Archive for Medical Answering Service
Support System
Posted by: | CommentsWe have written a few blog posts about making and maintaining resolutions, and how without an active support system, it can be difficult to follow through to the finish line. What makes an active support system? There are two people who are crucial – you and your patient. The most important way your patient can stay healthy is to be involved as an active member of their own health care team! Patients who have good relationships with their doctors tend to be more satisfied with their care—and have better results.
As the medical provider, it’s crucial to provide support to your patient as they’re about to embark on a long journey. Cosmopolitan has created a few ways to show your support:
● Provide plenty of information
● Create an open environment and allow for questions
● Follow up with patients who need it
Cosmopolitan Can Help!
If you’re finding that your schedule is filling up with follow-up appointments or your phones are overflowing with patient concerns, let Cosmopolitan help! We offer you complete “after hours” medical office solutions, which allow for professional, accurate and timely communications. Cosmopolitan offers everything you need to keep your operation running smoothly. In addition to be a medical answering service, Cosmopolitan offers on-call schedule management for physician practices, health plans and hospitals, virtual reception, appointment scheduling, and appointment reminders. We’re here for you during or after office hours.
Contact us today to start your custom quote!
Help Patients Maintain Resolutions
Posted by: | CommentsDid you catch our recent blog post, “Setting Realistic Goals”? Once you’ve made your resolution, now comes the difficult part – maintaining it. If you’ve prepared yourself for reaching your goal both mentally and physically, then it can be an easy journey. However, we know there are probably a good a good amount of people who still have a hard time sticking to their guns. It’s happened to the majority of us at one time or another!
As a doctor and/or medical advisor, it’s important you provide each patient with words of advice. They need to know that even though they have a hard habit to break or a difficult goal to reach, it can be done. Here are some tips that Cosmopolitan has come up with to help maintain goals:
● Analyze each step and allow for setbacks
● Take small steps to reach your goal
● Give each goal a meaning
● Don’t keep them to yourself, have a support system
How Cosmopolitan Can Help
We know how important your patients are, which is why we offer a wide variety of custom services to keep your practice running smoothly both day and night. With our medical messaging, we offer complete “after hours” medical office solutions. If you and/or your in-office staff are not available, Cosmopolitan Medical Communications will proudly work as a professional extension to your office! Your patients will receive sincere, quality service at all hours of the day.
Call us today for a custom quote! 1-800-913-1337
Keeping Your Staff on Track During the Holidays
Posted by: | CommentsThe end of the year can be a busy and chaotic time for your staff and bringing in the New Year can be just as stressful! People leave for vacations, take time off to be with family, and can fall victim to illness; whatever the case may be, it’s important to keep you and your staff’s heads in the game. Until your office is officially on holiday, business is to be run as normal. Your phone calls need to be answered in a timely manner, patients’ needs should be put first and paperwork should be handled immediately. No one likes coming back from vacation to a desk full of files!
How Cosmopolitan Can Help!
From medical answering services to appointment scheduling and appointment reminders, we offer everything you need to keep your operation running smoothly during these busy times. Our operations are entirely based in The United States and are fully HIPAA-compliant. Cosmopolitan Medical can also help with the overflow calls that come in during your busiest times of day. We can answer patient questions about practice information, set up appointments, and provide any other receptionist services you might need. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as your back up support. We promise to keep your patients feeling happy and healthy and your office staff stress-free.
Using Cosmopolitan Medical as your medical answering service, your patients will receive the highest quality of service, making for happy customers and repeat visits. We measure our success by the success of our clients, so call us today and let us show you how we can help you.
Roles of the Front Desk – How Cosmopolitan Assists
Posted by: | CommentsImagine yourself in the front desk of your doctors’ office. The phone lines are ringing off the hook, you have piles of paperwork needing to be filled out and filed, and there is a long list of appointment reminders needing to be made. You need to schedule and reschedule appointments over the phone, and you have a line of patients ready to check-out. Calm down and think for a second. What do you do?
Cosmo can help! We are a HIPAA compliant business and train our team for weeks before they begin taking calls. We provide training in 63 different skill sets ranging in complexity to ensure our team and account managers are fully prepared to handle all accounts. With our devoted team and excellent customer service, your patients will always feel taken care of and comfortable.
Cosmopolitan is here as your business partner, offering everything you need to keep things under control. From medical answering service, on-call schedule management for physician practices, health plans and hospitals, virtual reception, appointment scheduling, and appointment reminders (live or automated), we’re here for you during or after office hours.
Call us today!
Minimizing Costly No-Show and Late Appointments
Posted by: | CommentsDon’t you hate it when friends or colleagues cancel an important meeting or lunch? It’s even worse when they don’t even show up because it signals a disregard for our time. This scenario plays out regularly in the medical industry in the form of no shows. We want to help you minimize the chaos and revenue loss from late patients and those who forget their appointments. Below you will find some info on our appointment reminder service. It is entirely automated, meaning no additional work for you, and patients are much more likely to show up on time. Minimize the loss of productivity and cash flow from late appointments and no-shows!
Step 1 – It takes seconds to upload your patient file using our secure, 100% HIPAA compliant website.
Step 2 – Following your personalized script, CosmoMinder contacts your patient list. This is not just a simple appointment reminder – in addition to cancel or confirm, with the press of a button CosmoMinder gives your patients the option to speak immediately to a live person.
Step 3 – View your results. Immediately after calling your patients, CosmoMinder emails you with the results; detailing the outcome of each call.
Here at Cosmopolitan, we don’t want you worrying about the little things that could potentially have a big impact. We help by extending our 24-hour services to you. We offer appointment scheduling, automated appointment reminders, and with our friendly and efficient customer service, your patients will always feel prepared, appreciated and comfortable.
Have questions? Contact us today! 1-800-913-1337
Halloween Safety
Posted by: | CommentsHalloween is just around the corner, can you believe it? Social gatherings with large groups, creative costumes, and an endless supply of sweet treats are the highlight of this holiday, so safety precautions are important!
Courtesy of CDC Family Health –
- Swords, knives, and similar costume accessories should be short, soft, and flexible.
- Avoid trick-or-treating alone. Walk in groups or with a trusted adult.
- Fasten reflective tape to costumes and bags to help drivers see you.
- Examine all treats for choking hazards and tampering before eating them. Limit the amount of treats you eat.
- Always test make-up in a small area first. Remove it before bedtime to prevent skin and eye irritation.
- Look both ways before crossing the street. Use established crosswalks wherever possible.
- Wear well-fitting masks, costumes, and shoes to avoid blocked vision, trips, and falls.
- Eat only factory-wrapped treats. Avoid eating homemade treats unless you know the cook well.
- Enter homes only if you’re with a trusted adult. Otherwise, stay outside.
- Never walk near lit candles or luminaries. Be sure to wear flame-resistant costumes.
Cosmopolitan is a 24-hour answering service and available to Physician’s and their patients 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This includes Holidays! However let’s not crowd the waiting rooms on Halloween, stay safe out there.
Have safety tips of your own? We’d love to hear them! Leave a comment or drop by our Facebook page to share your ideas!
Your call REALLY is important to us!
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Is anyone STILL reading this?
I like to read the news and I like when they feature obscure studies about how much time you have spent on various activities in your life. Did you know that by the time you are aged 50 years you have slept 6000 days, worked 6500 days, walked 800 days, and sick for 500 days? You may have also spent 69 days brushing your teeth and up to six weeks tying your shoes, unless you wear Velcro, of course.
What I would like to know is how much time I have spent listening to contemporary jazz, recorded advertisements, and periodic affirmations of how important my call is while I wait for the notorious “next available representative”. Hours, days, years? In old age, will I look back on my life and wonder what remarkable things I could have accomplished if I was never on hold?
As a consumer, I try to simply take my business elsewhere, but unfortunately the hold has become the new norm. It’s like a rite of passage or initiation that must be suffered for the privilege of speaking to someone who (hopefully) can help you. These days, an office without extensive hold times can be few and far between. Yet, I make it a point to find one, and when I do they get my business.
Just a couple of months ago I woke up one morning to terrible heel pain; plantar fasciitis. I Googled podiatry for Phoenix and started calling the list. I called at least 8 podiatry offices hoping that someone could get me in that week. I should have lowered my hopes to simply finding an office that would answer the phone. Half of the offices immediately put and kept me on hold for at least five minutes before I hung up and moved on. The other half didn’t even answer the phone at all; no recording, no music – nothing but ringing. I couldn’t believe it! I finally reached an office that answered and four appointments later my unlucky foot is feeling much better.
I don’t think I am being unreasonable or pretentious to feel that my four copays, plus whatever they billed my insurance for the visits, ultrasound, and cortisone shots would have covered the cost of another employee to answer the phone; or better yet, an answering service. I realize that these are tight times but these offices are stepping over dollars to pick up dimes.
So who is to blame and what do we do? Simply put, this is collectively our fault. Every time we have settled for apathetic service we have condoned and allowed it to propagate. Here are some solutions: Consumers, we need to stop settling for less and start supporting the office that values its patients. Office Managers, evaluate your level of service. Consider your office’s hold times and abandon numbers. Those abandons are lost patients, lost consultations, and lost revenue. Find ways to streamline your processes so calls are less lengthy and your staff more efficient. Lastly, if you need help, get it. An answering service is a great solution; just ask our offices’ patients.
Disaster Recovery Checklist – A Must Have for Every Medical Practice
Posted by: | CommentsWith everything that’s happening in the mid-west, we can’t stress to you enough how important it is for your business to have a Disaster Recovery plan. For example, the hospital in Joplin, MO being torn down is a heart wrenching story, and we can only hope they are taken care of with a substantial plan! Just in case you were overwhelmed with all the great information we provided about having a Disaster Recovery Plan, we’ll jog your memory with a quick recap of our previously written blog .
A Quick Checklist
Here are a few important steps in developing your plan:
- Develop a plan – identify your risks, prioritize business functions, establish recovery locations for back-up systems, records and supplies.
- Backup Site – Equip your backup operations site with critical equipment, data files and supplies (computers, phones, TV’s, cameras…)
- Contact Information – Employees, key customers, vendors, business partners…
- Communications – Having access to multiple and reliable methods of communicating with your employees and patients!
Tips Courtesy of Continuity Central
How Can Cosmopolitan Medical Help?
With proper preparation, Cosmopolitan Medical Communications can seamlessly take over your calls during a time of need, such as a disaster like flood damage or a tornado. We can also help set you up with backup servers that will store your information, data and records so that when your offices are back up and running, your files will be safe and sound. We guarantee HIPAA compliancy and the highest quality of service at all times. Call us today and let us show you how we can help!
Medical Call Centers and Changing HealthCare for the Better
Posted by: | CommentsThe news is full of debates about the financial crisis in the United States. Government shutdowns have been threatened, programs are at risk for being cut, and one of the biggest issues, healthcare, cannot be decided on. Decisions being made are affecting people – not only the average individual, regardless of whether or not they carry insurance – but also medical providers. Physicians, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals are surely feeling the pinch with Medicaid in jeopardy and FSA’s (Flexible Spending Accounts) having new limitations and other potential heath care cuts. With less insurance money coming in, medical practices are looking to cut costs.
But will cutting costs also cut quality care?
Typically when costs need to be cut, staff members are the first to feel it. If they are not let go, then they are feeling the pressure of taking on the additional work from those who have been let go. Phones ring in to machines, patients feel hurried through a phone call when it is answered, and patients in the office can often feel the stress of the environment around them. Unneeded stress is the United States’ number one health problem; shouldn’t you be trying to eliminate stress from your office?
Utilizing a medical call center to outsource some, or even all, of your phone needs is not only cost-effective, but also can assist in smoothing out your day-to-day operations, creating a stress-free environment for your staff and patients.
Depending on your needs, a call center can offer services for handling over-flow calls, after-hour services, or 24-hour phone answering services to support your call volume during, and after, office hours. Cosmopolitan Medical Communications offers all of these services, plus more! We can assist in data entry, automated appointment reminders, billing, post-discharge services; the list can go on. All for the fraction of the cost it would take to bring on staff members to fill these needs.
You can be assured that using Cosmopolitan Medical as your medical call center provider that you and your patients will receive the highest quality of service, making for happy customers and repeat visits. We measure our success by the success of our clients, so call us today and let us show you how we can help you.
Ready or Not…It can Happen to Anyone!
Posted by: | CommentsAsk any IT company and they will tell you that they have a full disaster recovery plan in place to back up data and keep their storage safe. It makes sense right? There is a lot of information within those tiny little machines that everyone is so connected to these days. However, have you ever thought about how important it is to have a disaster recovery plan in place for your medical facility?
Most doctors’ offices have rooms filled to the brim with files of patient information, but what happens if your office is flooded or damaged in a tornado? Can you rebuild with all that lost information?
Disasters may not be as large as a hurricane or tornado; it can be something as simple as a power outage or down phone lines. Whatever the case may be, you need to be prepared for these misfortunes to last a long time, as they sometimes do.
A good friend of mine is a funeral home manager in Phoenix, and once told me that their phone lines were out for three days straight. They typically have an after-hours service, but that staff is only able to handle evening phone calls. It was a struggle to make sure the lines were answered and the business kept moving forward during those three days, and it made them rethink their back-up plan.
When your phone lines are ringing busy, your patients will feel frustration. No one wants to hear a busy line when they need to talk to a doctor. Therefore, it is very important to arrange a back-up answering service available at a moment’s notice to take over your phone calls in the case of a disaster, no matter how large or how small.
Keeping a medical call center, such as Cosmopolitan Medical Communications, on standby is one key step in creating a disaster recovery plan. Switching over to a call center causes no interruptions in service and your patients will never even know there was a problem. A good medical call center will always be available to take calls when you need them the most.
Contact Cosmopolitan Medical Communications to talk with us about setting up an answering service, and disaster recovery plan, for your practice or hospital. We’re ready to help you out with whatever service best suits your needs, and the needs of your current, and future, patients.