Accessing A Triage Nurse On The Telephone
As a medical professional you may not always be able to provide the kind of telephone staff your patients require, especially twenty-four hours a day. While a traditional answering service can offer patients assurance that their message will be directed to their doctor immediately, some calls require instant assistance or just some common sense advice.
This is the time for a triage nurse, but paying a nurse's salary to babysit a telephone tends to be outside most medical office budgets. Is there any kind of answer? Actually, the better medical answering service providers can offer nurse telephone triage as well as the "standard" services required by most medical offices.
In addition to professional advice and assistance from a nurse, most callers will be able to leave detailed messages, get information about office hours or which doctor may be on call or even leave a personal voice mail.
When beginning to look for a medical answering service it is a good idea to carefully itemize all that will be required of the service and make sure that each is completely covered, and guaranteed by the provider.
For example, ask about guarantees of service - do they have emergency or disaster recovery plans. Consider that your answering service may be in another state or at a great distance from your physical location and should some sort of catastrophic weather event or disaster occur your office could be without any kind of telephone support. This means you should ask how data is backed up (for HIPAA compliance), if they have multiple call centers for such times as disasters and emergencies and if they are able to provide themselves with electrical services in the event of power outages.
In addition to the physical capabilities of providing service, it is a good idea to ask them their standard procedures when handling callers. For instance, how long is the average "on hold" period? Do operators need to place a caller on hold in order to answer other calls? Where are the operators located? Will the operators be HIPAA trained or compliant?
The last two issues tend to be fairly important. While many large companies can save a great deal of money through outsourcing, they may compromise the service received by their patient. A heavily accented speaker may not allow a caller to feel confident that their message is well-understood. Also, outsourced staff may not be able to meet the needs of such specific training as that involved with HIPAA compliancy.
About the Author:MedConnectUSA is a leading provider of medical answering services and telemessaging services. MedConnectUSA has been serving the health care industry since 1991. MedConnectUSA handles routine and emergency calls for the medical industry only and all calls are answered by HIPAA trained, US operators.
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