Virtual Healthcare Receptionist: Why Your Practice Needs One This Year
You probably don’t enjoy juggling phone calls all day long. It’s even worse when you have a never-ending stream of incoming calls that interrupt your in-person work.
There’s a better way to handle your phone communication: a healthcare receptionist. However, not all healthcare receptionists are created equal. Some can actually hurt your practice instead of helping it.
If you want to streamline your healthcare operations and enjoy the benefits of:
- Better customer support
- Higher productivity
- More focus on important tasks
You need to understand the differences between the two types of healthcare receptionists: on-site and virtual. And let us tell you, the best option for your practice is a virtual healthcare receptionist.
Why? Because they can do much more than just answer every phone call for you.
Virtual Healthcare Receptionist Pros
The pros of a virtual healthcare receptionist may seem overt at first, but interestingly enough, the best benefits that a healthcare receptionist service can offer you are much more subtle.
That’s because these top benefits are organizational and can have a profound effect on your day-to-day work schedule rather than all at once.
Scalability
Virtual medical receptionists are essential because they have enough manpower to scale and fit the needs of your medical practice. Scalability ensures your healthcare receptionist support remains responsive and efficient.
Whether you’re experiencing growth, seasonal fluctuations, or specific demands, the virtual service has the necessary manpower to seamlessly handle increased call volumes and administrative tasks.
Affordability
Because a receptionist service of this kind is scalable, it’s also affordable. The reason is that training a new on-site receptionist can be extremely costly. Traditional on-site receptionist training can incur substantial costs, including recruitment, onboarding, and ongoing training expenses.
In contrast, a virtual service provides a cost-effective solution, allowing you to allocate resources more efficiently. With scalable support, you can avoid the financial burden of training new on-site staff whenever your practice experiences changes.
Secure and Trained
A virtual healthcare receptionist service ensures both security and expertise in every interaction. The service providers prioritize stringent security measures to safeguard sensitive patient information.
Virtual receptionists also undergo comprehensive training, staying updated on industry regulations and medical terminology.
It should be clear now that the benefits that a healthcare receptionist service can bring to your medical practice can have a huge effect on you, your team, and even your patients. However, to fully understand the difference between a healthcare receptionist service and an on-site healthcare receptionist, you must know the limitations of the latter.
On-Site Healthcare Receptionist: Limitations and Costs
An on-site healthcare receptionist has many drawbacks and costs that you should think twice about in the healthcare industry.
Drawbacks
- On-site staff can only handle so many calls and tasks at a time, which can cause delays and frustration during busy periods.
- On-site staff can’t adjust quickly to changes in patient flow or seasonal demands, which can lower your efficiency and patient satisfaction.
Costs
- Hiring an in-house receptionist involves advertising, interviewing, and hiring expenses, as well as training and orientation costs.
- Keeping your on-site staff updated on medical practices and compliance rules requires more training expenses. You also have to comply with standard labor practices, which may include paid time off. In short, an on-site receptionist will cost you a lot of money.
A virtual healthcare receptionist service is a much better option for your practice. It can do more than just answer your phone calls.
It can also:
- Adapt to any call volume and task load, without any delays or errors.
- Adjust to any changes in patient flow or seasonal demands, without compromising your efficiency or patient satisfaction.
- Save you money on hiring, training, and employee benefits, while providing you with professional and reliable service.
How a Virtual Healthcare Receptionist Compares to an On-Site Healthcare Receptionist
Although how a healthcare receptionist service compares to an on-site receptionist should be obvious, it’s how they affect your day-to-day that really helps you understand what separates the two.
Hiring and training an on-site receptionist can be a complete nightmare. The hiring process alone is enough to dissuade anyone from undertaking such a task. Even if you manage to find a worthy hire among your choices, you still need to go through the hurdles of training them and integrating them into your practice.
Countless hours and dollars will be spent in this process. The sad part is, that it’ll all be for nothing as soon as two calls come in at the same time. Your new hire will handle the first and then the second will be put on a lengthy hold, leaving your practice and its patients back at square one.
That’s just one of the five signs your business needs a virtual answering service.
The alternative is contacting the number one healthcare receptionist service. Getting a response within 24 hours. Setting up the service at an affordable price point and leaving the trained professionals that you just hired, to do their job.
Best Healthcare Receptionist for Your Practice or Hospital
Without a doubt, the best healthcare receptionist service is My Receptionist. This service has a strong core of features that can serve businesses and organizations within any field or industry. My Receptionist’s most shining feature is its integrated scheduling platform.
You can learn the finer details about how this scheduling platform works on their website. However, let’s go over a quick summary of this scheduling platform and what it can offer you. For existing customers, you can gain access to this scheduling platform at a reduced cost.
Common Workflow
The robust scheduling capabilities of this platform are used by the live agents that will be handling your calls. For each call they answer, they will gain relevant information which will be sent to you via email, fax, or text. My Receptionist’s live agents will then set the appointment on the scheduling platform for you to look at whenever you choose to do so.
The manner in which call information is sent to you will depend entirely on you. However, you can rest assured that the information will be encrypted and safeguarded. This is to stop unwanted eyes from gaining access to sensitive client or patient information.
Overall, My Receptionist accounts for every part of the call-to-appointment process. The live agents the service provides are trained in proper communication but most importantly friendly. There is nothing more that a caller wants than to be greeted by a friendly voice on the other side.
Evolving Past a Virtual Healthcare Receptionist
There are times when your healthcare practice may need more than what even the top virtual healthcare receptionist can offer. If you find yourself in that kind of situation, then look no further than Always Answer.
Always Answer is known as the premier answering service for healthcare practices and hospitals.
Always Answer was able to earn the top spot among all answering services because of its highly trained live agents that are available 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Not only does the service have the manpower to easily scale to fit your needs, but Always Answer also offers a wealth of features and customer support capabilities.
Surveys and More
You can use the service to conduct customer and patient surveys. Through these surveys, you can gather relevant information that you can use to improve your healthcare practice’s service and in-patient care.
Always Answers live agents are capable of handling and implementing whatever custom script you hand them. Through these custom scripts, the service’s agents can gather important information which is then stored and sent over to you.
The impact of a medical answering service because of all of these features and much more, can not be understated. If you need a complete answering solution to free up your time and become your number one patient care ally, look no further than Always Answer.
Get a Healthcare Receptionist in 2024
You can easily get the top healthcare receptionist service on your side. Just contact us today! Fill out the form in a couple of minutes and get a response within 24 hours. That’s how you can improve the phone answering capabilities of your healthcare practice. You can focus on more pressing matters with increased answering capabilities.
These pressing matters may include handling the concerns and needs of your in-person patients. Learn how My Receptionist works and why we’re the top healthcare receptionist service in 2024.