Emergencies keep happening even when most of your staff is off for the night. The same goes for after-hours calls and medical inquiries. A medical practice or hospital has a lot to deal with and more workers won’t solve the problem.
A new call response team would face the same operational challenges as the rest of your staff. And hiring one or two more people can be very expensive. You need one tool to improve your response time and scale to any emergency.
An emergency answering service is a cost-effective solution that fits into your daily operations. In this post, we will explain how it works and the price you pay for not hiring one.
What If You Don’t Have An Emergency Answering Service?
What’s a medical practice like without enough hands on deck or time to handle each incoming call?
Some common occurrences include:
- Missed calls or delayed responses
- Patient frustration
- Staff burnout, due to every member attempting to handle several things at once
- Inability to scale
The list goes on but the message is clear, a medical practice or facility without a healthcare call center will not be able to address emergencies or patient concerns. That’s not exactly a recipe for success. In some circumstances, lives could be lost.
As mentioned before, while expanding your staff is always a feasible answer, it’s also a short-term one. Any increase in calls or business means that you’ll be back to square one, you can’t exactly keep hiring medical staff forever.
Would your budget as it is now even allow for the training, time, and resources to hire one or two new members?
There is, of course, the possibility of setting up an automated voice messaging system. However, that may cost you even more than a couple of new staff members.
Perils of an Automated System
Could an automated system handle each incoming call? That depends on your definition of “handle”. You see, an automated system is basically a straight-to-voicemail solution. Not only is this useless in an emergency but downright dangerous.
You are effectively putting your callers on hold except without a guarantee that someone will get back to them. An automated system will not be able to relay crucial information to you, nor will it save you time as you’ll be forced to review each call in its entirety.
Essentially, your callers, people with serious emergencies are left to fend for themselves. If hiring new staff members is a short-term solution at best and automated voice messaging systems are downright dangerous and cruel, what sets a cost-effective hospital call center or answering service for dentists apart?
Why an Emergency Answering Service Improves Response Time
A top-tier emergency answering service can easily scale to meet the demands of any work day. This comes at no extra cost.
The perils of having to hire more staff members are quickly dealt with and without breaking your budget. In addition to that, you also won’t have to spend the time or energy required to train new staff members. The healthcare call center takes care of that.
That additional functionality comes at no extra cost to you. This is why response time is increased with an emergency answering service, their scalability means that every call can be easily answered.
Degree of Separation
Another way that an emergency answering service improves response time is by being separated from your operations. Any incoming emergency can quickly cause disarray, with medical staff racing from one side of the building to the next.
Everyone caught in the vicinity of this action can become disoriented from it. This is not the case for an emergency answering service. Due to their remote location, an emergency answering service and its live agents can handle any incoming calls without the stress of being directly faced with the problem.
In fact, the live agents of the top emergency answering service are well-trained and equipped with everything they need to handle any call. This service is known as Always Answer.
Features That the Best Emergency Answering Service Uses to Address a Situation
Always Answer is an emergency answering service that has been in business for more years than most of its competitors. Started initially as a regular answering service before quickly expanding and becoming the complete answering solution they are today.
Not only do Always Answer’s agents have the experience needed to remain calm and sharp during an emergency but they’ve also been trained to use the latest translation software. More on this later.
Perhaps Always Answer’s strongest feature is its call centers. While most answering services are busy setting up call centers in developing regions of the world, Always Answer decided to do things differently. Their main call center is based in Dallas, Texas, but the service also has call centers spread throughout the United States.
Due to where they are located, Always Answer has access to the best talent. Talent that knows what the protocols are for an emergency within the United States.
24/7 Availability
Aside from their location, Always Answers live agents are also available 24 hours a day and seven days a week. This is a service that despite having high standards, doesn’t close up shop. You can expect the same degree of quality regardless of what time or day it is.
This is only possible thanks to their army of live agents spread throughout the United States. 24/7 availability works great for an emergency answering service because often, the worst cases that require immediate attention tend to happen at odd hours of the night.
With their 24/7 availability, Always Answer’s live agents not only respond to all calls but they also:
- Gather relevant information with each call.
- Forward any information to you if necessary.
- Assist and work together with local services to ensure each call is handled with care.
Bilingual Answering
Time is crucial in an emergency. You can’t afford any miscommunication or language barriers. Imagine how you would feel if you needed help and called someone who didn’t speak your language.
Always Answer prevents this from happening with its bilingual services. This service gives your medical practice agents who speak English and Spanish fluently.
Always Answer knows that the United States is a very diverse country, so it trains its agents to use the latest translation software. This software lets Always Answer’s agents help callers in more than 170 different languages. You can trust that whoever calls, they will talk to someone who understands them.
Custom Scripts
The fact that you can provide Always Answer with a custom calling script of your choosing may not seem like a landmark feature, at least not at first. But to understand what this can do for your medical practice, you have to first see it in action.
An emergency answering service that can put your custom scripts into action, is a service that can quickly and efficiently gather crucial information from each call. This information can prove vital in saving lives and the faster you get it into your hands, the faster an emergency can be addressed.
A custom calling script that asks the caller if they are a regular patient of your medical practice or not. If so, then your team can quickly access their file and get to know their preexisting conditions. That is information that can save lives.
Custom scripts can also:
- Help the caller relax in a time of need.
- Include custom greetings for a personal touch.
- Ask vital questions at the right moment.
Right Emergency Answering Service For You
You need an emergency answering service that can scale to your needs. A service that has well-trained and capable live agents. Always Answer is the only emergency answering service that can do all that.
Call us today and get an emergency answering service that improves your response time and saves your money. Make your medical practice more efficient and satisfy your customers with one call.
