Disasters and other emergency situations can truly test you-as a doctor and as a company owner. Most of the year, things may go fairly smooth for you. Patients know the drill-you're not in on the weekends or past 8:00 PM on weeknights. Most respect that, though you do notice a few voice mails every morning. However, what happens in a time of testing? What happens when there is an emergency situation and your office cannot be reached?
What could possibly happen to make this situation occur? Any number of things, from a power outage, problem with your phone, to even a natural disaster like a tornado, severe storm, hurricane or earthquake. What happens when your office is unable to respond to patient calls? Do you tell your patients, "Sorry about that...we weren't available?" While this may be bothersome to some customers, this type of attitude could be life-endangering to some patients.
This is why it's important to invest in a doctor answering service. Medical answering services provide immediate assistance that is always available, regardless of the status of the doctor's office. Disaster recovery from a professional answering service may offer backup power for short or long term outages. A telephone answering service might also make use of redundant and satellite phone lines (which are known to work near perfectly because they communicate directly with an orbiting satellite) and have emergency facilities on standby. Additionally, the best disaster recovery solutions also ensure that their facilities are placed in alternate locations throughout the U.S. That way, the call center services can easily route calls to different locations in the event of a local emergency to make sure all calls go smoothly.
You can even ask an answering message service for help with a triage nurse, disaster recovery planning or personnel that has had HIPAA training. HIPAA training is a specialized course that allows telecommuting workers work for doctors, medical facilities and pharmacies. The training involves several different factors related to respecting confidentiality, following procedure, and ensuring that the patient is well cared for.
In this day and age, personal attention is becoming increasingly common for doctors and other professionals. Leaving a cold and impersonal message for customers looking for paper supplies is one thing. However, when you work with patients who rely on your concern and education to improve their mental or physical wellbeing, leaving things up to a machine may just be too risky.
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