Virtual Medical Assistant

The median wait time at U.S. emergency rooms is 2.6 hours. The average wait time is 4 hours. Experts are predicting that wait times will only get worse. If those statistics aren't enough reason to avoid unnecessary ER visits, then patients should try, when possible, to go to the same emergency room.

A report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that adults in Massachusetts who visited ER at different hospitals paid almost twice as much than adult patients who went to the same hospital. By visiting multiple hospitals, patients were exposed to a greater risk of medical errors, delays in treatment and duplicate tests. Provider to provider communication across organizations, is still poor.

Healthcare is an industry that struggles to meet the challenge of reconciling high touch with high tech. The essence of healthcare resides in the personal relationship between a patient and that patient’s physician. Technology, in many cases, appears to erode that sense of personalization that patients seek.

A virtual medical assistant can actually help strengthen the practice-patient relationship by providing both parties with timely, easily accessible, relevant, and convenient communication. Patients, like doctors and the front office staff, are busy and they appreciate phone reminders from their practice. Without a reminder, appointments are more likely to be missed and are often rescheduled much later or not at all.

Automated reminder calls that prevent a missed appointment may mean the difference between the early detection and treatment of a life threatening disease or a serious illness that is detected too late.

An automated call service not only increases the probability that a patient is seen and issues diagnosed as early as possible but it also ensures higher revenues for the practice. From the practitioner’s perspective, this type of medical practice support optimizes a doctor’s time so that he or she can help the greatest number of patients in a day without having to experience ebbs and flows in the daily appointment schedule. That proves to be healthy for the physician, both physically and mentally, and it also ensures a steady flow of paying patients so that the practice can continue to employ other physicians, nurses, technologists, back office staff and the like.

A reminder call service is a win/win for doctor and patient. The technology will both reduce costs and increase revenues, thereby providing the means and the incentives for physicians to continue to deliver quality health with greater efficiency. Patients experience continuity of care and better health.

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.

The crisis with emergency rooms, where the average wait time is 4 hours, has spawned a new trend, making appointments for emergency room visits. The Los Angeles Times reports that 8 Southern California hospitals now offer ER appointments using a system called InQuickER. Patients pay $14.99 - $24.99 to make the ER appointment. They're guaranteed that if they show up at their assigned time, they will be seen in 15 minutes or get their money back. InQuickER says that 95% of these appointments have been kept. Hospitals may still ask that the appointment be made several hours in advance but the system reduces the amount of time spent in the waiting room.

I recently reread an excellent article published in Family Practice Management in 1999 called Improving Patient Communication in No Time. The author provides many easy to adopt tips for being a better communicator. Many of the communication tips involve being a better listener and paying full attention to the patient during the exam. The article also includes the following intriguing paragraph:

"Use computers creatively. Some physicians are now using e-mail to answer patients' questions and avoid getting tied up in lengthy telephone conversations. "I know one doctor who even has e-mail hours," says Davis. "It's like a chat room. It keeps patients in touch with their doctors, and with managed care anything you can do to decrease the demand on a doctor's time helps." Thiedke uses her computer as a patient information tool; she'll occasionally tell patients about sites she's located on the World Wide Web that are specific to their health care needs."

The basics of good communication haven't changed since 1999 but communication technology has definitely changed a great deal since 1999. New ways to communicate with patients have emerged.

• The popularity of social networking sites like Twitter, Sermo, Facebook, etc., make it easy to monitor your online reputation, contribute content, etc. For tips on managing your online reputation, see the post, Social Media Helps Doctors Manage Their Online Reputation.
• Just about everyone has a cell phone with them at all times and text messaging outpaces email among teenagers. Consider how your patients communication patterns have changed over time. Has your practice adapted and kept up with the times?
• Secure e-mail messaging, patient portals, econsults, patient self-service kiosks, virtual medical assistants...the list goes on. Are you using technology to provide added value to your patients, e.g., decreasing check in time, making forms easily accessible?
• Patients are used to broadcast voice messaging and the quality of pre-recorded appointment reminders is better than ever. Sending appointment reminders is easier and more affordable than ever with Web-based automated appointment reminder services. Learn more about automated appointment reminders by visiting Webley.

There are many traditions in the medical field that need to be broken for the sake of efficiency.

1. Just because many medical practices have their front office staff make appointment reminder calls, doesn't mean that this is the best practice.
2. Just because manual appointment reminders are traditional doesn't mean that they are effective or cost efficient.
3. Just because every other doctor uses a live answering service to handle after hours calls, doesn't mean that this is in the best interest of patients.

In fact, if you are looking for a way to help out your receptionist, we recommend you look into a virtual medical receptionist. Bringing her on board will allow your human receptionist to work on non-routine tasks. “Hiring” a virtual medical receptionist is one of the easiest cost-cutting and stress-relieving routes you can take. She is the way to a new, easier, cost-effective future.

Your virtual medical receptionist can be programmed to make reminder calls and take messages after hours, alert on-call physicians to emergencies, greet patients when your live receptionist cannot, and so much more.

Your virtual receptionist takes a few minutes to make your hundreds of appointment reminder calls – or send out individual reminder emails, depending on your patient's preference.  Plus, your new virtual assistant will be saving you money not only on reminder calls, but on after hours care as well.

There are so many deep-seated benefits to “hiring” a new virtual assistant that we strongly recommend getting started today. Look deeper into what a virtual medical assistant can do for your practice at Webley MD.

Your practice might have a hiring freeze in place, but there is one more employee that you simply cannot live without. Her resume is impressive and her work ethic is unmatched. For every task that you give her, you can be confident that she'll deliver a consistent, reliable outcome.

Her name is VALMA, which stands for VirtuAL Medical Assistant. Here are just some of the many things that she can do for your medical practice.

1. She answers phones when your receptionist cannot.

VALMA is the ultimate employee when it comes to answering phones. Because she can work 24/7, she is always around to pick up the phone, even after hours. She greets patients cordially and helps patients through situations in a calm manner. She even alerts your on-call physicians when there is a new message for them to review. She can easily change their on-call status.

2. She makes phone calls while your receptionist works on other important tasks.

To be blunt, reminder calls are less than stimulating for live employees. Appointment reminders can consume endless hours. With a virtual medical assistant on your staff, you will find that reminder calls are no longer a hassle for your live staff. VALMA excels at making hundreds of reminder calls in moments, not hours.  She even keeps track of the outcome of each reminder call.

3. She knows how to personalize each one of her reminders to best fit the patient.

VALMA has a wide range of capabilities. If your patients prefer to be reminded of appointments by email, she can send personalized e-mails that make it easy for the patient to confirm or cancel an appointment.  She can deliver messages in other languages.  She can send more than appointment reminders.  VALMA can notify patients of normal lab results, suggest preventive health screenings, send out vaccination reminders and more.

If this list is not enough to convince you that VALMA is the only virtual medical assistant you'll ever need, then please visit Webley MD for more information.

Many private practice physicians face the challenge of managing a practice and finding time for patient care. A Medical Practice Monitor survey found that over 50% of private practice physicians spend at least one full day a week on practice management and 16% spend up to three days a week just on practice management.  

When practice management takes up that much time and energy, it's time to look for ways to save time and increase office efficiency.  

Start by keeping track of how you spend your time.  Log your activities for a week.  Include the time spent on each activity and rate the importance of the activity.  Then take a look at the log with a critical eye.  Identify ways to save time.  Ask yourself how you would like to spend your time and what you can give up or change to accomplish that goal.

Consider how much time you spend on communications.  Phone calls, writing notes, and e-mails can take up quite a bit of time.  Can you save time on any of these?  Can your staff save time by making fewer phone calls?

For example, time management experts suggest that you can cut down on the amount of time spent on e-mail by not opening and reading an e-mail until you have time to deal with that e-mail.  This saves you from rereading the same e-mail multiple times.  The same logic applies to paper - try to handle it only once.

As for phone calls, technology makes it easy to automate routine calls and save hours a day.  For example, automated patient messaging systems can call patients to deliver lab results and remind patients of upcoming appointments.  Automated call reminders have been highly effective at delivering patient messages and have the added benefit of offering proof of message delivery.

For calls that can't be automated, try to set aside some uninterrupted time to make multiple calls and keep the calls brief.  Do the same with e-mails.  

A virtual medical assistant or automated answering service, can handle incoming calls, direct calls and help keep your messages organized.  The service cuts out the middleman, the live answering service, and can deliver new message notifications according to your preferences.  

When you make better use of your time, your practice and patients will benefit.

At Microsoft, you could be greeted by a virtual assistant - a disembodied face on a computer screen.  The receptionist belongs to the leader of Microsoft's medical avatar project.  The virtual assistant is able to recognize speech, diagnose conditions and speak back to patients.  

While you might not be first in line to replace your front desk with a virtual receptionist, your practice can take advantage of the services of currently available virtual medical assistants.  Automated voice answering services have been available for years and they can answer your calls, route callers to the right department or person, take messages and relay those messages much more quickly than a human receptionist.  Your receptionist will be the person who appreciates this service the most.  

The virtual medical receptionist is also available after the practice is closed.  Webley MD's virtual office answering service has features specifically designed for medical practices, such as the ability to manage the physician's on-call status by phone.  To learn more, visit Webley.

The largest practices are known for using the latest medical technologies. Many studies have shown that larger practices are ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting technology.  For example, a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found an EMR adoption rate of 46.5% for ambulatory care practices with more than 11 physicians, compared to 24% for the solo practitioner (Hing, Hall & Ashman, 2010).  Recent data posted on www.medicineandtechnology.com shows that 36.5% of physicians are using EMR in their practices; the adoption rate is 70% for practices with over 26 physicians (Kim, 2010).

Today's patient have cried out for their doctors to evolve along with the times, and the best have responded with automation. The question is no longer, "Why do top medical practices use automation?" The question is, "Why on earth wouldn't they?"

Here are just 4 of the many reasons why top medical practices use automation, and why your practice should too:

1. The patients want it.  Millions of patients have email addresses and send and receive emails daily. In one survey, 77% of adults responded that they “would appreciate” contact from their doctors through email. Top medical practices use automated communication technologies, such as automated appointment reminders, because patients want it. 
2. The staff loves it. With all the time that automated appointment reminders can save, there is no reason not to upgrade. Lorraine Laurio, a medical assistant at Springhill Dermatology Clinic in Mobile, Alabama, affirms it. “I can’t imagine why any practice wouldn’t have a system like this,” she says.
3. It saves money. A practice with 3 physicians that schedules 75 appointments a day can earn an extra $18,000 per year by using automated reminders. There is no need to hire part-time staff to make those phone calls. Automated reminders are proven to reduce no-show rates by 30% or more. This extra revenue is what allows better practices to boost salaries and purchase new equipment.
4. It attracts new patients. When only 25% of doctors use automated email communications and 77% of adults want it, who do you think is going to receive all the business? It's the practice that is responsive to patients' desires.

Have you looked at the cost of your current communication system lately? If not, it could be time to for an update or at least an assessment of what your options are. 

How much does the call center you hired ten years ago cost you today? Take a tip from master money saver Bill Cockrell, practice CEO of Cardiovascular Associates in Birmingham, Ala., who saved his practice $600,000 per year in a matter of weeks. He says, “We looked at our answering service, and asked, 'What can we do to reduce our costs there?' And we examined the bill and realized that we had 11 physicians that still had their home phones answered by the group's answering service. We saved $12,000 a year by doing away with that. It's things as simple as that.”

If it's possible to spend $12,000 per year just to answer eleven phones, think of what you are spending annually on an answering service to take care of your after hours calls.  Is it worth it?  Or is it time to do away with live answering services and automate to save money? 

Leaving a message with a virtual medical receptionist is an efficient for your practice and convenient for your patients. With an after hours answering system, every call is answered by a courteous, professional virtual medical assistant who guides the patient through a simple menu of options, to determine the appropriate place for the message and immediately delivers urgent messages to the on-call physician.  Automation saves money and speeds up the time it takes for a physician to receive that urgent message after hours.

Don't let an answering service waste any more of your time and money.  

Cutting unnecessary expenditures is a wise financial practice. If you are hemorrhaging money, look no further than automation to help save cash on operation costs. Automation can potentially save thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of dollars per year.

Your practice may never have considered telephone dialer services (aka automated calls) as an option. It is time to consider these services and rid yourself of the preconceived notions you harbor about computerized patient reminders. Here are some truths about automation that will put your misconceptions to rest.

1. Automation is easy
Jonathan McAllister, a client-site IT manager for a major healthcare consulting firm, spoke of the ease of going from manual to automated. “While you might think setting up such a system could require an advanced degree in computer science, take heart. These days, virtually any practice can take advantage of telephone-based automated appointment reminder systems with minimal technical skills required,” he says. That's right. All you need is your medical degree, your business savvy, and very little technical know-how to get your system up, running, and saving you money.  

2. Automation is practical
You've probably heard the potential for automation to save you money and decrease your no-shows. It's true.  While results vary depending on the particular practice, automated reminders are effective and they will produce results. “These systems . . . have practical applications in healthcare environments by decreasing your no-show rate and providing a convenient service to your patients, while freeing up your staff to perform other tasks,” says McAllister.

3. It's an indispensable asset
The overwhelmingly positive response to dialer software doesn't lie. Most practices find that once they've tried an automated system, they can't live without it. Lorraine Laurio, a medical assistant at Springhill Dermatology Clinic in Mobile, Alabama, agrees. “I can’t imagine why any practice wouldn’t have a system like this,” she says.

4. It's like making money for free
Automated appointment reminders save you money.  Even better, since these reminders reduce your no show rates, they make money for practice.  The software literally pays for itself, sometimes in a matter of days.

Give automation a try. Visit Webley for more information. You'll be glad you did.

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.

Mondofacto.com defines patient care as: "the services rendered by members of the health profession and non-professionals under their supervision for the benefit of the patient."  Patient care covers more than just the time spent with the patient (aka face to face time). 

Patient care can be improved by improving communication and being responsive to patient needs.  You have the option of hiring more staff or using a virtual medical receptionist.  Your actual medical receptionist surely wishes that he/she had an extra pair of hands, so that more time could be spent dealing directly with office duties, including assisting patients.  A virtual medical receptionist can handle routine tasks such as answering the phone and making appointment reminder calls.  Having this extra help can make the difference between long wait times in the office and long hold times on the phone.

An automated appointment reminder system can quickly send out a large volume of personalized automated reminders to the patient by phone and by email. The reminder message contains the date and time of the upcoming appointment and patients can easily confirm or cancel the appointment by pushing a button.  No staff member time is required, other than the few minutes it takes to send the appointment information to the system. 

A virtual medical receptionist can answer the phone when no one is available, including during lunch, breaks, holidays and after hours. The virtual receptionist answers all calls courteously and promptly.  When a caller leaves a message, a new message notification is relayed immediately.  Callers can tag their messages as urgent.  The call routing and immediate new message notification features are particularly useful after hours.  The on call physician will have quick access to patient messages and can triage the call personally, rather than relying on the call center operator to make such important decisions and to relay the message accurately and quickly.  

When your staff has more time for patients, they'll be able to provide better patient care and they'll feel more effective and more satisfied with their jobs.  

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. 

An automated answering service can direct and route calls, so that non-clinical calls are not forwarded to the on-call physician.  Those callers leave messages that the clinic staff can attend to the next day.  The automated service notifies the on-call physician of clinical calls immediately.  Messages are recorded in the patient's voice - they can be replayed if desired.  The physician can have message notifications sent to an e-mail address, multiple phone numbers or an alphanumeric pager. 

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

A virtual medical assistant is a great tool for medical practices that are struggling to keep up with tasks but do not have the budget to hire additional staff. These virtual assistants can help you streamline the efficiency of your office as well as offer your patients greater convenience.  While virtual medical assistants can do anything from schedule appointments to answering your phones, we focus on two value-added services.

After-hours Answering Service

While most medical offices rely on traditional live answering services for after hours calls, many are unhappy with the level of service provided by their answering service.  We've heard live answering services described as no more than "glorified answering machines" because they do little than take messages.  Giving additional responsibility to low skill operators is problematic.  

After hours calls can be extremely important and it is critical that physicians receive timely accurate notifications of urgent after hours calls. An automated service can effectively screen calls and ensure that urgent messages reach the on-call physician immediately.  

Reminder Calls

As you are probably well aware, no-shows create inefficiencies in the office. They add to the burden of your staff since the staff needs to set aside additional time to follow-up on no-shows.  

Some medical offices try to compensate for no-shows by overbooking appointments. Some practices charge patients if they don't give more than 24 hours notice that they will not be able to make the appointment. In our opinion, neither of these solutions is one that provides the highest levels of customer service, and in a worst-case scenario, these actions could make such a bad impression that the patient decides to discontinue their relationship with you.

Using a virtual medical assistant to send appointment reminders can significantly decrease the occurrence of no-shows, while at the same time offer patients a much-appreciated service. A virtual assistant can send out reminders via phone or e-mail with little staff effort.

With these different forms of communication available, your patients can rest assured that they will be notified of their upcoming appointments, and it will be done in a consistent, courteous manner.

Yesterday I attended my first virtual conference and tradeshow, Physicians Practice LIVE. Webley MD had a virtual booth in the virtual exhibit hall where we had a chance to chat with many of the attendees.  I wasn't sure what to expect since it was my first time as a virtual exhibitor and sneak preview day and exhibitor training didn't address all our concerns.

For anyone in planning on hosting a virtual tradeshow in the future, please provide adequate time for exhibitors to build their virtual booth and let us in early to get comfortable with the features.  In this case, we were allowed in 1 hour before the show began.  I wasn't going to wake up at 5 AM for that.  The hours were obviously geared for the East Coast.  Send us the show reports right after the show ends (please).

Exhibitors, here's what I learned (it also corresponds to my experience as a marketer and as a chat moderator in the virtual classroom):

1. Promote, promote, promote.  While Physicians Practice did a wonderful job of drumming up interest, as a vendor you should also seek to increase attendance via e-mail campaigns, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  More attendees = more leads.
2. Be ready to type quickly.  To save time prepare typed responses to FAQs, you can copy and paste these 
3. Greet people who enter the booth/chat room.  While many aren't going to respond, it's still nice to be acknowledged.  Some shoppers want help immediately and others prefer a hands-off approach.  A simple greeting doesn't seem too obnoxious.
4. Most people are lurkers.  Perhaps they're multi-tasking on their computers and not paying attention to the screen.  Or maybe they don't want any sales pressure.  However, if someone takes the time to click on your booth, I take it as expressing some interest or curiosity.  Send a quick e-mail to thank them for visiting the booth, introduce yourself and see if you can assist them.
5. Offer incentives to download your materials.  One suggestion is to enter everyone who downloads a piece of your literature a chance to win a prize.  You want them to remember you and consider you.  Good collateral helps.

We found that having two people in the booth was sufficient and that it's just as much work to man a booth in the real world as it is in the virtual world (only you exchange sore feet for sore fingers).  

As exhibitors, we naturally wanted visitors to come hear about our wonderful automated appointment reminders and automated answering services, and many of them were interested in the virtual exhibit hall, but they were also there to learn from experts and their own colleagues.  They wanted a safe, non-commercial place to interact (in this situation it was the networking lounge - while exhibitors were allowed, their presence wasn't highly appreciated).  

The most rewarding moments for me personally:
* Learning that someone actually finds the white papers I wrote interesting
* Hearing from our happy customers
* Overhearing what medical office managers talk about to each other

If you are a doctor or manage a medical facility, you know how invaluable your support staff truly is. Without a dedicated team of coders, nurses, receptionists and others, none of your patients would be able to get the medical assistance they need.  However, even the most dedicated staff member can occasionally forget to make a reminder call or send a reminder postcard.  This can lead to a no-show and lost revenue.  When you use an automated appointment reminder system, not a single patient will ever be overlooked.  

Once you start using a reliable, high quality automated reminder service, you and your staff will never need to worry about reminding patients of their upcoming appointments.  You can reduce a significant portion of your staff's workload by subscribing to an automated reminder call service.  If your practice is like most, your staff spends a significant amount of time each week making appointment confirmation calls.  Although these calls are important because they reduce the amount of no-shows, there are better ways that you can remind patients about their appointments without making your staff manually call each patient. 

An automatic reminder call service that will handle these calls for your staff.  This frees up time that your staff can spend handling their primary responsibilities, including spending more time with patients.  Your staff will welcome the reduction in their workload.

Let your staff focus on important tasks, and leave the repetitive task of making patient reminder calls to an automated call reminder service.