How To Handle Emergency Calls In a Medical Office

Here’s How To Handle Emergency Calls In a Medical Office

Handling emergency calls is a very significant consideration in a medical office. It is essential to have a proactive measure to avoid any issues that might compromise your service quality. Contracting a professional answering service is a great idea to enhance your emergency call handling. The ideal answering agency will have agents working 24/7 to give callers to your practice a pleasant experience.

Responding to emergency calls

It is very challenging for physicians to handle emergency calls that can come at any time. Some of the most important issues that might compromise service quality include time restraint, spending too long on hold, and difficulty in communication. Read on to discover how a professional doctor answering service will streamline emergency call handling.

Effective listening

Answering agents take time to listen to callers. This allows for discovering the nature of the call, whether it is an emergency or not. Effective listening is very important and requires not bombarding callers with endless questions. Listening intently is essential to avoid interrupting the caller.

The agents pay attention to the caller’s tone of voice, phrases used, and talking speed. This allows for picking up important information from whatever the caller is saying. During an emergency, some callers usually panic. Agents from a medical answering service understand how to listen to callers to gather important information.

Asking concisely about the medical condition

The efficient handling of emergency calls requires asking appropriate questions regarding the caller’s medical condition. Call agents ask clear and concise questions. This limits wasting time asking the same questions. Apart from asking for details regarding the address and details about the condition, asking one question at a time and confirming this information twice is helpful.

Ensure to give the answering agents a script to make it easier to respond to caller inquiries. Using a script allows one to determine whether the condition is an emergency or not. The agents advise callers to call back during working hours for non-emergency cases. Alternatively, the answering agents will inform an appropriate physician to respond to the caller’s emergency.

Being empathetic

The most significant benefit of entrusting a professional answering service is to protect callers from listening to voicemails. Talking to a live agent creates a significant impact on callers. For effectiveness, professional answering agents appreciate the impact of empathy toward callers. The agents understand the best way to respond to frantic callers with emergency conditions.

There are not always polite, but empathy from the agent gives them a feeling of calmness and trust. With callers already upset about their condition, it is the job of professional answering agents to be empathetic towards callers regardless of their manners.

Keeping callers calm

Remaining calm is very important when handling emergency calls. With already stressed calls, your answering agents should effectively calm them down. This is possible by allowing them to speak while listening calmly ad only asking concise and clear questions where possible. Listening to callers avoids making them worried or distracted to keep the conversation on track.

Taking action

Outsourcing an answering service is a wonderful thing. Equally important is to understand whether you are getting good value for money. This requires taking time to go through timely reports and listening to recorded calls. It allows for discovering any loopholes and other issues that need fixing immediately. Listening to recorded calls also allows discovering some of the most frequently asked questions.

This allows updating your script to allow the agent to respond accordingly to caller queries. Taking action to evaluate the services from the answering agency ensures they meet your expectations. It also allows for assessing whether the answering service sticks to HIPAA regulations.

Taking immediate action

People expect authentic interaction in calling your practice. You need to take proactive action to handle emergencies. It takes rigorous training and planning to handle emergency calls in your medical practice. A great answering service should have procedures in place to guarantee the effective handling of calls. Enlisting the services of a doctor answering service significantly pays off.

You will always have in mind that all calls to your practice are received. Answering agents are always available 24/7, including when the physician is on vacation. Your patients will have a pleasant experience knowing that they can always reach your practice regardless of time or day. Assistance from professionals ensures streamlining of operations in your office and allows staff to focus on offering excellent patient care.

Wrapping up

Medical practice has to always be available to give the necessary assistance to patients, including those on the phone. People can always call your office, including after business hours. A team of agents from a medical answering agent is always handy 24/7 to offer the necessary assistance. This is a good gesture, especially for callers with emergencies. The answering agents will inform appropriate physicians to handle emergencies and postpone situations that can wait for the next day.