By Madison Davis
Medical practices provide crucial healthcare services that the vast majority of the public depend on for their physical and mental wellbeing. This can come with a lot of pressure, and unfortunately, GP surgeries often find themselves overstretched due to the sheer number of resources that they need available to them in order to support such a large number of people.
By opting to enlist some outside help, medical practices may be able to better handle their day-to-day tasks and responsibilities, ultimately reducing the strain on a whole number of healthcare professionals – from receptionists to pharmacists, and GPs themselves. In this guide, we look at a few of the ways a call handling service could support medical practices to make a real difference in the lives of their patients.
To easily book appointments
GP surgeries can often struggle to meet the demands of the public, particularly when it comes to having enough available phone lines to simultaneously book appointments, respond to general queries, and provide updates on care.
By employing the help of a call handling service, surgeries may find that they’re able to tackle their administrative tasks much more efficiently, meaning that patients can easily call up to book appointments without having to do so within a certain time frame, or be put on hold. Similarly, those getting in touch with general queries can easily receive the information that they’re looking for, as and when they need it, without having to wait what could be potentially days or weeks for a response.
As a personal receptionist to a nurse or GP
Often when we have a query for our GP, we’ll have to book in and patiently wait for a call back. If they’re particularly busy, we may even need to seek support elsewhere while we wait for our next scheduled appointment.
While it can be helpful to speak to another GP or nurse at the surgery, or perhaps seek the help of a local chemist, some queries relating to our personal care simply can’t be solved by anyone other than our registered general practitioner. By equipping GPs with their own personal receptionist to manage their daily communications, they should be able to get in touch with patients much more efficiently, whether they’re prescribing medications, responding to a call back request, or providing care remotely.
To support in-house receptionists
It’s not always feasible for medical practices to hire more than a couple of receptionists to work in person on the premises of the surgery. Unfortunately, this means that multiple tasks can fall on one or two people to be responsible for them, and receptionists then have to find a way to prioritise their tasks, which can lead to some having to be put on the backburner.
By hiring a call handling service, receptionists working in surgeries may find it easier to manage their time, and put more focus on the tasks outside of call handling that are equally as crucial for the smooth running of the surgery. This should make for a much more efficient way to handle general administrative tasks, and may even mean that they have more time to support the surgery whenever additional ad-hoc tasks or issues arise.
Why is a call handling service useful?
A remote call handling service is useful in any industry, but can be particularly helpful for medical practices that struggle to balance their healthcare services with the sheer amount of paperwork and administrative tasks that go along with them. By getting access to that little bit of extra help, they can outsource many of the tasks that in-house receptionists would usually be responsible for, from taking messages and answering queries, to updating personal details and signing new patients up to the practice.
Ultimately, medical practitioners have an important job, but they can’t provide a seamless, supportive service unless they have channels that support quality communication with their patients. By having a few additional helping hands to answer the surgery phones, medical professionals are likely to find that providing care to the public becomes a much simpler, more efficient process.
