Medical practices are facing more and more challenges as the capabilities of healthcare grow and patient expectations become higher and higher. While this provides the promise of greater care for patients it also has a massive impact on the working day of not just doctors, but any other staff working in a medical practice or office. Thankfully, help is at hand in the form of virtual receptionists who can ease the strain of bureaucracy in modern healthcare and allow the staff at your practice to concentrate on those crucial areas which need the most attention. And, once a virtual medical receptionist is in place, you will discover that your practice can begin to exceed patients’ expectations and deliver a world-class service that benefits everyone involved.
What exactly though is a virtual receptionist?
The Lowdown on Virtual Receptionists
Cost-effective and easy to implement into your practice, a virtual medical receptionist is a remote worker who can operate as your practice’s first point of contact. Undertaking all the tasks associated with an in-house receptionist, a virtual medical receptionist will handle incoming calls, arrange and confirm appointments, carry out the medical insurance, deal with prescription refills and make plans for patient referrals.
As we’ve already established, virtual medical receptionists are remote workers but their connection with your practice can be seamless. By utilizing Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) software, such as 8 x 8. Virtual medical receptionists can make and receive phone calls from local area codes (such as the practice’s location)through their PC. Patients will be instantly connected with the virtual receptionist and receive the same level of care as if they were dealing with a receptionist who was physically in your practice.
Virtual medical receptionists, therefore, are a highly effective method of communication both internally and externally, but what are the benefits of bringing in a virtual receptionist?
The Benefits of a Virtual Medical Receptionist
The basic concept of a virtual receptionist is a highly alluring prospect for any medical practice which wants to push its capabilities that little bit further. The main benefits that your practice could expect to reap from such a setup are:
Free Up Time to Spend with Patients
One of the main problems that doctors face is not being able to spend enough time with their patients. Medical problems can be highly complex affairs but when a doctor is struggling with a poor backup provided by an inefficient phone system, every single appointment in their schedule needs to be reduced in length to ensure every patient gets seen.
Not only does the patient get the short end of the stick in this scenario but the doctor is also left frustrated as they’re unable to work to their full ability. However, with a virtual receptionist in place, you’ll discover that the phone system becomes more efficient and there’s less need for the administrative workload to be spread around the practice. As a result, doctors are less rushed and can give their full attention to patients.
High Levels of Customer Care and Service
If your patients suffer bad experiences at your practice then you will soon find that they stop coming back. Instead, they will look into visiting practices that are praised for prizing their patients’ needs highly and above anything else. And, sometimes, this can be caused by something as simple as a lack of care demonstrated when arranging appointments or, other times, it could be down to the general sense of chaos at a badly run practice.
Virtual receptionists are closely monitored and their performance is regularly evaluated and scored. This helps to provide practices with the ability to understand the level of quality being brought into their workplace and has the bonus of giving virtual receptionists a quantitative objective to work towards. And this can only help to improve your practice’s reputation for fantastic service as well as develop the customer service skills of your virtual medical receptionist.
No Need for an Answering Service
Many practices rely on an answering service to deal with customer queries instead of an actual receptionist on the front desk. Whilst this ensures patients can, at the very least, report issues, the reality is that many patients are prone to hanging up when they hear the cold, emotionless answering service message kick in.
This certainly doesn’t do your practice or the patient any favors but with a virtual receptionist in place, you can provide a more engaging form of communication to keep your patients satisfied. And it’s also important to remember that you’re not limited to having just one virtual receptionist, you can have as many as you like.
More Cost-Effective
For practices that want to be cost-effective, staffing is an important area of concern. Naturally, there’s an issue of salaries, but it’s also important to remember that the equipment costs and unseen costs such as wear and tear.
Virtual receptionists, however, help practices to neatly sidestep the production costs due to their remote abilities. By taking up no physical presence in your practice, virtual receptionists are a highly cost-effective solution when it comes to dealing with your patients’ needs as well as the needs of your work as a whole.
Reduce the Admin Workload
Running a medical practice is not a simple business and with the rapid increase of new statutes and new procedures, the paperwork involved in becoming an areal nightmare; in-house admin staff are finding that more and more of their time is being taken up with menial tasks that provide little value for the practice and its patients.
The presence of a fully trained virtual receptionist, though, means that your admin staff has the opportunity to pass less time on crucial admin tasks over they concentrate on more pressing tasks. This ever-present backup solution for admin allows better service to provide by your work reduces the stress on your in-house staff can easily lead to frustration and mistakes.
Medical Virtual Receptionist: Desk
A Virtual Medical Receptionist is a No Brainer
It is not a question of why any practice needs a virtual medical receptionist, more a case of why doesn’t your practice have one already? As a large number of benefits that benefit your doctors, patients, and clerical staff, a virtual medical receptionist can make an addition to your practice by bringing freedom and flexibility to a workplace that can be highly stressful and busy at the best of times. Find your perfect virtual medical receptionist at VA.care.