Author Archive
Employee Spotlight: Kay Mornes
Posted by: | Comments
Cosmopolitan Medical is pleased to recognize Kay Mornes for her achievements within the organization over the last eight years. When Kay first started with our organization, she had never worked in the healthcare or call center industry. Kay, however, had amazing determination during her training, and worked diligently to perform her best work. A truly loyal employee, Kay maintained perfect attendance with Cosmopolitan Medical for over eight years before retiring in August 2009. We were sad to see Kay leave, but knew she wanted to spend more time with her family. When Kay called us in December 2009 and asked us if she could come back to work part time, we were delighted to welcome her back to the team. For almost nine years now, Kay has continued to maintain perfect attendance, a perfect 100% quality assurance score, and nearly flawless work. Kay is frequently recognized by callers for providing outstanding service, and has received multiple client compliments on a monthly basis. We are so pleased to have Kay as a part of the team, and hope she will continue her position with Cosmopolitan Medical until she makes a decision to retire, again.
A Word from Kay:
I have been employed by Cosmopolitan Medical as a medical Team Member. I was hired in April of 2002 and retired in August 2009. Then, in December 2009, I applied for a part time weekend position and was graciously allowed to return. I moved to Arizona from Western Pennsylvania after my husband passed away to be with my only daughter Diana. I had never worked in the medical operations field before; however, with excellent training, I found this opportunity to be the best fit for me in Arizona. I thoroughly enjoy my day to day duties. I have been offered promotional positions, however I truly enjoy assisting callers on the phone and helping them with whatever problem they may need solved or solution they may be seeking. It has been rewarding, knowing I am helping others by providing this service. Cosmopolitan Medical’s incentive programs are awesome! Through different incentives available, I was afforded the opportunity to take my four year old granddaughter Samantha to Disneyland – not once, but twice! Since December 2009, I now spend my time with family during the week, and work part time on the weekends. Thank you to Margo Weiss and the Cosmopolitan Medical Team for acknowledging me, and for truly being the best.
This Summer Brings New Growth for Cosmopolitan Medical!
Posted by: | CommentsDespite a slow economy and low job ratings in the state of Arizona, Cosmopolitan Medical is continuing a natural growth and is expecting a large expansion over the next few months. This includes adding team members to handle the influx of business. This means Cosmopolitan Medical is hiring! Our plan is to add 20-25 new Team Members, with applications being taken immediately! If you are interested in becoming a member of our team, please feel free to apply online at www.cosmomed.com.
Cosmopolitan Medical: Best Places to Work
Many businesses will tell you they are a great place to work, but we have it in writing. Cosmopolitan Medical has been a recipient of The Phoenix Business Journal’s Best Places to Work several years in a row. In order to win the award, we had to submit our nominations and then we were picked based on employee surveys submitted to Quantum Workplace. Our employees have spoken, they love being a member of our team! As hard as we work, we play equally hard. Our break room has satellite television, Wii gaming consoles, computer with internet access and a Ping Pong table that has been the center of many employee competitions focused around winning the coveted Ping Pong trophy. Cosmopolitan also holds fun company competitions, where winning teams are rewarded with fun evenings at places such as Dave & Busters.
Supplementing a Medical Receptionist with Virtual Reception
Posted by: | CommentsWhen patients call your office, they are hoping to be greeted with a live receptionist rather than an answering machine. It is impersonal and cold to have your medical calls answered with a voicemail or an automated messaging system, and if patients are shuffled around, pushing button after button, only to reach a voicemail, they may become frustrated and you will lose a call. Connecting them with a live voice, patients feel confident that someone is listening and cares about what they have to say, even if they don’t receive an immediate answer to their question. is becoming easier and more beneficial for doctor’s offices to outsource virtual reception duties.
The Busy Medical Receptionist
It is not realistic for one receptionist to efficiently handle all in-house calls from new and existing patients, twenty-four hours a day whilemanaging all other responsibilites including greeting and asisting patients and any other work she needs to attend to throughout the day. Hiring an answering service like Cosmopolitan Medical for virtual reception to handle overflow calls during the day will free up your on-staff receptionist to happily assist patients in the office without the stress of a ringing phone in the background.
Around the Clock Care
Cosmopolitan Medical can also manage your scheduling software and schedule appointments for your patients. A service like this is vital to a medical practice in order to make patients feel they are not being neglected and their calls are top priority. Your patients would also be able to contact Cosmopolitan Medical 24 hours a day to schedule their appointments, allowing them the flexibility of calling on their time, instead of having to figure out how to call during regular business hours. Imagine the increased revenues from advertising to your clients they can schedule 24 hours a day! No longer will patients have to cancel appointments because they couldn’t get through to reschedule their appointment. At Cosmopolitan, we have been able to assist clients in reducing their no show rate by being available to meet the scheduling needs of your patients 24 hours a day.
HIPAA Compliance and the Home-Based Agent
Posted by: | CommentsLast month we discussed the importance of choosing a Medical Answering Service that is HIPAA compliant to protect your customers, as well as your medical practice. This month we’d like to expand on the importance of not only selecting an answering service that is HIPAA compliant, but to select an answering service that only employs in-house agents or team members.
How Secure is a Home Office
In order to comply with the HIPAA law, all patient information must be secure and regulated by a strict guideline that is enforced by a HIPAA Security Officer on staff with any business that is medically related or deals with the medical field in any way. This includes an outsourced answering service for any medical office. In recent years, it has become a trend for answering services to have home-based agents. It’s more cost effective and they can easily find employees with flexible hours. However, it is not secure. Utilizing home-based agents would make it impossible to comply with HIPAA and guarantee that data and patient information is truly protected.
Guaranteeing Protection for You
Cosmopolitan Medical’s Team Members are all in-house and trained profusely in HIPAA policies and procedures to guarantee protection for you and your patients. Our computer systems are guarded and monitored with the top anti-virus software to protect from information being hacked and stolen. All employees are provided with a locker to leave personal effects such as cell phones, purses, and cameras; these items are not permitted where your phone lines are answered. Cosmopolitan Medical also has a certified HIPAA Security Officer that enforces all policies and will identify and take the proper steps to correct any breaches in the system in the quickest possible manner. You will not find these precautions taken when outsourcing to a home-based answering service.
Happy Anniversary Cosmopolitan Medical Communications!
Posted by: | CommentsJuly 1, 2010 will mark Cosmopolitan Medical’s 34th anniversary and we are celebrating with expansion and looking toward the future with new technologies while preserving the values that Cosmopolitan was established upon. Cosmopolitan Medical was founded on July 1st, 1976 by Margo Daley-Soll when she suddenly became widowed and had to support and raise ten children on her own. Margo, a doctor’s wife, noticed a need for a medical call centers that focused on maintaining positive human interaction while serving doctors, their staff and their patients. Our company has been operating under the same management ever since, and continues to focus on quality service for our clients and an enjoyable workplace for our employees.
34 Years of Quality Service for our Clients
As you read last month, Cosmopolitan Medical Communications won the ATSI Award for Excellence for our fourth year in a row. Not only did we achieve this award, but we also ranked number one nationally. Our anniversary will mark 34 years of our daily pledge to provide doctors, hospitals and private practices like you with the best service possible. Our team members are continually learning new technologies and policies to improve our dedication to you, including HIPAA guidelines all the way down to a new keyboard that allows for us to serve your patients in an even timelier fashion.
34 Years of Caring for Our Employees
Cosmopolitan Medical believes that taking care of those who work for us will provide better service for our customers. Happy employees creates a happy work environment, which will resonate in the quality of phone service we provide you and your patients. Cosmopolitan Medical holds quarterly team competitions, as you saw mentioned in an earlier blog post. The same team that won last quarter’s competition also won the first quarter competition of 2010. They were awarded a BBQ and pool party at the home of Michelle Weiss, Director of Business Marketing. The team was able to choose what they wanted to do, and they felt it would be fun to just be together on a friendly basis, celebrating their victory.
Then to celebrate our top ranking for ATSI, Cosmopolitan Medical awarded the hard working team members by placing a new Wii Gaming System with multiple games in the employee lounge/break room, which also contains a ping pong table and air hockey table, employee computers and other items for relaxing on break. The Wii was brought in on June 25th
The Importance of a HIPAA Compliant Medical Answering Service
Posted by: | CommentsAs you are probably already aware, in February 2010, several amendments to the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules within the HITECH Act created new requirements and restrictions to healthcare organizations and their business associates. Failing to comply with these requirements can bring forth monetary penalties of up to $1.5 million annually and criminal penalties for individuals or employees of covered entities or business associates.
What does this mean for Cosmopolitan Medical?
As a fully HIPAA-compliant medical answering service, as soon as the new regulations were put into effect, Cosmopolitan Medical Communications took all measures to ensure our organization was compliant and our team members were properly trained. We took the steps to implement appropriate HIPAA written policies and procedures that comply with the Business Associate provisions of the privacy rule. Our organization has an appointed HIPAA Security Officer on staff that enforces a system to identify any breaches, implement a complaint system and develop a sanctions policy. Cosmopolitan Medical wants our clients to feel at ease knowing that your patient calls are being properly handled by our team members.
What does this mean for Healthcare Organizations?
Your patients want to know that their information is secure and private, so when handing over any private information to a third party entity such as a call center, it is important for you as a healthcare provider to ensure that all members of the organization are well trained in HIPAA policies and procedures. Even though Business Associates are now required by law and held accountable for HIPAA compliance, any violations can end up penalizing you as a healthcare provider as well. By confirming that the people and organizations you outsource to are compliant, you are one-step ahead in keeping your patients information secure. Please know that you should always be able to ask your answering service for verification of their privacy guidelines and their training procedures. Cosmopolitan Medical is always happy to provide this information.
Service Spotlight: Virtual Reception
Posted by: | CommentsIn continuing our monthly service spotlights, this month we will focus on the benefits of Virtual Reception for medical practices and healthcare organizations.
Virtual Reception: The Breakdown
In short, Virtual Reception is a service that allows doctor offices and other healthcare organizations to redirect any patient calls to a remote receptionist or an answering service. More and more, the healthcare industry is realizing that it is important to maintain a personal touch when dealing with patients, which means not allowing calls to go to an electronic system. It also means not letting the phone ring over and over again or to allow long hold times. Utilizing a Virtual Reception service from Cosmopolitan Medical will ensure that the phone call is answered within three rings and hold times are mere seconds as opposed to minutes on end. In addition, team members at Cosmopolitan Medical will answer the call with greetings specific to your requirements and also take messages and forward calls to the appropriate person within your practice.
What does this do for me?
Using a virtual reception service can reduce the cost of hiring and training additional staff, but still maintains the personal touch of speaking with a live person. Cosmopolitan Medical Communication’s Virtual Reception service can either handle calls when your office’s own line becomes too busy or we can be the first point of contact for your patients. Our virtual reception service will give your patients the best first impression of your practice while saving you on overhead and provide better call handling. Cosmopolitan Medical is confident in the quality and care of our Virtual Reception service, we are certain you will not be disappointed.
Employee Spotlight: Joanna Luna
Posted by: | Comments
We are very excited to introduce a new monthly segment to our blog spotlighting some of our exceptional team members. Cosmopolitan Medical Inc feels that our team member’s hard work and dedication is what makes us an industry leader, so we would like to honor our finest and also let you get to know the faces behind the phone line. This month we are spotlighting Joanna Luna.
We have been privileged to have Joanna on our Cosmopolitan Medical team for three years and recently she was promoted from a Team Manager role to an Account Manager role. She has joined our existing team of Account Managers and is responsible for being a single point of contact for all aspects of accounts including updates and informational changes, billing questions, or any other questions or discussion our clients need to have. Joanna is the cheerful voice our clients hear on the other end of the line when they call in on their account.
A Word From Joanna
I have had the pleasure of working at Cosmopolitan Medical for the last three years. During the past couple of years, I was fortunate to grow within the company. I started as a Team Member answering incoming calls on the Operations Floor and have transitioned to an Assistant Team Manager, then to a Team Manager, and now I am the newest addition to the Customer Service Department. In the Customer Service Department, we are assigned a group of accounts and we are responsible for managing all aspects of the account from managing on call schedules, following up on Team Member questions regarding the account, keeping account information update, answering client questions, and checking in with our clients on regular basis to ensure they are still happy with service, and to see if there is anything we can do to be of further assistance for our clients. I enjoy working for Cosmopolitan Medical because of the company culture, positive attitudes, friendliness, and the many opportunities to grow. When I’m not at work assisting clients or answering calls, I like to spend time at home with my family. I have a three year old son named Hayden Jeremiah who consumes the majority of my time. We recently moved into our first home in Avondale, so when I’m not busy unpacking, I enjoy watching movies, shopping, watching sports, spending time with friends or simply going out for a drive. I thank Cosmopolitan Medical for all that I have been fortunate enough to experience.
Four Years Running: ATSI Award of Excellence Winner
Posted by: | CommentsIn May 2010, Cosmopolitan Medical Communications was thrilled to be ranked NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONALLY for the 2010 ATSI Award of Excellence. We achieved the top score among all participating answering services / call centers around the globe. This is our fourth consecutive year winning this award, and we are very proud to be recipients. The award was presented to us on May 14, 2010 at the annual ATSI Convention in San Diego, CA.
What is the ATSI Award of Excellence?
The ATSI Award of Excellence is a measure of quality customer service provided by call centers and answering services around the world. As the leading industry association for answering services, ATSI has established a set of guidelines for call centers and answering services to demonstrate their level of customer service. “Mystery calls” are placed by a third party company throughout the year to participating call centers, and can be received at any time, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The “mystery calls” are scored in several categories including, but not limited to, hold time, correct use of grammar, manners, verification of information given by the caller, and operator knowledge and confidence.
Excellence equates to GROWTH at Cosmopolitan Medical!
Since our goal is to ensure a positive experience for every caller, every time and to make sure each call is properly managed, it was time for Cosmopolitan Medical to grow. We are very excited to bring on 10 new employees in May in order to continue to expand and train high-quality team members to guarantee our callers are always receiving the highest level of care.