It is common for healthcare providers to have existing staff to handle all incoming calls, appointment scheduling, and other regular tasks. This can make your practice gain efficiencies with improved service but only for a short term. In the long run, you are likely to notice that your in-house call center staff doesn’t emphasize customer service excellence by using rogue ideas. With time, your practice is likely to end up with frustrated patients, burnout employees, and revolving employee turnover. Here are signs to know when to pull the plug and switch to professional call center services.

High staff turnover:

Have you noticed a high turnover in your call center staff? The chances are high that you hired entry-level people with front desk experience but without scheduling and professional customer service expertise and experience. Such people are likely to get overwhelmed by the call center work with more bidding out for positions in other organizations. Their lack of skills and empathy to handle patients more appropriately makes them unqualified for call center work. A solution is to hire a professional answering agency with professional and expert agents.

Failure to review recorded calls :

It is a red flag if you can’t review recorded calls against practice guidelines. A quality call center should lessen variation through scripting and encouraging scheduling and other telephone tasks. There is a big problem if you don’t have the time or resources to evaluate your customer service quality. This usually leads to more patient dissatisfaction with consequent administrative and provider complaints. It is high time you took the plunge and switched to a professional answering service with resources for call reviews and guaranteed patient satisfaction.

No staff ongoing training :

Are you finding it hard to give your call center staff ongoing training and coaching? You are headed for trouble. Industry regulations and standards such as HIPAA keep on changing and there is no excuse for noncompliance. Ongoing staff training is important to ensure your employees are at par with current standards. This eliminates patient dissatisfaction, lawsuits for non-compliance, protects your practice’s reputation, and employee frustration. Consider collaborating with a professional medical call center with agents who undergo continuous quality improvement training is the solution.

Failure to prioritize patient leakage:

When patients call your practice and your service doesn’t meet their expectations, they are more likely to hang up and call another practice. This patient leakage is likely to cost you a lot in revenue. Offering patients a convenient customer service will make them loyal to your practice. This requires monitoring appointment volume to eliminate no-shows. A professional call center will always make return calls to encourage preventive health visits and return visits. In-house staff is less likely to notice patient leakage since they are overwhelmed.

Provider frustration :

Referrals are a great way to get new customers to your health practice. This requires ensuring that referring providers don’t get frustrated with your overall experience. Referring providers who fail to get make an appointment for their patients in your practice are likely to get frustrated. This is likely to make them hesitate to send future referrals putting your earning potential in jeopardy. It is high time you realized that your staff lacks resources to handle an efficient call center. This is where switching to a professional service provider comes in to give your referring providers a better experience.

Poor data entry:

Regular errors in your data entry processes are a huge burden on the whole revenue cycle process. Relying on in-house staff to manage call center activities is likely to be filled with failure to verify insurance, incorrect entering of patient information (), and inappropriate setting of payment expectations. All these encourage claims rejection, patient frustration, and more backend work. Luckily, a professional call center agency lessens chances of errors leading to efficient reimbursements and fewer claims denials.

Low patient satisfaction:

The success of your medical practice depends on how they feel about your service delivery. Patients who are not satisfied with your practice are more likely to hang up after a short while. Additionally, frustrated customers are likely to write negative reviews about your practice. If you notice these, you have to act proactively before you lose more customers and to limit reputational damage. You can best counterattack this by hiring professionals to handle your answering service. This comes with benefits that will give your patients a positive experience including:
1) 24/7 availability
2)Fully customizable service
3)Bilingual and multilingual agents
4)Delivering non-urgent messages

Bottom line:

Enhanced patient experience encourages a positive experience and more revenue for your practice. This requires having an efficient call center department to respond to patient concerns immediately. Hiring call center services is a great ideal to offer 24/7 availability, limit referring provider frustration, and encourage reviewing recorded calls. A reputable answering service will have agents with expertise and experience to meet your practice and patient expectations.  Read more at Healthcare Business Process Outsourcing.