Medical Call Centers

2008-09-01 13:32:30

( Pharmeceutical-Medical )



Alliance Between Medical Practitioners and Call Centers

In the past, medical practitioners and hospitals maintained their own in-house crew to handle calls from patients during off-hours regarding requests for urgent care advice, prescription requests or other matters.

With the recent advances in technology, many hospitals and doctors have outsourced the call handling function to medical call centers in order to cut on operating costs and to be able to provide more efficient and timely assistance to their patients. Each medical call center may serve one or more hospital or doctor networks, and also health insurance providers.

Just like other call centers, medical call centers can automatically direct the calls to the proper party who will be qualified to respond to the concerns. Medical call centers have the capacity to handle huge volumes of inbound or outbound calls, or even both. And with call center recording capability, the call can be monitored anytime for quality control purposes.

Services Offered by Medical Call Centers

You can get basic medical information by dialing the call center's phone number. An automatic voice response comes on and prompts you to choose the type of information you need from a menu. There may be further sub-menus until you find the information you need. All the information is prerecorded and chances are, you will not need to speak to any live call center staff. However, if you're not satisfied with the information, you can press another button to get a live person to handle your call.

If you need urgent advice about a medical problem, you can also press a designated number to speak directly with a triage nurse. Depending on the nature of your medical problem, the triage nurse may advise you to go to the hospital or may refer your case to a doctor.

With their tie-ups to specific hospitals and doctors, medical call centers can also schedule appointments for you with your own physician. They can also recommend specific doctors based on the area of specialization and your preferred location.

Medical call centers may also answer calls from patients about billing concerns on behalf of the health insurance providers, doctors and hospitals they serve. The patient does not have to wait for office hours to make such inquiries.

Medical call centers may also make outbound calls to conduct clinical surveys or to provide feedback to either patient or doctor.

Getting the Most from Medical Call Centers

Before calling a medical call center, have your health insurance card and some paper and writing instrument at hand. Listen carefully for the menu prompts and follow directions. If the menus don't cover what you need, press the button for the operator so that your call may be redirected to the correct party.

Be very specific about the information you give to the agent so that you can receive immediate response and attention. In an emergency, remain as calm as possible while you explain your situation.


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