Live Medical Answering Services vs. Automated Phone Answering: Which One to Choose?

The medical profession has always been notorious for long working hours and unusual shifts.  Staffing has always been difficult, but in today climate, Healthcare facilities are facing an overwhelming number of patients with a reduced level of staff.  This often results in medical workers being pushed to their limits.

Time has become a scarce resource, and healthcare providers are no longer thinking whether to invest in time-saving solutions but rather consider which tools to choose. Today, we’ll take a look at answering services, and analyze the advantage of live phone answering over automated solutions.

Live Call Answering vs. Automated Phone Services

The concept behind answering services is simple. Instead of handling the never ending incoming calls on your own, you turn to an external provider to answer all phones and deliver the first line of support to your patients around the clock. To do that, you can hire live call operators or use an automated service, also known as a "menu tree."

Live Medical Answering Services 

Live-voice answering services connect your patients with live consultants authorized to take all incoming calls and handle basic inquiries, such as office hours or location information. Live agents can also take down patient messages for non-urgent queries, and forward emergency calls to the on-call physicians. Specially trained operators are well-versed in customer service, and they specialize exclusively in handling healthcare-related calls without providing services to other industries.  They can also help schedule all of your patient appointments directly into your EHR which will free up your internal staff and allow them to help patients that are in the practice.

Automated Phone Answering

Automated phone service is conducted without the presence of a real human on the line but through a machine. When your patients call, they hear a recorded message prompting them to make appropriate selections using their keypad or voice. The automated system can navigate callers to your facility directory, put them through to the right party, record a message, and assist with FAQs. 

What Makes Live Medical Answering Appropriate for Your Healthcare Business?

Personal Touch

Technology can be intimidating, especially for elderly callers. Patients want to talk to a real person, and they expect a human to pick up the phone when they are trying to reach you. With live call answering, you give them a chance to hear a friendly, caring voice on the other end of the line. This is a capability that automated answering cannot provide. 

HIPAA Compliance

By choosing specialized live answering services, you ensure that all your patient's Personal Health Information (PHI) remains safe and protected. A HIPAA-compliant provider  implements technical safeguards such as web portal encryption and secure messaging platforms and keeps staff up-to-date with the latest regulations concerning the collection and processing of sensitive patient data. 

Prompt Assistance

When your patients call in an emergency, they have no time to waste on plodding through a convoluted maze of confusing phone prompts or getting stuck in an endless queue. With live answering services that never happens. Quick response times are guaranteed as providers are bound to take all incoming calls within the time specified in the SLA.

24/7 Patient Support

Live representatives are on duty 24/7/365 to answer your patients’ calls per your exact instructions. This includes during business hours for call overflow, weekends, and all holidays. Whether your goal is to handle excess calls, support your staff at peak times, or reduce overhead, every call is handled according to your established protocols any time of the day, even at night.

Professional Representation of Your Business

The image that your healthcare facility relays to patients affects your bottom line. Hence it’s imperative that you sustain the high quality of customer service across all touch points. Specially trained live-voice agents possess superior technology, communication, and customer service skills, and they proceed according to the protocols you established to maintain a professional image of your healthcare facility.

Free up Your Valuable Time

Your time is invaluable. It’s comforting to know that now you can save it by handing off phone answering to a trusted, specialized provider. 

Every year, our live-voice consultants answer over 5 million phone calls for physicians, psychologists, dentists, hospice centers, small medical centers, and large hospitals. They are available 24/7, delivering excellent customer service to your patients at affordable rates. Would you like to try?  Now, you can do it for FREE!