While most physicians know that an outsourced call center can handle functions such as phone answering services and appointment scheduling, many people may not be aware of the other services that they can provide. Many call centers can also serve as an office and customer support solution for a variety of important functions needed to run a medical office:
- Nurse triage: Many medical answering services also offer options of a nurse triage, where experienced nursing professionals can listen to patient’s medical complaints and determine if their situation is minor or serious enough to warrant emergency treatment. This can be an especially important service for an after hours answering service to avoid constant paging of doctors and staff.
- Physician referral: For health systems, this is a convenient way to manage referring patients to primary care doctors or specialists without requiring office staff to research and match patients with physicians.
- Patient follow-up calls: After a patient has received in-patient or out-patient treatment, there are frequently follow-up calls that need to take place. This can include monitoring that they are following their post-care treatment plan or are recovering as expected.
- Customer surveys: As with any other business, customer surveys can tell medical offices how they are doing along with which services to improve upon or add. An outsourced call center can also handle this function, making calls to previous patients to gauge their level of satisfaction.
If you are using a call center or phone answering service, you might want to see what other services they provide. Bundling services can streamline activities while saving money.