, so she can't serve coffee, but she can help with the tasks that need the most labor and require unusual working hours: appointment reminder calls and the after hours call coverage.

Here are three ways that a virtual office receptionist can benefit your practice:

1. She takes over time-consuming appointment reminders

Your receptionist probably spends countless hours on the phone making routine phone calls. The virtual office receptionist is not just an automatic phone dialer, she leaves messages and tracks responses too. Plus, she can email patients. Snazzy, eh?

2. She takes care of patients after hours

Providing after hours care for your patients can be stressful. You don't have the money to hire a second receptionist, your on-call physicians can't take all the calls, and the call center that you hired just isn't cutting it. Your virtual office receptionist will answer phones after hours with a cordial greeting, then direct your patients to the service that they need. If they need to reach the on-call physician, she'll notify the doctor on call right away.

3. She is the ultimate office receptionist

She never stops working and can make those reminder calls when your office is closed and your patients are more likely to be home. She is always available to make your staff's jobs easier, and for a fraction of the cost that you would pay people to do the same work. Use or don't use her as you wish, she can be there for you whenever you want.

To “hire” your own virtual receptionist, please visit Webley online today.

Eliminate the stress from after hours phone calls

Tuesday, September 7, 2010 by Webley MD

The hours the practice is closed can be the most stressful time for physicians who are on-call. Call centers are an inefficient and expensive route for medical practices. Some of the common call center horror stories include mixed up messages, lost phone numbers, and patients who fall through the cracks and never get a call back. A typical call center operator is likely juggling calls for lawyers, plumbers...and your practice.

Most of the time patients who call after hours for clinical advice are anxious and experiencing discomfort. They do not need to be subjected to difficult after hours call centers who don't provide them with the attention that they deserve.

The doctor-patient relationship should be as easy and stress-free as possible; it is a bonus if it can be stress-free for the doctor as well. Unfortunately, typical call centers are neither reassuring nor inexpensive.

That's why medical clinics nationwide have opted for an automated answering service or virtual office answering service from Webley MD. The service provides your patients with an easy, stress-free menu of options, including the option to leave a recorded message. Callers can even flag their message as urgent. The on-call physician receives new message notifications immediately and can retrieve messages as quickly as possible without the need of a middleman. The physician can replay the patient's message, determine the best medical advice, and return the call when prepared.

An automated answering service with call routing and new message notification features is the fastest, easiest and most accurate way to get only those calls and messages that require immediate attention. For more information, visit Webley MD.

Exercise your independence with an automated healthcare answering service

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 by Webley MD

Last week Americans celebrated their independence on the 4th of July. Independence Day is also a time that we may ask ourselves how we would like more freedom and what makes us feel "enslaved."

If you work for a practice that offers after hours care using on-call coverage, you may feel enslaved by after hours calls.

You may think that you have no other option besides outsourcing patient calls to a call center. It is an unfortunate feeling, believing that you are chained to a poorly trained company that neither cares for your patients nor your on-call physicians.

Here is good news for the independently minded doctor: you don't have to be trapped by a call center any longer.

An automated healthcare answering service is an effective organizational tool that reduces your outsourcing costs and improves your after hours care. With an automated answering service, there is no need to rely on a call center for anything. Patient calls are forwarded to another phone number and patients have the option of leaving a message. Messages can easily be organized and categorized by type or recipient, just by setting up additional voicemail boxes. Physicians are notified immediately after the patient has finished recording his message, and whether he has flagged it as an urgent situation. The physician can then deal with the situation on a case-by-case basis, calmly and intelligently, and replay the message as often as desired.

With an automated healthcare answering service, physicians will no longer wait hours at a time to receive a flood of patient messages, going from drought to flash flood, and becoming overwhelmed, flustered, and disorganized.

With such a system, there is no unreliable middleman between the physician and his patients, only a streamlined answering service to forward relevant messages without hassle. Your patients will no longer be forgotten, anxiously waiting for a returned call into all hours of the night.

Exercise your independence today, and get started with your own automated healthcare answering service today.

Improved communication leads to higher patient satisfaction

Thursday, July 1, 2010 by Webley MD

Unfortunately, “stressful” has become the word to describe doctor-patient relationships today. Patients try to communicate with their doctor and their doctor is always too busy. We see this in the decreasing length of appointments, voice messages left that aren't responded to for hours or even days, and having to book appointments months in advance. The average primary care physician has a patient load of 25 to 30 patients a day, scheduled back to back, this leaves 15 minutes per patient. The physician also needs to return phone calls, answer e-mails, fulfill prescription requests, review lab reports, etc.

How can doctors expect to maintain a positive relationship with a patient and simultaneously improve the medical experience when they're constantly under time pressure?

Communication with patients can be improved through automation thanks to medical communication software. Consider these two benefits that your practice will see immediately after installing automated appointment reminder software and an automated after hours answering service. You will...

1. ...give your patients the communication they need...

Most people have an e-mail address that they check regularly, yet only 25% of physicians have opted to use e-mail to communicate with their patients. Appointment reminders delivered via e-mail are becoming increasingly desired way by patients. Listen to your patients. When reminders come in a form that will be convenient, expected, and desired, there is a higher chance that he/she will remember to come in. E-mail reminders are also easy to send and extremely inexpensive. When e-mail appointment reminders are combined with voice appointment reminders, they are even more effective at lowering no show rates.

Most importantly, when patients remember their appointments, you are able to provide timely health care. This will keep them healthier and happier in the long run. What could be more satisfying?

2. … and the customer service they deserve.

Multiple problems have surfaced with after hours medical care over the years. Call centers can be rude or uninformed, on-call physicians sometimes don't get their messages on time, patients are left wondering, and so on. Using an after hours automated answering service will exceed patient expectations and improve their after hours experience by providing an easy-to-use automated menu and the ability to leave a message and tag it as urgent. The on-call physician will receive a new message notification immediately, allowing for a quick response. Sometimes this timely response can make a tremendous difference in the patient's health and well-being.

These easy changes will not only increase your patient's satisfaction, but will also keep them loyal to your medical care. Did you know that 30% of people are more likely to switch to a doctor who offers the ability to communicate by e-mail? Be the doctor with it all and try automated medical communication services today.

Providing better after hours care keeps patients from the emergency room

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 by Susan Linton

“The ER is the last place a member should go for non-emergency care,” says Laborers’ Health & Safety Fund of North America (LHSFNA) Labor Co-Chairman Armand E. Sabitoni. “The cost is high and, often, overcrowding causes service to be slow and quality of care to drop.”

An estimated 40% - 50% of people who visit the emergency room were experiencing minor medical problems. These patients would have been better served by a doctor’s office or urgent care center, but they went to ER because of its accessibility.

Each year about 112.7 million emergency room visits occur in the United States. The Emergency Department Summary of the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey provided the following statistics for the the U.S., in 2006:

Number of ER visits: 119.2 million
Number of ER visits per 100 persons: 40.5
Most common diagnoses: injury, poison
Percent of ER visits with the patient seen in fewer than 15 minutes: 22%
Median time spent in the emergency department: 2.6 hours

Visits to the emergency room should be reserved for situations where immediate care is needed to prevent disability or death. The crowded emergency room is not a pleasant or inexpensive place for patients to wind up.

Being accessible after hours allows your patients to receive better care and improves their health and well-being. While a live answering service or healthcare call center can answer after hours calls and take messages, the service might fail to forward important calls to the on-call physician. A good automated answering service (i.e., virtual medical receptionist) can answer patient calls and forward only clinical calls to the on-call physician. This type of service helps keep patients safe by offering the fastest way to reach the on-call physician and by delivering the accurate messages that are free from transcription errors.

How to effectively utilize automated medical communication technologies

Friday, May 14, 2010 by Webley MD

Currently available communication technologies can help turn communication at a busy medical practice from haphazard and slow to efficient, accurate and timely. Even small practices face communication challenges because of the constant inflow of messages and phone calls.

Use an automated answering service to manage after hours calls

Automated doctor call centers (also known as an automated medical answering service) perform the necessary after hours duties better than a live service or answering machine. If a patient calls the number and needs to speak the on-call physician immediately, the physician has the option of hearing the caller's identification before answering the phone. The caller can leave a detailed message and also tag his/her message as urgent. The on-call physician would immediately receive a new message notification sent to his/her pager, cell phone, home phone, e-mail address, etc. Separate voicemail boxes serve to organize messages. For example, the practice can choose to set up a voicemail box for clinical after hours calls, billing inquiries, prescription requests, and so forth.

Reduce the number of outbound calls with a notifications service

Many of the calls made to and from a typical practice concern appointments. Having your staff call patients to remind them of upcoming appointments is time consuming, expensive and inefficient. The same information can be conveyed in a professional, consistent manner by a more reliable, less expensive automated appointment reminders service. A good notifications service can track patient responses. In turn, this makes it much easier for your practice to keep track of confirmed and cancelled appointments.

Increase patient satisfaction with answering services

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 by Webley MD

Physicians have the onus of not only treating patients but also taking care of them from a customer service perspective. Patient satisfaction is important to the success of the medical practice. All staff members and office policies and procedures should consider the patient perspective and strive for patient satisfaction.

In order to devote proper attention and care to each of his/her patients a physician can benefit tremendously from an effective means of service that enables him/her to save time, money and help the staff succeed at their tasks. Technology can be used to automate routine tasks and increase office efficiency.

An automated healthcare answering service is one such means to deal with high call volumes efficiently and professionally. A virtual office phone answering service routes calls to the right department and answers each call promptly. Messages are organized according to voicemail boxes that your practice creates, making it easier to assign the right personnel to the task of returning phone calls.

When your practice is closed, an automated answering service continues to greet and guide patients. Callers can tag their messages as urgent and leave messages in their own words. The system will automatically notify the doctor on-call that there's a message. With this approach, the doctor can get full, accurate and complete messages and act accordingly. Custom greetings can easily be created over the phone. Doctor answering services enable physicians to respond promptly to urgent calls and this creates a positive impression on the minds of their patients.

Practices can save time and money and better serve their patients with the help of virtual calls centers.

Communication is the key to patient responsiveness

Monday, April 26, 2010 by Webley MD

For many providers, having staff make reminder calls is their only method of reminding patients of upcoming appointments, but how many have stopped to think whether a phone reminder call the best way of reducing missed appointments? These days, patients are available through any number of channels including phone calls, e-mail, and even text messaging. Most patients have multiple phone numbers, including work numbers, home numbers and mobile numbers. The best way to reach your patient is the way the patient prefers.

One study showed that 14.8 million adults would prefer to have web access to their doctor's office, and that 11.9 million would switch to a doctor who communicated via e-mail. By relying only on staff appointment reminders, many doctors offices are missing the chance to communicate with their patients in a way that is cost effective and that many patient actually prefer.

Keep in mind that phone calls aren't the only way to communicate with patients. Studies show that communicating by more than one method will significantly decrease no-show rates over using just one method of communication. Having an automated reminder system that combines e-mail with phone reminders can decrease your no-show rates and increase your patient satisfaction at very little cost.

Manual appointment calls are time consuming and contact with the patient isn't always successful. Setting up automated messages to contact the patient's preferred number and calling at a preferred time can increase your contact rate. Adding e-mail messaging services can increase that rate even further.

Appointment reminders aren't the only service that a healthcare call center can provide. Messages can be sent out to remind patients about immunizations, preventative care, and even public health warnings. Utilizing a healthcare call center with a multi-channel electronic communication solution can improve your bottom line and improve your patients' health as well.