Every conversation a healthcare provider makes with a patient matters. Every contact point from the initial call to the post-op appointment includes an opportunity to build rapport, show concern, and ensure patient happiness. For patients, ease and accessibility of communication channels is important, as it shows that healthcare providers such as physicians are concerned about their well-being.
Missed calls and lengthy wait times for patients may have far more dire consequences than most clinics realize. Missed calls impact income, lost patients, and a stained reputation. A good slip is missed by not having a medical answering service in these times when patient expectations are at an all-time high. Physicians answering service provider act as additional support to physician clinics. Medical answering service is now a must to ensure the healthcare center is able to match the patient’s expectations, provide optimum care, ensure the safety of the patient’s data, and be available 24/7 to ensure patient medical care availability.
Communication in the Health Sector Significance
Good communication is essential for providing exceptional care. Patients expect their healthcare providers to be prompt, courteous, and communicative besides medical professionalism. They expect their calls to be handled expertly and promptly, whenever they phone in to seek emergency care, to schedule an appointment, or to answer a question regarding a prescription.
Expectations of Patients in the Digital Age
Patients in the modern digital age get used to immediate responses and their availability at any time of the clock. Telemedicine, online scheduling of appointments, and even electronic health records entered patients’ daily lives, and they expect even their healthcare professionals to be as prompt and available as their favorite e-retailer. Frustration, anxiety, and lost confidence will ensue if a patient’s call is not answered or is subject to abuse.
Impact of Missed Calls on Patient Retention
Any good healthcare practice depends on patient retention. It is relatively cheaper for healthcare practitioners to be in good books with their present patients than to look for new ones. Conversely, sometimes missed calls have a disastrous effect on the retention of patients and gradually decrease the patient base.
Missed Appointments and Cancellations
The most obvious presentations of a missed call are missed appointments.
Opportunities to care may also be lost when a patient cannot reach anyone to make an appointment, confirm a time, or cancel when necessary. Failure to communicate effectively to miss an appointment may also result in gaps in care, thus threatening the outcome of the patient.
The greater the provider unavailability, the more likely patients will seek care elsewhere. A patient may spend hours calling the office with no success and simply go somewhere else that is better accessed. The bottom line is lost patients, which hurts the revenue of the practice and diminishes the patient census as a whole.
Cost of Patient Churn
The rate of loss of a patient from practice is very much on the minds of healthcare providers, as a lost patient translates to lost potential cash from appointments, treatments, and follow-ups. Thus, high churn rates may indeed lead to lower revenues. Bringing on new patients to replace those who have left often can be quite pricey because it involves the costs of marketing, any promos or discounts given, and the time it takes to onboard them.
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Causes Why Patients Drop Out from Missed Calls:
Unable to Make or Change an Appointment: They cannot schedule a new appointment or even reschedule one. The patient may become frustrated that they cannot schedule a new appointment or need to reschedule an existing one.
Lack of Response to Questions: Patients may opt for alternative care if their questions are not met in time.
Failure to follow Up: The patient contact may be followed by no subsequent follow up interaction with the patient.
Lost Income from Missed Calls and Patient Opportunities
Missed calls can lead to huge losses in terms of revenue, along with lost opportunities and patients. Every missed call is an unutilized consultation, treatment, or appointment. Such losses can accumulate and be quite substantial over time.
Emergency and Unscheduled Consultations and Procedures
When each time a patient calls into your office to make an appointment and cannot get through, you lose potential income. If the patient cannot reach your office, then this will impact your bottom line regardless of whether or not they are coming in to seek a new treatment, a follow-up visit, or a regular check-up.
New Patient Acquisition Influence
New patients acquired are the lifeblood of any expanding medical practice. However, prospective patients will be less likely to choose your practice if they cannot make contact or have a poor first impression. In today’s highly competitive healthcare market, they can simply choose to go elsewhere because you failed to answer the call.
In addition, some patients are going to blog about their experiences a few days after leaving your practice. A failure to communicate well can lead to a negative review that will deter others from your practice-thereby affecting your reputation and income further.
The Advantages of Investing in Patient Care With Medical Answering Services
Purchasing the services of a medical answering service is investing in the health of your patients. It is an evidence of commitment to quality, accessible care for all patients, no matter when they call or what language they speak. The result can be better patient outcomes, increased patient satisfaction, and a more robust and resilient practice.
Missed calls are serious in the competitive field of healthcare. Losing patients and revenue, aside from low productivity and potential lawsuits, are some of the considerable costs that would be attributed to the failure to engage a medical answering service. Having invested in a professional answering service will mean that every call from your patient will be handled promptly, professionally, and with the right amount of care by your healthcare providers.
