Healthcare Answering Service

Time to fire your answering service?

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by Susan Linton

Keeping a personal touch vs. better triage

Some medical practices rely on a live healthcare answering service to handle their after hours calls to provide a personal touch. Callers may be in distress and they may appreciate the opportunity to talk to a live person. However, ask yourself whether your patients benefit by having a call center employee decide which calls are important enough to forward to the on-call physician.

A study published in the Journal of Family Practice had primary care physicians review calls deemed by the answering service to not be emergencies. These physicians felt that in approximately half of those nonemergent cases warranted their immediate attention. They recommend that all clinical after hours call be forwarded to the on-call physician. It is the on-call physician who is best able to triage the call and decide on the appropriate action to take.

The automated healthcare answering service puts the triage decisions back in the hands of the person best suited to make those decisions, the on-call physician, while saving the physician from dealing with callers who do not require clinical advice and whose needs can be met by the office staff the following day. The physician can screen each call, and decide to take the call or let the caller leave a voice message.

Automated answering services benefit patients in other ways

A good automated answering service can handle simultaneous calls, so each patient gets through without hearing a busy signal. The service can provide several self-service options (e.g., provide directions and office hours) and offer the patient the opportunity to leave a message for the practice.

Most patients are used to automated answering services. A good automated service can provide all the services of a live answering service (e.g., message taking, new message notification, on-call physician scheduling) with superior speed, accuracy, and consistency.

Your patient's safety is at stake. A virtual medical assistant that answers your calls can help you be there for them.

Staff retention, workplace satisfaction and patient satisfaction

Thursday, October 20, 2011 by Susan Linton

I recently read a Fierce Practice Management article called Master the three A's of staff retention. The article identifies three non-financial reasons for staff satisfaction: (1) autonomy (empowering staff to make decisions), (2) action (feeling that they have helped a patient), (3) assessment (feedback on their performance but also allowing them to assess their managers). These three A's relate to having a sense of authority and competence and feeling valued by one's organization.

What it leaves out is the importance of the relationship with one's manager.

Surveys have shown that 39% of employees leave their organization because of their poor relationship with their supervisor. "What staff want in a leader is approachability; to work "shoulder to shoulder"; tools and equipment to do their jobs well; appreciation; efficient systems; and opportunities for professional development."

Managers have a responsibility to increase the efficiency of the organization.

While you may have an efficient, experienced front desk, your staff might spend too much time on routine tasks and not enough time on higher value, more complex tasks. Your staff might be spending too much time answering the phone, making routine calls and sending out routine correspondence. They may not realize that many of those tasks could be automated at a cost and time savings. It is the responsibility of the manager to learn about new methods of improving the medical practice.

Automated patient appointment reminders have been effective at (1) reducing no show rates, (2) decreasing the amount of time the staff needs to spend on making manual reminder calls - possibly saving hours a day, (3) increasing the reliability of reminder calls.

Automated answering services offer many of the same features of a healthcare answering service, including new message notification and call screening. Automated answering services have the important benefit of eliminating the middleman, so that the on-call physician can receive messages immediately.

Both of these technologies save your staff time, money and effort. Once you have a happier staff, you'll find that you'll have happier patients as well.

Email patient reminders make sense for patients and practices

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 by Susan Linton

Did you know that 77% of patients would like an email reminder?

Now guess how many actually receive email reminders. The answer is 4%, according to a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive poll.

I'm astounded by the huge gap between what patients want and what they're currently getting from their healthcare providers. Perhaps many providers don't know what patient preferences are...or they don't think that being more patient friendly will make that much of a difference, so there isn't a compelling reason to change their current practices.

Email patient reminders are not only easy but they save the practice time, effort and money.

Affordable automated patient reminder services can use existing information from your appointment files and customize reminder messages. The results of campaigns can be easily tracked. Some services let patients click to confirm or cancel an upcoming appointment.

You can manage your email volume by sending a "do not reply" email reminder. For patients that require additional assistance, the email body can provide instructions to call your practice.

Emails are seen as convenient and accessible to patients and practices should think of them in the same way. Patients do care. Multiple polls have shown that the majority said that having electronic access to physicians would influence their choice of providers. Offering email reminders can enhance the satisfaction of current patients and attract new patients.

The rise of convenient care clinics and what it means for your practice

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 by Susan Linton

Last week MinuteClinic, the nation's largest provider of walk-in retail medical clinics in the U.S., announced that it reached the 10 million patient visit milestone. They opened their first retail clinic in 200 and now have close to 600 clinics in 26 states. The rapid growth of retail medical clinics has been driven by their ability to offer convenient, affordable care. And patients have by and large been satisfied with the services they've received.

Medical practices have several key advantages over retail clinics and one major disadvantage, accessibility. By emphasizing advantages and addressing the major disadvantage, practices can better compete with retail clinics.

Medical practice advantages:

Wider range of available services
Stronger relationship with existing patients
Physicians and the trust that people have for physicians

Emphasize those selling points on your practice website, blog, Facebook page, newsletter, etc. (your marketing materials). Strengthen your relationship with patients by improving communication with them. Communicate more often and use different communication channels. Try to involve your physicians and increase their visibility (e.g., for the ones that are interested, encourage them to get involved in online social networking).

Consider proactively communicating with patients using automated broadcast messaging. For example, helping patients keep track of when its time to come in for an annual exam by sending automated reminders is a valuable service that keeps patients healthy and strengthens the relationship between your practice and the patient.

Automated patient messaging services make it easy and cost effective for busy medical practices to reach a large number of patients with reminder calls and reminder emails. These services also make it easy to personalize and customize messages.

Addressing the key disadvantage of medical practices

Consider making a few changes to make your practice more accessible. Start by reminding your patients that you are available after hours, that you have self-service features and that you are available by email for non-emergency situations.

Let your patients know about your after hours accessibility. When patients need medical advice, you want them to think of you - but they might not do so unless you make it clear that your practice can be reached after hours. Post your after hours policy on your practice website if you have one. Let them know that your after hours calls are listened to and that they can expect a call back within a short period of time. Setting expectations will alleviate your patient's anxiety.

Offer self-service features. If your practice has a website, you can provide basic information on the site (e.g., directions, hours of operation). Or more sophisticated patient portals offer access to medical records, online bill pay, refill requests and e-consults.

Allow patients to email your practice. Many patients would like to communicate with their doctors via email and this type of communication has been shown to increase effectiveness of care and reduce healthcare costs. Make sure you clearly state how patients should use e-mail (e.g., not to email when experiencing a medical emergency) and expected response time. Also make sure these communications are secure (encrypted).

It may make sense for your practice to stay open longer hours and leave some unscheduled slots for drop-in patients. Patients who are experiencing discomfort are naturally concerned and most cannot wait weeks for the next open appointment. Increasing your practice's accessibility will increase patient satisfaction.

A virtual healthcare call center at your fingertips

Thursday, July 21, 2011 by Susan Linton

Busy signals, unanswered phones, and long hold times on the phone can seem like an inevitable part of calling a medical practice and its after hours live answering service. However, those phone related inconveniences can be avoided with the adoption of a virtual medical assistant.

A virtual medical assistant offers many of the same features of the live healthcare answering service. Some key features to look for when choosing a virtual medical assistant include:

New message notification. While it make take hours for the on-call physician to receive his/her messages, the virtual medical assistant sends out new message notifications go out immediately after the patient leaves a message.

Custom greetings. Callers can still be greeted with a voice they know and trust by having your staff record the greeting message.

Easy access to messages. Your staff can access messages from anywhere, either by calling in or via email. And these messages can easily be saved to patient's electronic files.

Consistent, courteous handling of each call. Live agents can vary in their customer service skills. With a virtual medical assistant, you know that each call will be handled courteously.

For additional information, visit Webley.

Unified messaging in healthcare

Thursday, June 30, 2011 by Susan Linton

Unified communications - it sounds desirable but what is it and what does it mean for healthcare? Unified communications allows an individual to manage messages across a variety of message mediums. A unified communication service typically assigns a personal mailbox to an individual. The user can access voicemail messages, email, faxes, text messages and more from that personal mailbox. The mailbox is accessible by multiple types of devices, including phone, computer, and so forth. Unified communications can improve communication and facilitate collaboration.

For businesses and mobile individuals that experience high message volumes, unified communications can be an essential business tool. There are special challenges (e.g., more stringent privacy and security standards, legacy systems) to UC in healthcare. For a detailed discussion of these, I suggest reading the IT Business Edge article, Great Promise -- and Great Challenges of Unified Communication for Health Care.

Smaller practices are in a better position to adopt UC as they typically are not encumbered by expensive legacy systems.

Automated answering services increase control over messages by offering a library of greetings, notification rules, voicemail boxes, call forwarding and so forth. What's more, physicians are in control of when and how they receive their messages as well. They can pick up their messages as they arrive, not when a call center decides to send over their messages.

When a patient calls in, there is no disgruntled, exhausted call center employee to take down her message. Instead, her call is immediately answered and a custom greeting created by the practice is played. She then is guided through a simple menu that helps determine the reason for the call and separate the messages that can wait till morning and the calls that require immediate attention. She can even tag the message as urgent. Calls that require immediate attention can be automatically forwarded to the on-call physician. The on-call physician can answer or let it go to voicemail - or choose to have all calls go straight to voicemail.

The physician can pick up his messages through his phone or online from his office computer. He can consult medical references before responding. His response is on his terms. The recorded voice message can easily be replayed, shared and saved in the patient's file.

It's simple and efficient.

The future of healthcare and technology

Tuesday, June 28, 2011 by Susan Linton

Several months ago, IBM's supercomputer, Watson, made headlines by defeating "human" contestants on the game show, Jeopardy. Watson demonstrated that "what it can do much faster than a person is collect...information, analyze it and use it."

IBM followed the win by announcing their plans to use Watson in the health care field. Watson represents the more sophisticated version of what's currently available to those in the health care field today, including mobile applications, self-serve check-in kiosks, EHRs, and more.

Scientists are currently working to develop "friendlier" robots to help look after the elderly, gather basic health information from patients, and more. Cameras, robotic arms and so forth help the remote patient gain access to a healthcare provider.

While some of these applications may seem pie in the sky, there are many healthcare technologies available today that can help practices increase productivity and decrease operating costs.

Computers are an essential part of healthcare because when it comes to information retrieval and routine tasks, they are faster, more cost-effective and more accurate than humans.

Virtual medical receptionists are growing in popularity because they are inexpensive, easy to adopt and effective. The efficient use of communication technology - especially automated appointment reminders and after hours care - can help your one receptionist do the work of many. For example, with automated notification technology, one person can send out hundreds of messages in just a few minutes - and those messages can be for more than just appointment reminders. Automated messaging services can send out notifications for account balances, lab test results and more. Unlike their human counterparts, virtual medical receptionists can offer automated messaging services and answering services 24/7.

Help your patients avoid the pain of ER

Thursday, June 16, 2011 by Susan Linton

In San Francisco, signs for St. Mary's promise of an ER wait time will be 30 minutes or less plaster the side of buses and billboard signs. The campaign was launched in 2003 and it still runs 8 years later. Thinking back to the hours I've waited at the UCSF ER, I can see why the campaign has been a successful one.

ER waits are the most stressful. You or your loved one is likely in pain or severe discomfort and so are the other wretched people around you.

Looking back at that horrific UCSF experience, I realize now that my husband didn't need to go to the ER. I just didn't know where else to go. He didn't have a regular physician. He seemed to be extremely weak/ill with a high fever. I didn't know if he had caught something serious while we were abroad.

Things would have been different if he had a regular physician with a clear after hours policy.

The best way to provide after hours care to your patients and to keep them from making unnecessary emergency room visits is to use an automated after hours answering service or virtual office receptionist with call routing and message notification features.

The automated healthcare answering service puts the triage decisions back in the hands of the person best suited to make those decisions, the on-call physician, while saving the physician from dealing with callers who do not require clinical advice and whose needs can be met by the office staff the following day. The physician can screen each call, and decide to take the call or let the caller leave a voice message.

A good automated answering service can handle simultaneous calls, so each patient gets through without hearing a busy signal. It can also relay the message to the on-call physician immediately and the message can be repeated, saved to an electronic patient record or forwarded.

When patients need medical advice, you want them to think of your practice. It's important to make it clear that your practice can be reached after hours. Emphasizing after hours availability conveys the impression that your practice values their after hours calls. Post your after hours policy on your practice website if you have one. Let them know that your after hours calls are listened to and that they can expect a call back within a short period of time. Setting expectations will do much to alleviate your patient's anxiety.

Patients want self-service options from their healthcare providers

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by Susan Linton

Looking for a way to offer greater convenience to your patients, increase their loyalty and make life easier for the medical office staff? If you haven't adopted patient self-service features yet, consider this:

A consumer survey commissioned by NCR Corp., conducted in March 2010, found that 79% said they were "more likely to choose a healthcare provider that allows them to manage various elements of the healthcare experience over the Internet, on a mobile device or at a self-service kiosk."

The message is clear. Patients are interested in self-service features. The good news is that there are many inexpensive ways to offer self-service features to your patients.

Your practice website can range from simple (e.g., a place where patients can access forms and directions to complex (a patient portal).

Potential patient self-service web-based features:

Bill pay
Directions to the business
Appointment requests
Forms (e.g., medical history questionnaire)
Directions and hours
Lab test results
Send and receive secure messages with your physician

Hiring a virtual office receptionist can transform your phone to a self-service tool. Many calls that a medical practice makes and receives can be handled by a good virtual office answering system.

Potential patient self-service features for callers:

Get directions to the practice and hours of operation
Request an appointment or prescription refill
Check lab test results
Leave an urgent message
Access information on insurance, eligibility, and benefits

Self-service kiosks are also growing in popularity but they're usually not economical for smaller medical practices.

For additional information on virtual office phone answering systems, visit Webley.

Increasing your practice's accessibility after hours

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 by Susan Linton

Do your patients have a difficulty time reaching you after hours? Medical practices have a responsibility to their patients even after the practice closes for the day. Being accessible after hours enables your patients to receive better care and improves their health and well-being.

Here are some simple tips for making your practice more accessible after hours:

1. Remind patients that you are available after hours

When patients need medical advice, you want them to think of you - but they might not do so unless you make it clear that your practice can be reached after hours. Emphasizing after hours availability conveys the impression that your practice values their after hours calls. Post your after hours policy on your practice website if you have one. Let them know that your after hours calls are listened to and that they can expect a call back within a short period of time. Setting expectations will alleviate your patient's anxiety.

2. Use an automated voice answering service.

The best way to provide after hours care to your patients and to keep them from making unnecessary emergency room visits is to use an automated after hours answering service with call routing and message notification features. An automated answering service puts the triage decisions back in the hands of the person best suited to make those decisions, the on-call physician, while saving the physician from dealing with callers who do not require clinical advice. The physician can screen each call, and decide to take the call or let the caller leave a voice message.

A good automated answering service can handle simultaneous calls, so each patient gets through and doesn't hear a busy signal. It can also relay the message to the on-call physician immediately and the message can be repeated, saved to an electronic patient record or forwarded.

3. Offer self-service features

If your practice has a website, you can provide basic information on the site (e.g., directions, hours of operation). Or more sophisticated patient portals offer access to medical records, online bill pay, refill requests and e-consults.

4. Allow patients to email your practice

Many patients would like to communicate with their doctors via email and this type of communication has been shown to increase effectiveness of care and reduce healthcare costs.

Make sure you clearly state how patients should use e-mail (e.g., not to email when experiencing a medical emergency) and expected response time. Also make sure these communications are secure (encrypted).

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.

Four types of answering services that practices are using to handle after hours calls

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 by Susan Linton

General live answering services
Live answering services that aren't staffed by medical professionals are basically live message takers. While these services may be able to send messages to you via SMS and e-mail, this does not change the fact that their basic service is low tech and uneconomical. Because of the expense of hiring live operators, the live answering service will always be more expensive than an automated answering service.

The typical live answering service can charge $10 to $25 per call. For large call volumes, this can be extremely expensive. Cheaper live answering services may not actually be cheaper when you consider extra fees such as holiday surcharges, message delivery, call patching, etc. And they may suffer from high turnover and poor customer service. Negative patient interactions with an answering service will reflect poorly on your practice.

Medical live answering services
While using a higher quality, more expensive healthcare call center can provide your patients with timely advice from qualified medical professionals, there is still uncertainty about the quality of the call center staff. Your practice may be asked to provide detailed protocols or the service may have its own.

General automated answering services
With an automated answering service, the human variability is taken out of the equation. Each caller is greeted promptly and courteously. Some automated services allow practices to record their own greetings, so patients are greeted by a voice they recognize. Messages are digitally recorded and reliably sent out. These services usually come with advanced call management features, such as call routing, customizable find and follow me rules, call forwarding, etc.

Medical automated answering services
Medical automated answering services have the same features as a general automated answering service but also include features that were developed specifically for medical practices. For example, an automated medical answering service may allow practices to easily manage on-call physician status.

To learn more about medical automated answering services, visit Webley.

Automate to enhance medical office productivity

Friday, December 17, 2010 by Susan Linton

Peter F. Drucker, the father of management, offered the following advice for managers:

"The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager."

"Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed."

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

Like any business, medical practices need to be concerned about productivity, resource allocation and time management. Successful, well-run medical practices didn't achieve their success by accident. They have good managers and good organizational processes in place. It isn't enough to have good workers.

While you may have an efficient, experienced front desk, your staff might spend too much time on routine tasks and not enough time on higher value, more complex tasks. Your staff most likely spends too much time answering the phone, making routine calls and sending out routine correspondence. They may not realize that many of those tasks could be automated at a cost and time savings. It is the responsibility of the manager to learn about new methods of improving the medical practice.

Automated appointment reminders have been effective at (1) reducing no show rates, (2) decreasing the amount of time the staff needs to spend on making manual reminder calls - possibly saving hours a day, (3) increasing the reliability of reminder calls.

Automated answering services offer many of the same features of a healthcare answering service, including new message notification and call screening. But automated answering services have the important benefit of eliminating the middleman, so that the on-call physician can receive messages immediately.

Both of these technologies save your practice time, money and effort. Many practices are choosing to automate in some form because automation allows for faster, more convenient access to information, error reduction and improved record keeping.

To learn more, visit Webley.

Announcing the launch of Webley MD's Community Stories

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 by Susan Linton

This week we're launching a new program, Webley MD Community Stories. We're listening and we want to hear from the healthcare provider community: both those who provide medical care and those who support them. Inspire us by sharing your stories about how your practice is coping and thriving in today's challenging environment.

We'd love to hear inspiring stories about your practice. The potential topics are endless, including:

* Adopting EMR or eprescribing
* Recruiting new physicians
* Starting your own practice
* Going paperless
* Gaining new patients through marketing
* Managing email communications with patients
* Switching from a live answering service to an automated answering service
* Dealing with no shows

Share your story with us by completing the submit a story form and your story may be chosen to be featured on this blog, on our website and in our enewsletter.

Why a reliable appointment reminders system is essential to any medical practice

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 by Webley MD

When a major part of your practice's revenue depends on patients coming in for appointments, it is essential that each patient come in for their appointment.

Most medical practices use appointment reminders because they work and they bring in revenue. It is unusual when practices do not engage in some form of appointment reminder, especially since the number one cause of missed appointments is simply patient forgetfulness. When patients are reminded a day or two before their appointments, very few forget their appointments.

One of the benefits of living in a technologically advanced society is the reliability that modern technology can bring to its users. When it comes to making certain your patients come in, your best bet is to choose a reliable method of sending appointment reminders. That's where the using a quality reminder service can provide a practice with reassurance.

A service like Webley MD Reminders is almost failproof. The technology is highly advanced, making it near unbeatable when it comes to consistency. Personalized reminders are generated and sent based on the appointment information provided by the practice. Detailed reports show when the call was made and whether a live person was reached, an answering machine was reached or there was no answer.

Your appointment reminder calls will go out as long as the appointment information is sent to Webley MD. Patients that consistently receive their appointment reminders are most likely to be consistent in keeping their appointments. This means a continuous flow of income for you and uninterrupted healthcare for them.

A reliable appointment reminders system is essential to keeping the income flowing into your practice and keeping your patients healthy. Without it, you are subjecting your practice's stability to the whims of human forgetfulness and error.

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.

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.

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.

Patient satisfaction with after hours care

Tuesday, June 8, 2010 by Susan Linton

Researchers posed the question, are patients more satisfied when they receive after hours care from their own family physician or clinic compared to other alternative venues for care? They surveyed family practice patients who received after hours care from their own clinic, emergency rooms, walk-in clinics and telephone advisory lines. They found that patient satisfaction was highest for patients who saw or spoke to their own physician or visited their own practice's after hours clinic.*

The authors of the study also point out that satisfaction could be higher for those who received care from their physician or their own practice's after hours clinic since the wait time is shorter than that for an emergency room visit or walk-in clinic. As for the telephone advisory line staffed by nurses, they point to an earlier study that found that most callers were told to seek care or consult a clinician as potential reason for the low satisfaction scores.

Trust, familiarity and liking can explain the patient satisfaction scores. Patients likely feel the most comfortable seeking help from someone who knows or has ready access to their medical history and these providers are also in the best position to provide appropriate care.

Physicians have reservations about nurse-staffed telephone advisory lines as they believe they can make better decisions about care. And most practices that use a live answering service do not use one that is staffed by medically trained personnel.

An automated after hours healthcare answering service provides on-call physicians with the right tool for managing after hours calls. First, the virtual phone answering service can direct callers according to the reason for calling. If the caller does not need immediate assistance, he/she can leave a message and the staff can take care of these messages on the next business day. However, if the caller needs clinical advice, those messages go to a separate voicemail box and the on-call physician is immediately alerted that a new message has been received. The ability to listen to the caller's message ensures message accuracy and the on-call physician is able to triage the call appropriately.

* Howard, M. et al. Patient satisfaction with care for urgent health problems: A survey of family practice patients. Ann Fam Med. September/October 2007;5(5): 419-424.

Harnessing the power of technology to increase your practice's bottom line

Tuesday, May 18, 2010 by Webley MD

Technology has revolutionized the way business is conducted across the globe. It is now possible for a business to communicate with thousands of customers with a single click, thanks to technology such as e-mail and broadcast voice messaging. Businesses that harness these powerful communication tools have more time to focus on important tasks, like taking care of their customers, and they have better relationships with these customers if they use these tools wisely.

These same principles apply to a medical practice. Physicians, like any business owner, can benefit from automating time-consuming business processes that impact their bottom-line. The two simplest processes to automate in a physician’s practice, with the biggest impact on bottom-line, are appointment reminders and message taking.

Automating Appointment Reminders

No-shows can have a huge impact on the practice’s bottom line. If a patient misses an appointment, this not only means lost revenue now, but also a missed opportunity to build a relationship with that patient. Appointment reminders, however, are an area of operations that can be time-consuming and cumbersome. This process can easily be streamlined and completely automated by making use of a reminder call service that sends out automated reminder messages by phone or e-mail or, better yet, both. This reduces costs, increases efficiency and makes it much easier to track reminder calls and patient responses.

Automated Answering Services

How often does someone calling your practice hear a busy signal? How often are they placed on hold? When a patient is placed on hold or has difficulty reaching the practice, that patient becomes frustrated and may call another practice, one that is more accessible and responsive.

Having someone in your office take messages introduces a host of problems, including inaccurate transcriptions, illegible handwriting, lost messages and so on. These same issues occur when you use a live after hours answering service. Inaccurate, lost and delayed messages can lead to patient dissatisfaction and can even endanger their health. An automated answering service records the patient's message and immediately sends a notification that a new message has been received. Messages can be replayed, further increasing the ability to receive and understand the message accurately.

There are significant benefits to automating routine tasks through the use of technology. Automated processes lead to more streamlined operations, lowered costs and increased staff efficiency. The biggest impact though, can be seen on the bottom line. Automated systems work efficiently and consistently and can give physicians the competitive edge in an increasingly demanding healthcare environment.