These days, many people want to have access to quality medical care. While many medical practices/offices promise to provide greater patient care, this could affect the workday of doctors and other medical staff. Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, remote work is now possible in the medical field in the form of a virtual medical receptionist.
In this blog post, we will discuss everything that you need to know about Virtual Medical Receptionists and how they can help your practice save time and money while increasing efficiency and improving patient experience.
Definition of Virtual Medical Receptionist
A virtual medical receptionist is a virtual/remote medical front desk worker. This person operates as the first point of contact for your patients. A virtual receptionist can work for a doctor’s office, hospital, clinic, dental practice, and other healthcare facilities.
Although everything in the medical field is typically done in-house/in-person, modern technology makes it possible for virtual receptionists and practices to communicate seamlessly.
Why Should You Hire Virtual Medical Receptionists?
Hiring a virtual receptionist is not simply about jumping into the “embrace remote work” trend. In fact, it offers REAL benefits for your practice such as the following:
1. Improved Customer/Patient Care and Service
Patients come to your practice for one major reason – TO FEEL BETTER. You do not want to give them bad experiences at your practice, otherwise, you’ll have no new or returning patients coming in for your help.
Bad patient experiences can start from bad customer service (i.e., lack of care when setting appointments, unanswered calls, etc.)
Remember, GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE ENCOURAGE LOYALTY.
Research shows that virtual medical receptionists are 6 times more likely to provide a live inquiry with a positive answer than the average receptionist.
Hiring a professional virtual medical receptionist can help boost your customer service by handling calls effectively, booking patient appointments, providing prescription refills, and more.
This can only help improve your practice’s reputation for fantastic service.
2. Increased Productivity and Efficiency
One major problem many doctors/medical practitioners face is that they aren’t able to spend enough time with their patients.
A reason for this is an inefficient phone system. Without someone to help doctors with phone calls, appointments in their schedule will have to be cut short.
As a result, patients don’t get enough medical care on their end and doctors get frustrated as they were not able to work to their full ability.
When you hire a virtual medical receptionist, you’ll now have someone to take care of patients’ queries on the phone. Doctors are now able to give their full attention to their patients without being rushed.
Patients will also get 100% of the allotted time of their appointment with you to get the best medical care.
With a virtual receptionist, not only do you help increase productivity and efficiency for your practice but also improve the patient experience.
3. Reduced Admin Work
The sad reality for most medical practices is that the paperwork involving new statutes and procedures becomes more and more time-consuming.
These tedious administrative tasks are taking a toll on many medical practitioners and staff, especially doctors. Also, these menial tasks provide little value for practices and patients.
A professionally-trained virtual medical receptionist provides back-up to in-house medical admin staff, reducing tedious admin workload.
This way, medical staff can focus more on crucial matters and give more value to your practice.
4. Reduced Unnecessary Costs
Staffing plays a major role in medical practice. Hiring in-house medical staff can be costly because of salaries, equipment costs, marketing of the job post, etc.
A virtual medical receptionist helps reduce unnecessary costs for your practice thanks to its remote capabilities. They are responsible for their own equipment and don’t require additional benefits that in-person receptionists have. You can either hire a virtual medical receptionist based on an hourly rate, or partner with a managed virtual assistant provider like Synergist Corporate Solutions which does all the hiring and training of qualified virtual receptionists for you.
What Does a Virtual Medical Receptionist Do?
Now that you know the key benefits of hiring a virtual medical receptionist, you might be thinking how these benefits give more value to your practice and patients.
To put it simply, virtual medical receptionists take up most of the important, non-practice-crucial tasks for your in-house medical staff and practitioners. A virtual medical receptionist performs duties such as:
Answering phone calls
- Arranging appointments
- Handling verifications of medical insurance
- Responding to emails
- Handling prescription refills
- Making plans for patient referrals
But most importantly…
- Performing all duties regulated by law (e.g., HIPAA for the USA)
Having a virtual receptionist allows patients to be instantly connected with your practice and receive the same high-quality medical care they get from dealing with an in-person medical front desk.
Skills to Look For When Hiring a Virtual Medical Receptionist
Remember that a virtual medical receptionist serves as the first point of contact for patients.
They should also be able to handle tedious administrative tasks, providing backup to in-house medical staff.
But most importantly, they should add value to your practice by providing patients with the best experience first-hand.
Thus, here are the top 5 skills you must look for when hiring a virtual medical receptionist:
- Administrative Skills
- Communication Skills
- Analytic Skills
- Customer Service Skills
- Time Management Skills
Hire Virtual Medical Receptionists Today!
Whether you’re a small medical practice or a large medical facility does not matter.
In the medical field, everything needs to be done efficiently so that patients can get the best medical care for themselves and their families.
With everything that was mentioned in this blog post, it is clear that hiring a virtual medical receptionist is indeed beneficial for doctors/medical practitioners, and patients alike.
If your practice is struggling with a lack of time, resources, or personnel and wants to provide the same quality service to patients while reducing costs, hiring a virtual receptionist is the solution you need.
Get in touch with us today and get started in finding the right virtual medical receptionist for you.
