Healthcare phone systems, often referred to as medical call centres or hospital call centres, enable businesses in the healthcare industry—like doctor’s offices, medical clinics and hospitals—to provide better patient experiences. Outsourced healthcare call centres services allow organisations to engage proactively with patients while saving resources and driving growth. Read on to learn about the  key features of VoIP phone system for healthcare and more.

In recent years, the healthcare industry has vastly improved its service capabilities via modern medical call centre solutions. These healthcare contact centres connect patients with medical teams. Medical contact centres leverage healthcare call centre software to support patients from the first inquiry to post-recovery consultations. Here are a few examples of types of healthcare call centre solutions:

• Inbound call centres: These call centres handle incoming calls, such as appointment scheduling and billing inquiries.

• Outbound call centres: These call centres handle outgoing calls, such as patient outreach, feedback and research.

• Blended call centres: These call centres provide inbound and outbound calling services for a mix of customer support capabilities.

• Contact centres: This type of call centre offers web-enabled solutions that allow patients to communicate via voice, video or text.

• Health insurance call centres: These call centres deal with insurance processing and insurance technology. By employing call centre software, many hospitals and medical clinics have been able to streamline processes and focus on what matters—a more seamless patient experience.

The main features of a healthcare phone system are that they offer around-the-clock support and better, more flexible care. Having a healthcare phone system vastly improves patient welfare and establishes trust between the patient and the healthcare provider. Here’s why:

• 24/7 support mitigates risk: In many other sectors, the vast majority of calls are not urgent and can be returned after a waiting period. In the medical field, this is not the case. A phone system mitigates these risks by providing 24/7 service to patients. Even if the call is not an emergency, answering questions about medications or symptoms provides peace of mind and drastically increases overall satisfaction.

• Better patient relationships through improved care: After establishing an optimal call flow, phone systems allow for a range of agents, each dealing with specific issues. Moving customers smoothly from one agent to the next prevents circle calls, phone tag and annoying wait times that drive down satisfaction levels.
  To provide around-the-clock support and nurture patient relationships, your healthcare phone system needs to have the right technology. These nine technologies can help healthcare organisations and hospital phone systems create a better experience for both patients and their agents.

• Call Routing: Direct calls to the correct teammates every time by customising distribution and ring rules.

• Call Monitoring: Accelerate employee training and boost call quality assurance by monitoring live calls.

• Business Hours: Set customised schedules to confirm exactly when each of your numbers is available to receive calls.

• After-Call Work: After a call, give your team the time to tag, assign and prepare for the next conversation.

• Call Analytics: Keep track of all your call centre metrics, such as wait time, missed- call rate and call volume, in one place.

• Call Conferencing: Make it a collaborative conversation using Aircall’s call conferencing feature. Host a total of five people in the same live conference call with Aircall’s VoIP calling solution.

• Call Queuing: Give inbound callers the option to remain in the queue until one of your agents is available to talk.

• Call Recording: Review call recordings to help confirm details, monitor quality and guide training sessions.

• Blocklist Numbers: Eliminate spam callers and bots so you can focus more on the conversations your business cares about. Learn more about call centres with our Call Centre 101 guide or learn how to build a call centre from the ground up with our ultimate setup guide.

There are a handful of best practices to keep in mind for outsourced healthcare call centre services. When it comes time for your healthcare business to partner with a healthcare phone system or call centre service, it’s valuable to choose software that’s familiar with your business needs. The best healthcare call centres:

• Hire the right people: The medical field involves patients who are often experiencing stressful, worrying issues. These patients are likely to interact with your business in a heartfelt, emotional way. By hiring and training the right people, you go a long way to ensure a positive patient experience.

• Communicate with empathy: Make sure your agents are professional, positive, and always looking for ways to provide a superior patient experience.

• Speak to patients in their language: Does your medical centre provide care for a population that speaks more than one language? Make sure you offer patient support in those languages for an inclusive experience. Provide multi-channel support. Make communication easy by offering contact options across email, live chat, text message and more.

• Monitor and analyse metrics: Review key performance indicators like average response time, abandonment rate, average call time, first-call resolution and patient satisfaction to get a full picture of your service. VoIP phone services integrated with end-to-end customer service management apps can help you track calls as they progress through your system.

Read more about how to set up a medical call centre

Aircall improves healthcare call centre efficiency in many ways. We’ll work with you to set up the right strategies and processes to optimise your phone system so you’re able to create a great patient experience. Here are just a few of the ways Aircall improves healthcare phone system efficiency:

• Save time and remove friction: It’s a breeze to set up Aircall. No technical consultants or complex gadgets are required to get started. We’ll make it easy for patients to get in touch with you and streamline your efficiencies. Plus, our software is so easy to use that you’ll reduce training from months to minutes.

• Collaborate more easily: Build IVR menus and smart routing rules to direct callers to the right agent every time. Collaborate on calls through the shared inbox, apply tags or comments and assign follow-ups to specific teammates.

• Enjoy one-click integrations: Connect Aircall with your CRM or Helpdesk to centralise activity and automate call logging. Manage technical aspects without the IT team. Add new numbers, teammates or routing rules on the fly.

• Resources, guides and live support: Aircall’s Knowledge Base is constantly updated with new articles full of advice and resources from the Aircall team. Additionally, we regularly publish curated eBooks, video tutorials, surveys and other resources—all designed to help sales and support teams do their jobs better.

A VoIP phone system such as Aircall is a great choice for GP practices. It enables you to easily direct customer calls with features such as IVR, manage appointments with accessible call notes and communicate with empathy.

Aircall maintains strong privacy and security measures, such as end-to-end data encryption, HIPAA compliance for handling Protected Health Information (PHI) and requirements imposed by regulations such as GDPR.

For more insights into how Aircall will increase the efficiency of your phone system, schedule a demo today.