How Daytime Answering Service Lowers Cost Of Delivering Healthcare

I, like the majority of healthcare executives nationwide, can read pamphlets and websites until I am blue in the face or receive all of the promos and free gifts from conventions of how different call centers can help their medical practice. Here from a healthcare administrator’s point of view is how a daytime answering service has helped me in my healthcare career as well as making the livelihood and quality of care better and finally finding a call center that has the “Go To” daytime service that my staff and patients need.

After being in healthcare administration for the last seventeen years I have asked myself the same questions healthcare executives think about every day; how can I fix the problem of my staff being overwhelmed by phone calls during office hours? Am I able to create limited voicemail for my staff, shorter on hold time and repeat calling?

Many of the issues I have seen over my healthcare career have mostly been the amount of call volume coming through the front office. The staff members of that area become switchboard operators instead of handling many of their other responsibilities during business hours such as making appointments, check-in and check-check out patients, make sure each patient has an EMR update, verifying insurance, collecting co-pays and past due balances. Secondly, I have seen issues in the nursing stations because all healthcare administrators know that all physicians like their nurses by their side and want them waiting on them as soon as they come out of an exam room.

From an executive standpoint we like to keep our physicians constantly busy and making the patient flow consistent day to day. Physicians also like to use the term the nursing staff will not leave the office until every voicemail is answered and every patient, pharmacy, home health, hospice is called back. At the end of the day we all know what this means is money, money and more money. At the monthly board meeting the physicians are asking their administrators “Why are we paying so much in payroll with majority of it being in overtime?”

Daytime Answering Service Perks:

Calls answered in real time and the option to message any staff member including nursing, appointment scheduling, surgery scheduling, precertification and laboratory all in real time.
English and also bi-lingual care coordinators.
A record of all calls at your disposal.
Can be customized to interface with any EMR and PM system.
No added or hidden costs for additional hardware or IT support.
Patient Satisfaction! No more busy signals, hold times or dropped calls.
Daytime service can bridge over to any PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone.
Business cost savings.

These are just a few of the examples where I have searched for answers in my healthcare tenure and have found them in daytime answering services. This has helped me over the years in staff productivity, patient staff and physician relationships, cost savings of not having to create additional staff members, and more money to budget for something else needed within the practice.

Brian Woods is an ACMPE Physician Advocate at Ambs Call Center. Ambs Call Center provides daytime answering services nationwide for a wide range of industries. Learn more about Ambs’ comprehensive services at www.AmbsCallCenter.com.