Leveraging Medical Answering Services to Enhance Patient Satisfaction and Provider Productivity
Medical providers, including hospitals, medical centers, community health centers and physician practices invest millions of dollars in modern facilities, equipment, supplies, and staff every year to improve the quality of patient care and increase patient satisfaction. These healthcare enterprises are finding it increasingly difficult to continue to support operators and call centers in-house and are turning to specialized medical call centers for virtual medical receptionist, daytime call management and other medical call center solutions.
Representatives serving as virtual medical receptionists for medical centers can prioritize information for medical providers on issues like appointment scheduling needs, prescription requests or emergencies. Effective use of a healthcare call center enhances patients' satisfaction with their medical providers and improves productivity in medical centers, outpatient clinics and doctors’ offices.
Read further to learn how using MASCO’s medical call center solutions offers a compelling business case, not only for reducing overhead costs, but also enabling strategic reallocation of resources .
Call Center Quality Management supports Improved Patient Care, Engagement & Satisfaction
Increased patient satisfaction is a product of a personal touch and quality feedback to make your patients feel validated and comforted. Our management team equips staff with personalized customer relations skills, a knowledge base specific to your practice, and the right technology to guarantee top-level service from our agents.
MASCO Call Center monitors and manages both quantitative and qualitative performance indicators including:
- Number of calls handled
- Average time to answer
- Call handling efficiency (call handle time)
- Call handling accuracy – did we connect the caller or send a page to the right provider?
- Quality of initial greeting
- Overall tone and voice quality
- Missed or declined calls
Using these metrics, we can pinpoint challenging areas and work to improve the service, better train staff, and perform quality assurance on behalf of your medical center. The professionalism and personalities of healthcare call center agents often enhance patient interactions, another essential part of collecting impactful feedback.
Effective Workforce Utilization and Management
Medical providers understand that demand for services and related call volume fluctuates according to unique medical offerings and current events (such as the COVID-19 pandemic). Scaling your workforce and promoting the efficiency of your in-house staff to match these fluctuating demands is challenging at best. In today’s tight job market, recruiting and retaining qualified staff complicates things further.
To improve your workforce utilization and better manage resources, medical offices understand the importance of directing patients' calls to doctors, insurance officers, and management in a coordinated and scalable approach. Well-coordinated patient communication can be achieved by using healthcare call centers that enable patients to speak with real people in helping them connect with the appropriate service provider.
Modern, Secure Technology Requires Significant Capital Investment
Managing calls internally requires specialized software, equipment, and an elaborate internal network and to handle medical calls and emergency dispatch securely and in compliance with HIPAA. We’ve invested millions of dollars in capital to offer our clients modern and secure technology to support their operations. We regularly upgrade software and replace equipment as needed.
Calls need to be securely stored and archived to enable clients to access calls and to obtain reports and information to support their operations. This requires complex data bases and equipment at costs that are prohibitive to smaller medical offices and clinics.
Providers can avoid such large capital outlays by leveraging MASCO Call Center’s service offerings.
Reduced Administrative and Overhead Costs
Administrative and overhead costs, including staffing costs for medical receptionists, schedulers, and telephone operators, contribute a considerable portion to the total expenses in doctors’ offices and medical clinics. Onboarding and continuing education, medical benefits, office space, and other employee benefits add to staffing costs.
Engaging MASCO Call Center to provide medical office answering and other related services reduces the ongoing costs of providing these functions in-house and enables the reallocation of scarce resources to support direct patient care. Additionally, we have a deep bench which removes your need to worry about covering for callouts, vacations, and holidays.
Additional savings associated with outsourcing patient call handling and scheduling to a medical call center can also lower these overhead costs:
- Office expenses, lighting, and heating costs associated with in-house staff
- Technology, including staffing, supplies and depreciation
- We can significantly reduce your telephone and utility costs by leveraging our considerable economies of scale.
Flexible, Scalable Solutions Tailored to your Needs
In-house phone operators and receptionists must always be present during low and high-volume seasons. The busiest seasons overwhelm your staff due to heightened patient needs and often require reallocation of other staff to assist.
Yet when patient flow and call volume falls, management must often lay off or furlough employees, impacting staff morale and contributing to insecurity at work.
A medical call center, on the other hand, is flexible and easily scalable to patient demand and call volumes. We operate 24 x 7 x 365 and are always hiring and developing staff to support our clients. This enables doctors’ offices and clinics to devote most of their time on caring for patients.
The Bottom Line
MASCO Call Center has been providing best in class medical call answering services to discerning clients for decades. Contact us today to learn more about how to improve patient and provider satisfaction while reducing operating costs and capital outlays.