People need doctors and medical professionals for health emergencies and other concerns.

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27
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2014
Find The Best Medical Answering Service Guide
Categories: Answering services, Medical
Author: Julia Woods
Medical Answering Service Guide
People need doctors and medical professionals for health emergencies and other concerns. The need
for reliable and top notch medical service is always in demand, and so is relevant customer care. We
need doctors to focus on helping patients and developing better medical procedures and practices, not
on answering calls. This is why obtaining an exceptional medical answering service is very
important.
There are several BPO or business processing outsourcing companies that offer answering services for
any type of function, and can be designed for small to large scale businesses. However, in the medical
field, the processes are different from that of typical phone system needs. In the management level,
hospitals and clinics are businesses as well. Yet the standards and security rules are more strict than
typical businesses. Customer service in the medical field involved many security standards and
certifications to guard patient and medical information.
If you are considering getting a medical service team for your clinic or hospital, here are some pointers
that you can consider as your guide in choosing which company to sign up with.
medical answering service
Security and HIPAA Compliance
For customer service in the medical field, the main concern is how information is handled, processed
and transferred. Patients can call a hotline to inquire about the doctor’s schedule, quick consult and
check about the results of their tests and medical diagnosis. Information transferred between the
patient, answering service office and the doctor should be kept confidential and secured at all times.
This is why you should look for medical answering service company that’s fully HIPAA compliant.
This should cover all their facilities, the computers and software they use, SMS, faxes, paging messages
and emails. Ask about the processes they implement, including the way they transfer documents from
one doctor to another, or one hospital database to another.
Cost and Quality
How much is it to get answering service team for your hospital or medical office? This can go as low as
$20 per month for unlimited calls. However, choosing a low priced plan can prove to have several
disadvantages in the long run. First most of these lower priced systems are not HIPAA compliant. To be
HIPAA compliant, companies need to invest time, equipment and training for their agents. And that
involves expenses, hence higher rate on service plans.
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How can you evaluate if a company provides quality answering service? Apart from being HIPAA

2. $20 per month for unlimited calls. However, choosing a low priced plan can prove to have several
disadvantages in the long run. First most of these lower priced systems are not HIPAA compliant. To be
HIPAA compliant, companies need to invest time, equipment and training for their agents. And that
involves expenses, hence higher rate on service plans.
How can you evaluate if a company provides quality answering service? Apart from being HIPAA
compliant, here’s a brief list on how we can just quality;
SLA or service level agreement. This is a quantified variable in answering service operations
and defines the number of calls they are able to answer in a given time. Ideally, the best medical
answering service is the one that can answer all calls that come in. If someone is calling for their
doctor during an emergency situation, the calls should be answered or routed properly to the right
channel. But of course, we have to consider instances that some callers may have changed their
mind about their consultation call and quickly hanged up. Other similar instances can cause
decrease in SLA. So in a nutshell, choose a company that can provide reliable equipment and
answering service with high SLA records.
Features on the Answering Service Setup. We can consider two types of phone system setup,
one that routes the calls directly to a real person, and the other, to IVR options. Choose a
company that has the technology where you can customize how, when and where your calls go
to. For example, if you’re running a hospital, you can choose to route calls directly to a medical
officer who will assist the callers of their medical needs. If you’re running a clinic with business
hours, you can setup your system to route calls directly to a medical officer. And then during after
hours, you can choose to have callers hear an after- hours message that gives them options on
how to reach you and what to do during emergency situations.
Call Quality. You can evaluate call quality two ways; internally and in the customer or patient’s
perspective. Often times, call quality on answering services can be graded by fixed set of directives
that the agents or medical officers must do during a call. This included proper verification, how the
call and information involved is handled, and the resolution. For an insight based on patients who
called, you can evaluate using surveys and reviews about the medical answering service they
used.
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