What Is a Virtual Receptionist for Medical Practices?
By
Jeff Mosler
February 27, 2022
One of the ways doctors improve patient experience is to work with a virtual receptionist for medical practice. Read on to learn the benefits working with one
Running a medical practice is a juggling act. It’s not just providing care to patients, there’s also managing staff, conducting office administration, dealing with insurance providers, and so much more.
Often, these tasks can seemingly get in the way of the most important one—administering top-quality patient care. But if you want your practice to make a positive impact, they are fundamental to its long-term success.
Fortunately, there are now tools that can alleviate many common administrative burdens. In fact, technology has made it possible to create a virtual medical office to ensure you and your patients are taking care of properly.
But what does a virtual receptionist service for medical practices look like? Let’s discuss.
What’s a Virtual Receptionist for Medical Practice?
In the pursuit of providing value-based care, medical practices are increasingly embracing new methodologies to create internal efficiencies and a better patient experience. A 24/7 virtual receptionist service is one such tool that empowers you to maximize every opportunity.
But this isn’t just a virtual receptionist. It’s that and a whole lot more. By implementing virtual receptionist services for your practice, you can benefit from the following services:
Medical call answering service – Instead of having to hire one or several in-house employees to handle phone calls, you could instead have a live virtual receptionist for medical practice available to answer questions and schedule appointments. The medical call answering service is available 24/7/365, so even when the office is closed, the phones still get answered and patients can receive care.
Patient intake – Acquiring all of a patient’s information can be time-consuming. You need to gather their medical history, insurance coverage details, contact information, and so on. With a medical office answering service or live virtual receptionist, you can streamline the patient intake process by gathering all of that information over the phone. This reduces wait times and improves their overall experience when the patient arrives at the practice.
Live text – In some cases a patient doesn’t want to get on the phone and wait to speak to the receptionist or doctor—they just have a question and would prefer an immediate answer. Live text allows for convenient real-time text messaging between the patient and the medical virtual receptionist. If they have an issue, a response is just a brief message away. This tool can also be leveraged to convert digital traffic into patients.
Multilingual reception – If you operate in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida or Texas, there’s a strong likelihood that a significant percentage of patients will be Spanish-speaking. Having a multilingual receptionist gives Spanish-speaking patients the option to have a conversation in the language they’re most comfortable speaking.
Appointment scheduling – Receiving calls and then scheduling appointments is a service that doesn’t need to be done in-house. By outsourcing this task, you can free administrative staff to instead focus on billing, interfacing with insurance providers, or assisting patients that are present—jobs that actually require their expertise. These tasks can also be performed outside of normal office hours.
HIPAA compliant services – A medical service or healthcare provider must be careful about protecting a patient’s private medical records. The right virtual receptionist for medical practices will train staff to follow these best-practices and only use technology that adheres HIPAA compliance requirements.
Virtual Receptionist and Patient Centricity
Medical practices are increasingly focusing on embracing a value-based care model. As opposed to a fee-for-service reimbursement model, this newer approach rewards providers for the quality of the care they provide. This means putting the patient in the center of their care. According to RevCycle Intelligence:
“In more basic terms, value-based care models center on patient outcomes and how well healthcare providers can improve quality of care based on specific measures, such as reducing hospital readmissions, using certified health IT, and improving preventative care.”
Having a virtual receptionist is just one of many ways you can instill patient centricity in your medical practice. All of the services provided benefit the patient and improve the quality of care in several ways:
When there’s not a backlog of appointments due to inefficient scheduling, medical providers can spend more time focusing on providing care.
Clients can get access to care or have questions answered immediately. This high level of customer care and service results in better patient satisfaction scores.
Reducing the administrative workload frees up other staff to devote their time to providing the best in-person care possible.
Nexa—Your Virtual Medical Office
A virtual receptionist is an important tool innovative medical practices can leverage to create internal efficiencies, drive revenues, and provide even better patient care. But it’s vital that they only work with the right partner—one that is HIPAA compliant and experienced within the world of care provision.
Enter Nexa. We offer a medical answering service that is available around the clock for both you and your patients. We have an extensive history of working with leading medical practices across the country, and we’re ready to get to work for you too!
Want to improve the patient and provider experience?
Then Nexa is your solution. To learn more, you can get started today!
Nexa Receptionists Holdings, LLC (“Nexa”) welcomes Pravin Chandrasoma as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for its two brands: Nexa and Alert Communications.
