A medical answering service provides a doctor with a live answering service instead of an impersonal voice mail system. A doctor answering service provides a few major advantages over hiring an employee or simply turning on an answering machine. What are some of these advantages?
First, consider the cost-effective advantage. Hiring a fulltime employee to record your messages will cost a yearly salary with benefits (if you want to keep your worker happy). Using a doctor answering service will be far cheaper because you are only paying for the services that were needed, not a yearly wage for labor. You can always choose to order medical call center on an “as needed” basis and adjust your needs for overflow or for slow months.
Another advantage is an hourly one. No doubt, you pay good money for the services of a secretary. Yet, you will only have such an employee during office hours and maybe on the weekends if he or she is willing to work this type of schedule. Most offices don’t even deal with this type of risk. They may hire one receptionist and then use a voice mail system to record messages at night or on the weekend. When you use a medical answering service, you can be available at all hours of the day, literally any day of the week. You can have a team of receptionists representing your office seven days a week, all hours of the day and even on holidays. This will be a tremendous relief to patients who absolutely must speak to a human being and not merely record a machine message.
Some doctors may have the tendency to avoid patients on the weekend or at night. Who can blame them? Being a doctor is hard work and patients sometimes cannot comprehend the idea of “off-duty.” However, avoiding patients is not the way to go about establishing a new medical practice. This is another reason why a physician answering service is ideal. You ensure that your office is represented at all hours of the day and still give each patient personal attention when on the phone. Your patients can be assured that you will be delivered a message promptly.
Furthermore, some doctor answering services also provide additional help to callers beyond just message recording. A doctor’s telephone answering service can provide question and answer sessions, appointment booking and perhaps even emergency response. For more information on a medical answering service, visit MedConnectUSA.com.
