If you are thinking about using an answering service to help you meet the needs of your patients and your medical practice, then you are not alone. At the same time, there are a lot of doctors who are thinking about signing up for an answering service for the first time. Just like making a decision regarding patient care, it is important for doctors to know exactly what they are getting when they decide to sign up for this answering service. What should doctors know about a doctors answering service?
An Answering Service Is Not a Replacement for the Doctor
First, it is important for physicians to understand that the answering service is not going to be a replacement for the doctor. The answering service is not going to be making medical decisions for the care of your patients. That is still going to fall on the shoulders of whoever you have on call that night. When you work with an answering service, the answering service is going to be responsible for relaying phone calls to the person who is on call. That way, all phone calls are routed to the proper doctor in a reasonable amount of time.
An Answering Service Can Free Up More Time for the Doctor
Before working with an answering service, there was a good chance that you were responsible for fielding all of the calls that came into your practice. You may have felt like you needed to drop what you were doing in order to handle an urgent emergency, only to realize that the question was relatively benign. With an answering service, you are going to be able to finish what you are doing before you return the call of your patient. That way, an answering service can free up more of your time.
An Answering Service Can Scale Up or Scale Back Accordingly
Finally, if you work in a medical practice where the volume of calls tends to fluctuate from time to time, then you will be able to scale up or scale back your agreement with the answering service at your leisure. If you need to have more people working the phones, the answering service should be able to accommodate this. On the other hand, if you need to scale back your contract, then you should be able to do this as well. You should only have to pay for the services that you use.
Use an Answering Service for Doctors To Help You
If you are looking for a way to free up more of your time, then a doctors answering service might be the answer. Consider working with an answering service to improve your quality of life.
