To appreciate the need for an automated medical answering service, you should first have a look at your office schedule for a month. Your medical office deals with hundreds of clients within a span of just a few weeks. Handling appointments is a process that involves several tasks; setting up the appointment, sending out reminders, and also handling cancellations.
With an automated scheduling system in place, you can be able to be more efficient and eliminate wasted time. From our experience and interaction with several clients, here are our top reasons why you should consider having an online appointment scheduling software in your medical practice.
Productivity of your staff
Let’s take the example of a typical medical office, where you have a staff that answers phone calls. These phone calls are from patients who want to schedule, cancel or reschedule their appointments. From a study conducted in 2017, the average phone call of such a nature takes approximately 8 minutes.
With just 7 patient calls, an hour has gone past. If you calculate this against the average employee wage per hour, you could be paying an estimated $6,000 per year. This is even more expensive than some of the automated software that is currently in the market.
You can free up your medical staff by having software that your patients can use to schedule appointments and also receive reminders.
Decrease distractions
You cannot deny that frequent distractions, in the form of phone calls and emails, will divert your staff’s attention. This is especially true for your front office staff, who interact with new clients, answer questions, perform customer service, do clerical jobs, and processing patients. A sudden change in attention can lead to costly errors in the office.
With effective scheduling software in place, you can free up your staff to tend to these tasks, distraction-free.
Engagement with clients
The work you engage in is centered on quality service. If you aren’t able to offer quality service to your patients in such a competitive market, you are bound to lose patients. Patients need to know that their needs are being met in a timely manner. And this might be a challenge for a front office that is constantly being distracted by phone calls and emails.
Install an automated scheduling software that will allow your patients to enjoy quality service from your practice.
Reduced expenses
For medical staff that has no scheduling software in place, there is a misconception that this software is expensive. Technology is being refined on a daily basis, leading to affordable scheduling technology in the market.
You can enjoy significant savings by installing such software and cutting back on hiring extra staff. Online scheduling software also guarantees that you have efficient and effective work from the current staff on your payroll.
Conclusion
What are you waiting for? Improve the quality of service that you offer in your medical practice by getting an appointment scheduling software installed.