Looking for a medical answering service can be a bit distressful, especially if you run a medical practice. You want a partner that can provide the same level of quality that your own team does, especially as your patient experience bears more importance than ever – Health insurance companies will downgrade practices and health systems with poor patient feedback.

While few people are happy with the current state of healthcare in the United States, one ray of sunshine comes from the growing role medical answering services and healthcare call centers play in providing professional, personal care and attention to patients and their caregivers. Most everyone knows a medical answering service takes messages for patients who call after-hours. What they may not know is that an answering service can do so much more.

Patient care coordination means different things to different people, from provider to patient, and from insurer to the network that connects them all. Regardless of how you define it, everyone’s goals are the same: enhance quality, streamline the provision of services, increase efficiency, and reduce costs.

After being in health care administration for the last seventeen years, I find myself asking the same questions health care executives ask themselves every day. For instance, "How can I keep my staff from being overwhelmed by phone calls during office hours?"

If you’re in health care, you know about the importance of HIPAA, which mandates the safeguarding of personal health care information.   This requirement also applies to your medical answering service and the information they collect from your callers, including each time they send you a text message.

Healthcare seminars and classes are a great way to communicate instruction tailored to a specific interest niche. This is both an effective and efficient way to disseminate medical-related information.While you can announce a schedule, plan the curriculum, and prepare the space in hopes that someone shows up, this isn’t the most effective approach. What if no one attends? Then you’ve wasted time and resources.