Everything you do as a medical professional is aimed toward providing your patients with a better standard of care, so why wouldn’t you consider hiring a nurse telephone triage service? As an added bonus, all the benefits that your patients receive will be reflected back upon the health of your practice. After all, happy patients will keep coming back, and not only that, but they will also refer their friends and family member to you as well. If you have ever considered working with an answering service, then you are familiar with the type of service you can get through nurse telephone triage. With a nurse operator, however, you get services that you just can’t get through an ordinary call center.
It can be frustrating or scary for a patient who is experiencing a medical problem to call your office and get a traditional answering machine message. They don’t want to leave a message after the beep, and they don’t want to email you or contact you through some generic website form. Whether it is unreasonable or not, patients today expect that when they call, they will reach a live human being who is capable of answering their questions and giving them helpful advice. You can give your patients all of that if you contract with a nurse telephone triage service.
The operators who staff nurse telephone triage services are trained and certified nurses, which means that they have the answers to your patients’ basic questions regarding symptoms, medications, and other issues that may come up in routine calls. These operators are also well versed in medical privacy requirements, so you won’t have to worry about any HIPAA violations occurring through your nurse telephone triage service. If your patients need more direct care than they can be given over the phone, the operator will simply direct them to the nearest emergency room or urgent care center.
Many doctors believe that it will be easier and less expensive to provide their own in-house call center, but those physicians have not thought through the implications of doing so. Not only will you need to undergo the time and expense of searching for additional staff, but you will need to provide them with training, equipment, and a manager, not to mention all the additional money you’ll be spending in salaries and benefits. On top of that, staffing people at night means added concerns about security. The hassle of all of that versus the relative ease of hiring a phone service with trained medical professionals makes this an easy choice.
