Some call agencies might tell you that their team follows official “HIPAA training.” (HIPAA can also be spelt HIPAA) What is HIPAA? No, that’s not hippo…or HEPA, as in an absorbent cleaning filter. HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Back in the 1990s, the government ordered some healthcare reform and one of the biggest issues was the quality and conduct of medical or healthcare specialists.
Just because someone is not a licensed doctor does not absolve him or her from being a part of the medical or health profession. HIPAA standards specifically apply to privacy rules, including confidentiality agreements. This means that all operators who handle these sensitive files must use discretion in communicating with the patient as well as with others about confidential matters. Imagine if such an indiscretion happened and the patient was embarrassed or slandered in public because of such an error!
When a company states that endorse HIPAA training, this indicates that they exercise confidentiality clauses from their employees, and also back up all files in a safe and discreet way. Under these standards, the company sees to it that all telephone conversations and all voice mail messages (or digital content) will be backed up in a safe and off-site location. HIPAA standards, in short, means that all state and federal laws are strictly taught and required to be followed by a company’s employees.
An outsourcing firm would be careful to train their employees to respond correctly in emergency situations. This will protect the client company from breaking HIPAA protocol—a mistake that could easily result in a million dollar loss. Call center workers should be experienced and knowledgeable in HIPAA training. These standards are usually recommended for professionals, hospitals, community clinics and managed care organizations. For more information, contact a call agency that advocates HIPAA.
Have you thought about a physician answering service? If you are a physician in private practice, then no doubt you can appreciate the importance of streamlining a business. It’s not practical to bring on new staff members when you barely have enough income to support two or three salaries. Your instincts are good—a call answering service would be a good idea. After all, patients do appreciate a warm human voice and will respond to a living person better than they would to an answering service.
A physician answering service is not just an ordinary answering service. This is a special call center feature that lets your patients speak directly to a trained staff that is equipped to take medical calls. These patients know the best way to respond to patients. They handle medical and dental calls exclusively, so that there is no break in concentration. For example, a call center agent answering phones for a doctor, and for the Home Shopping Network, could involve a “conflict of interests” of sorts.
These workers are trained to respond to people in a medical context, and above all, to be prompt, polite and professional. This is the next best option to talking to a patient yourself. In addition, medically trained call center agents are also familiar with HIPAA training procedures. These are very specific guidelines that protect a patient’s privacy. Failure to adhere to HIPAA guidelines could lead to a lawsuit.
A physician answering service is more expensive than the typical call center agency, but it is still affordable and, most importantly, customizable as to your company’s telephone time. In other words, you will not be charged a flat rate—you will only pay for the service that you receive. For more information on the benefits of a medical answering service, contact an answering service agency today!
A medical call center is not just another outsourced firm of call center workers. This type of agency provides a medically trained staff. You might not appreciate this feature until you actually experience the bad side of call centers. Imagine the worst call center agent you have ever spoken to. Remember that one, with that guy? All right, now try to imagine this setting in a medical context. What if you were having a panic attack or a heart attack? What if there was a crisis involving medication?
Try to put yourself in the mind of the patient. He or she is already suffering from the ordeal and doesn’t want the additional stress of dealing with an improperly trained non- medical call center agent. Unfortunately, due to the popularity of outsourcing work in this day and age, bad call center service is prevalent.
It’s one thing for a phone company or a cable company to provide a bad customer experience. We sort of expect these people to be at “bottom of the barrel” when it comes to high quality phone service. However, in a medical context, you absolutely cannot afford this problem!
You want your practice to be associated with positive response. You want to let your patient know that he or she is valuable. You want referrals. You want your clients to know that they can come back to you at any time. In order to do this, you do need to use a qualified medical call center agent company.
You cannot rely on kids that have barely trained a few weeks to take care of your most pertinent medical cases. Do not conclude that the cheapest call center service is the best. You owe it to your clients to provide a fast and accurate response to all health-related questions.
Sometimes a medically trained staff is not enough. If you are a doctor and are constantly communicating with patients who depend on you for life and death matters, you cannot take chances with amateur services. The communication process between doctor and patient is imperative. This is why in some cases a nurse telephone triage is your only real option.
What is a nurse triage service? This is an agency that provides registered nurse assistance to patients. These workers are not just call center agents—they are nurses who are trained to respond to medical emergencies. They are often asked to provide triage health advice to both patients and caregivers. Private citizens, recovering patients or nursing facilities might find a nurse’s words very comforting and informative.
There is a big difference between a nurse telephone triage and a medical call answering service. The latter does train employees to follow HIPAA guidelines and to respond in a positive way to patient’s concerns. Unfortunately, unless such a worker is directly conveying a doctor’s words, he or she cannot provide medical advice. Unfortunately, when patients call their doctor on the phone, they usually want just that. They want to be told what to do—not simply to “wait for the doctor.”
In cases such as this, it might better serve the doctor or the clinic to have a trained nursing staff on-hand ready to take calls. Hiring a full nursing staff can be very expensive. For most privately employed physicians or small clinics, this is not an option.
With nurse telephone triage services you only pay for the services you use. You pay for the time the virtual nurses (who are registered and legally able to give medical advice) spend with your patients. This is a great way to show your clients you care without breaking the bank, or breaking your back!
Natural disasters—they are everywhere! We have seen both Haiti and Chile suffer extensive damage from earthquakes in recent weeks. It seems as if every land has its own type of disasters and disaster recovery to contend with in this generation. Even here in America, we are not free from worry. Earthquakes ravage the west coast, while tornados hit in the southern plains area. Blizzards freeze Colorado while hurricanes threaten Florida. Only one thing is for sure in this day and age: you can never predict the magnitude of a natural disaster!
As grateful as you will be to stay alive after a natural disaster strikes, you must also give some thought as to your possessions and your professional business; all of this is known as a disaster recovery plan. If you run a company then you already know the importance of customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, your customers don’t know or appreciate the fact that a tornado is tearing through the local neighborhood. Someone a half a state away can’t expect to know that you’re trying to survive a flash flood.
All they are thinking is, “Boy, what lousy customer service!” Indeed, natural disasters can wreak havoc not just on property but also on business in general. Such an event could easily close down your office for weeks and send 50% or more of your customers down the drain right along with the excess rain.
A disaster recovery service allows you to field in-coming calls to a professional call center that is conveniently and virtually located. With this feature, you will no longer have to worry about missed calls or lost customers. You can receive all of your messages just moments after a natural disaster strikes. Life goes on after a disaster and it moves fast—move right along with it! For more information, talk to a disaster relief agency about this service.
If you are a doctor by profession then you are all about weighing the pros and cons of any situation. Let’s discuss the advantages of a medical call answering service. The first advantage to speak of is that of convenience. You well know that in this business that communication between the patient and the doctor is essential. However, you cannot possibly be in the office 24-7. (Though some patients certainly think you should be!) Instead of letting them wait, you can provide prompt patient assistance through a call answering service.
Another advantage to consider is that of economics. It is far less expensive to hire a virtual answering service than to hire a team of employees. You can streamline your business, while at the same time, providing a service to your patience. You don’t have to worry about raises, bonuses, overtime, sick days, insurance or vacations. With a medical call answering service, you don’t have to worry about dismissing a secretary when her services are no longer needed. There is no responsibility here—just a professional contract. You pay for the services when you need them.
Lastly, there is something to be said about the quality of a medical call service. When the workers are trained to handle medical calls, they provide superior patient assistance. They are able to provide specific directions to keep the patient calm and in good health until you can personally return the call. Using a lower quality service could result in poor patient-doctor communication, irritable patients, mistaken advice, and even HIPAA violations, which as you know, can be very costly.
You owe your patients the best quality of service, even if you personally can’t be in the office every minute of every day. For more information on a medical call answering service, contact an answering service and ask for medically responsible employees.
Does your company really need an answering service? Why would you want to invest so much money in hiring new staff members when you can just order a fancy new answering machine? Come on, who doesn’t love a voice mail message? Actually, very few people do. Wouldn’t you know, the answering machine craze of the 80s and 90s is over. People no longer respect machines. Who’s to blame? Probably those awful “automated systems” that the phone company uses to screen calls.
In any event, rest assured people do not like voice mail machines. Unless you are a major corporation that can afford to keep people waiting, it is not advisable—all the more so if you are a new or growing business. Customers want a human voice to talk to. They want to share information and ask questions of a real, living person. At the very least, they want someone who can feign a bit of empathy and compassion.
This is how you ultimately make your sales—by connecting with your customers on an emotional level. An answering service gives your company that warm touch that is sorely missing in automated machines. We human beings enjoy the Q and A and the back and forth of a conversation.
Of course, hiring a new staff just for personal interaction is not cost-feasible for most businesses. You really only have two options—be personally available at every minute of every day (or get your family to answer the phone when you sleep) or hire a virtual answering service to take your calls and record messages for you. Customers do not notice the difference. They are happy to talk to any living person. Rest assured, customers will feel a connection to your company right away if the person they talk to seemed nice and interested in their concerns. This is marketing 101 for the new age—always make it personal!
Despite what they always said about Johnny-Five—no, he wasn’t really alive. Machines are not alive! Herein lies the flaw of the answering machine (aka the voice mail service). It is impersonal. It makes a new customer feel three feet-tall. After all, what does it say to a person to hear, “We’re sorry…due to so many new people calling us we are unwilling to answer the phone right now.” If you had that attitude in dating, you might not get very far in the game of life! Now enter the option a live answering service.
This system works because in order to sell your services and products you need to connect with your audience. You need to let them see the real side of you, the human side. It makes buyers feel better about their purchases and about the dealer or merchant they use. When customers are happy, they come back for additional services. They refer friends and acquaintances. When they are unhappy, you will probably never know—because they never come back!
A live answering service provides this human interaction. It lets your callers converse with someone while you take care of other business. It’s not very reasonable to say, “I personally am available 24-7.” Yet, that is what some merchants do, and unfortunately for them, they get calls at 3 AM in the morning that they have to take. A live answering service gives your customers that much needed human voice, an actual person that responds to important phone calls. At the same time, this telecommuting technology gives you a much needed rest.
You can get your new messages instantly via text messaging, voice mail, email, pager or phone. Your customer will probably never realize that you have “outsourced” your calls. For all they know, you have someone working in the office all day long. What matters is that you made the personal connection. This is what a live answering service offers today’s entrepreneur.
What is the big deal anyway? Why is there such a big difference between a medical answering service and a regular call center agency? You may have to experience the difference to truly understand. Let’s put you, the doctor, in the place of a typical customer. How do you think your conversation would be handled? Let’s say you have a medical crisis. You are out of medication and need to talk to a doctor right away.
Suddenly a charming Indian voice comes on the line and explains in a dry and almost perfunctory manner that the doctor is unavailable. Despite your objections, the other person merely repeats script and grows increasingly agitated. By now, you’re fuming. You can tell this person doesn’t know anything about your condition or about medical practice in general. Rather than blame the Indian fellow, you’re going to place blame on the doctor for being so cheap. If only you had hired a medical answering service!
The truth is, bad customer service really isn’t the customer service agent’s fault. If a person is not trained to handle medical calls, then the entire situation is just a disaster from the start. Rest assured, hiring a cheap call center with low-level employees will quickly turn your patients against you. Patients not only want a comforting and warm voice to confide in—they want to be told what to do.
A medical answering agent is trained to handle medical calls for dentists, doctors and other physicians. When you purchase this feature, you can be confident that your clients will be treated with respect and will be given accurate advice. The best thing about a medical answering service is that it’s not expensive. You only pay for the service you receive. This is a form of outsourcing work, but a more effective type of work.
A physician answering service does not just offer superior quality and a personal touch; there are also other features that will help your practice. Consider a few of the more interesting options available. First off, the operator taking your calls will have your contact information. In the event of an emergency, you will be contact by phone and at the phone number you provide to the company. An operator will easily be able to give office hours, business address and any other basic information.
Another convenient feature of the physician answering service is that of text messaging. You can have important caller information sent to your pager, PDA system or cell phone. This feature is compatible with most types of carriers. You will have a voice mail service and can listen to the operator summarize all messages that your patients leave. You can receive email messages that review the contents of the call. If the situation merits (by your request) you can have the operator contact you by phone directly. A physician answering service can also deliver messages by fax.
The best advantage of this service is the ability to screen patient calls. Naturally, a doctor or a nurse does not have a lot of time to spare in a typical day. The more simple calls are filtered out, (but still addressed in a compassionate way) the more time the medical team has to devote to issues at hand.
The operators that answer your phone calls will have access to your office information. This is whatever information you want to make accessible. This is the best way to screen your calls and expedite your busy day.
If you ever have a problem with your physician answering service (whether a technical issues or a call quality issue) you can talk to a supervisor. You can provide specific information on the incident and request help. This entire process is customizable. You can be sure that your patients are cared for because you make every decision.
