Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Your Answering Service Experience Needed

Answering Service Companies, Really Necessary?

Long-time lurker, haven?t posted since 2012. Solo family practice in S. Florida, seeing between 30-35 patients 8AM-5PM, Mon-Friday. Office closed daily from noon-1PM for lunch. We are currently paying $500 every 3 months for our ?unlimited? answering service. We upgraded to VOIP phones in 2011 and thus are able to track call statistics in Excel, such as number of calls forwarded to external answering service after hours. Over the past 12 months, we have had an average of 391 calls per month forwarded to our answering service.

Of these 391 calls, I would say a great proportion are about med refills, telemarketers, and other non-emergency items.

I want to know how everyone deals with after-hours phone calls? I am not on call at the local hospital and haven?t even been to the hospital in years. I have agreements with hospitalists to admit my patients. I maybe get a call once monthly at home from a hospitalist about a patient that was admitted or had emergency surgery. Otherwise, I will just receive a report the next morning.

Patients that call after hours are told to go to the ER if it is an emergency, or wait until the next business day for an appointment (we get about 5-7 walk-ins daily, depending on the season). We also get audit calls from the state Medicaid department checking on our response times and appointment availability.

When we upgraded to VOIP phone services, we also contracted our current answering service. Before that, the office manager received after-hours calls and would handle them. Prior to that, we had an answering service we paid per call or per minute, I don?t remember, but it ended up being very expensive.

I really enjoy reading this board, even if I don?t contribute all that often.

-Anthony

I am relooking at how I do things, but I use a service from direct page, that used to be my beeper company.

They give me a local telephone number as potential for a voicemail, but I leave a message stating DO NOT leave a message, this is for emergencies only. It can receive text messages and about 1/2 the patients leave them. It sends a text message with the telephone number (and perhaps message) (ala beeper) to my cellphone and my NP's as well.

I forget what it costs, but about $15.00 a month as I recall.

Perhaps we are crazy, or gluttons for punishment, (choose 1 or apply any appropriate label) but, we stopped using an answering service years ago. Instead, (here it comes) we either forward the lunch hour and after hours calls to our cell phones using call forwarding or answering machine, with directions to call us on our cell phones.

It works well for our patients, and hasn't been much of an added burden for on call times. I find that not having to call patients back saves time and reduces frustration of dealing with busy signals or patients not answering calls. No added cost, and far fewer calls inquiring about labs and appointments.

I added another no frills cell phone onto my cell plan which becomes my on call phone $10.00 a month and when someone else is covering just change the voice mail message to call Dr S0nSo at XXX-XXX-XXXX

you can use your voip service to have an after hours menu. Your first choice can be :

"if you believe that you are experiencing a medical emergency, dial 1". This sends it directly to your cell phone.

Not to nit pick, but I might say medical emergency call 911. If you have an urgent problem that cannot wait until the office opens tomorrow, dial 1.

In this litigious world you have to assume everyone is an idiot and give them permission to dial 911. Doesn't stop them from suing, but will give them less of a basis.

Thank you for your responses. I don't have much contact with other local solo practitioners because they have all gone to work for the hospital, so the insight I gain from this board is tremendous.

The day after I posted this topic, I received an ad in the mail for a $70 per month flat-rate, no contract, answering service. After contacting them, I learned that some solo docs in a nearby city were using their service. They basically provide a personalized automated system. You are supplied with a forwarding number that is in essence, an auto-attendant. We would have to record any Spanish options ourselves as the service only provide English messages. It goes something like this:
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"If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911."

"For prescriptions press 1" --> "Please call during normal business hours for any medication issues....Mon-Fri 8AM-5PM...."

"For appointments press 2" --> "Call back during normal business hours....Mon-Fri 8AM-5PM...."

"Doctors & hospitals, press 3" --> They leave a voicemail, the audio file is then e-mailed and/or sent via text to up to 5 numbers/addresses. Physician can call back number and personal cell information is scrambled by service for physician's privacy.

"Non-emergency issues, press 4" --> Leave a message, sent to contact list as above.
=========================================================================================
A few months ago we had set up a full auto-attendant during business hours to handle the volume of calls that was overwhelming the receptionist (pharmacies, medical records, lawyers, HEDIS, etc). In our system, we had it setup to go to voicemail checked daily for RX's, medical records, etc, and a live person for appointments or doctor-to-doctor calls.

However, within a week we abandoned it after everyone complained. I realized that what this company would be charging me for is exactly what we had before.
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Here's my plan:
1. Set up the auto-attendant on a schedule for after-hours answering.
2. Make a Google Voice account for the voicemails (FREE TRANSCRIPTION!!), and forward the voicemails/e-mails to my smartphone.
3. Call through that Google Voice account via my smart phone to keep my cell phone number private.

How does that sound? Total price = $0/month. Voicemails are transcribed through Google Voice for free and I can record the Spanish versions of the auto-attendant system.

We are using answering service Statlinx 914-831-4300 for more than 10 years(Primary care practice). So far we are
happy.
Rate: 39.99 for 50 min of operator's time per month , Everything over 50 min $1 per minute.
We use this service to take patient's calls during off-hours. Secretary just forwards phone line to dedicated mail box and checking in the Morning if there are any messages left. If patient is calling he can select to leave message or talk to operator. If necessary operator will page doctor and connect patient with doctor.

I think the google voice idea is good. You can also set a schedule during which your google voice number will take calls/messages. If they call outside those times, you can forward to your office number instead. We use google voice to send text reminders and have call forwarded to our office number.

I do things in a bit different way. My disclaimer is that I am a Sports Med office and very Rarely have a patient who HAS to talk to me.

Basically we have VoIP phone lines. We have menus for people to hit. When we are at lunch or the office is closed, we have a closed message and say leave a message and the office will get back to you the next business time we are open (for lunch it is 1 pm , for closed it is next business day)...you get the gist...

there is an option that says if this is an urgent or emergent matter only you can hit option 4. Then option four basically repeats that you should only use this option for urgent/emergent matters only and then you can call Dr. Mody on his cell phone at XXx-XXX-XXXX. The number we list is not directly my cell phone but a google voice number that we forward to my cell phone. There is a google voice app downloaded on my phone.

The nice thing about this is that i can get a call and know it is a patient. i can let it go to voicemail and read it on google voice (though transcription sucks) or listen to it and decide if i want to call back...if i pick up i know to answer it "ESMI , dr mody speaking"...if they start talking about med refill or hey i am having issues with PT script and all that i tell them to call back during work hours...sometimes for new patients i will listen to the story (as i need more patients!!) and then tell them when to come in and have them email me demographics for the girls to put in the system.

again i don't know if i would want to deal with 400 a year afterhours directly...i end up just dealing with maybe about a 100 calls a year on nights and weekends..

Several folks have mentioned Google Voice. I've thought along those lines, but is it HIPAA compliant?

Free services are rarely HIPAA compliant. You need that BAA for a service like google voice. Also those transcriptions are "researched" to make their transcription more accurate.


You can also program phone systems to dial an outside number or a lot of VoIP systems have an app that will let you receive and dial out calls using the office number instead of giving people your straight cell number.

Google Voice has TERRIBLE transcription

We have a two-man internal medicine practice. We just have an answering machine at the office after hours that gives the patients our cell phone numbers to call if they need us. We take our own calls during the week, and one of us covers the weekends. We have found that we get fewer after-hour calls this way, which I think is because the patient is now calling our phone directly instead of getting a third-party (answering service), and some of them think twice about doing that. We also have many patients text us on our cells after hours. Total cost: nada. We were paying $80 a piece for answering service ($960 each)before we started doing this 4 years ago.

I am going to take flak about this. I never care about HIPAA. I care about patient compatibility. I don't think texting is HIPAA compliant. I got a patient down to the Mass Eye and Ear, which had an innominate artery compression of the trachea by 8 am the next morning from 6 pm the night before using only text due to the surgeon being in a meeting. HIPAA compliant, no? Great patient care? Yes.