As a healthcare provider, you can’t afford to miss calls. This is especially true if you truly care about your patients and would like to actually retain them. On your side, missing calls may seem like a small inconvenience.
However, patients don’t look at this in the same way. In fact, most of them feel ignored and not well cared for. When the situation is like this, it often leads to frustration and mistrust.
Since you don’t want such a scenario, it makes sense to always pick calls from your patients. This goes a long way in improving overall retention rates. One of the best ways to ensure this is to work with a reputable answering service.
This article looks at what you stand to miss if you don’t invest in such a service for your healthcare facility.
Don’t Miss Your Calls, Let Us Answer For You
Lost Trust and Patient Confidence
Individuals may reach out to your facility to check on their appointments and test results. Others may have urgent issues that they want handled. If they are not able to get the support they want, they end up questioning your reliability.
When matters get to this point, they may end up feeling undervalued and neglected. This pushes them to end up looking for services elsewhere.
This is a situation that you don’t want to experience. The main reason behind this is that rebuilding confidence can be quite tough. Therefore, it’s best that you prevent the loss in the first place.
Financial Losses for Healthcare Practices
Every call that you don’t answer means a lost appointment or delayed billing. It could also suggest that you lost a chance to bring a new person into your facility. Such issues have a negative effect on your overall revenue.
It’s good to mention that this isn’t just an issue that you will experience with new patients. If existing patients don’t reach you, they will end up feeling quite frustrated. This situation can cause them to fall off and seek better service. This leads to a significant reduction in long-term income.
This is an issue that you don’t want to go through. This is especially true when you think about the high cost of gaining new customers.
Compromised Patient Care and Outcomes
A patient could be calling to clarify medication instructions or report side effects. Another one could be looking to schedule urgent follow-ups. If their concerns aren’t promptly handled, chances are high that symptoms could worsen.
In fact, delayed communication usually causes mismanagement of treatment plans and overlooked symptoms. It also results in reduced adherence to care instructions.
These issues shouldn’t be allowed to go on for too long. The main reason behind this is that they result in preventable hospital readmissions and longer recovery periods. They could also cause life-threatening problems.
Ultimately, not picking up the phone directly undermines the quality of care. It also messes up with the trust patients place in you.
Damage to Your Reputation
You shouldn’t fail to pick up the phone. This is because individuals who reach out will feel neglected and undervalued. Bearing in mind that we are in the digital era, you can be sure that these frustrations won’t be kept private. People will definitely talk about their bad experience with you online. Such negative reviews plus word-of-mouth conversations can definitely harm your credibility.
A single missed call could even create the impression that your practice doesn’t care about patient needs.
The Role of Professional Call Management
To prevent the aforementioned issues, it’s wise that you invest in professional call management. With the right experts, you can be sure that no call will be missed. On top of this, you are guaranteed that callers will be handled in a prompt and courteous manner.
This will go a long way in minimizing the chances of missed appointments and frustrations. It will also make sure you never miss clients to your competitors.
As a healthcare provider, missed calls mean lost opportunities to create new relationships and strengthen existing ones. This happens because every unanswered call usually results in delayed care and patient frustration. It also causes the loss of loyal clients to other providers.
Since you don’t want such situations, you need to invest in reliable communication solutions. The best one is to get an answering service. At
AB Universal Messaging, we offer an outstanding service that will help ensure patient satisfaction. This will go a long way in ensuring improved retention rates and better revenue for your practice.
