The healthcare industry requires different products and features that focus on patients. You might be asking yourself, “Aren’t patients the same as customers?” In some ways, yes, but they’re very different at their core. Customers are filled with wants, whereas patients have needs. The need for medical care isn’t wrapped around keeping up with the Joneses but around health, which has different communication needs. A healthcare phone system brings those specific patient needs front and center.
Can you imagine an enhanced communication platform that caters to medical professionals? There’s no need to guess; it’s here with PatienTel.
What is a Healthcare Phone System?
A healthcare phone system is all about the patient and providing the most sophisticated technology to meet their needs. According to Salesforce, 80 percent of customers now consider the experience a company offers to be as important as its products and services. Integral features within a medical phone system include:
- Secure text messaging: Utilize secure SMS for patient communication and appointment reminders, providing a seamless patient experience.
- Compliant video chat: You can offer secure telehealth appointments for convenient patient care while also meeting HIPAA compliance.
- Advanced call routing: Patients are quickly directed to the appropriate healthcare professional for accessible and responsive communication.
The pandemic put phone systems for private physicians under a microscope, and inadequacies quickly became evident. The need for a healthcare-specific platform became a high priority and a need that PatienTel was built to fill.
Benefits of a Healthcare Phone System
The healthcare industry has a balance to strike between security and communication. Health data is fiercely regulated, which is on one side of the healthcare pendulum, and on the other, you have the emotional needs of individuals going through health crises. For example, those in need of nursing home phone systems where, at any moment, a loved one is waiting on news on their patient who needs more support.
PatienTel has managed to expertly combine communications regulatory concerns with empathetic technology solutions.
Increase Productivity
You can always expect a steady stream of phone calls when working in healthcare. A medical phone system provides call routing capabilities, allowing your employees more dedicated time helping patients.
| Auto attendant | Voice and touch-activated menus |
| Auto dialer | Skills-based routing |
| Intelligent routing |
The goal is to blend automation that makes it easier on patients and increases employee focus. According to Next Work Innovation, employees are interrupted 15 times per hour or every four minutes. To refocus on their work again, a person needs 15 to 24 percent more time each instance than they would normally spend on a task, depending on complexity.
Improve Patient Experience
No two patients are alike, and how they experience your office should align. For instance, in dental office communication, secure texting may be the preferred method of communication for patients. Without a tooth emergency, the texting platform can handle appointment reminders and verification.
In contrast, a nursing home phone system will be heavily involved in the intelligent routing of calls, voicemail-to-email usage, and more direct communication needs since the services provided may be more immediately critical.
Better Healthcare Administration
Time is precious, especially in healthcare, so implementing ways to streamline workflows is incredibly important. With an advanced healthcare phone system, you combine voice, text, video, messaging, and faxing into one system for the most efficient healthcare administration.
In addition, you can take it a step further and integrate it with your CRM and other productivity apps to reduce the need to jump around applications. A joint study between Qatalog and Cornell University found that people spend 59 minutes looking for information trapped within tools and applications on a typical day.
Analytics and Reporting
The power of taking call center features and focusing them on the patient experience is a move in the right direction. You can make strategic staffing decisions based on call volume and patient data with analytics and reporting. For example, a phone system for private physicians could focus their reporting on patient interactions. Every 30 days, run reports to analyze patient behavior. Certain patients requiring more personalized communication can be placed into intelligent routing and directed to a specific employee for better care.
There’s no one-size-fits-all with a healthcare phone system, and that’s great. The purpose is to provide many options and available use cases and tailor them to your medical office needs.
Reap the Benefits of a Dedicated Healthcare Phone System from PatienTel
The best care comes from an entire practice working together for their patients. It might not be top-of-mind that a phone system is critical to patient care, but it’s usually the first avenue any patients have with your medical office. That initial contact can set the tone for the rest of the interactions.
PatienTel is the brainchild of the experienced leaders from Magic Apple. Is PatienTel new? No, it’s not. We’ve been focusing on healthcare for years but decided it needed its own spotlight. We’re beyond excited to take our philosophy, “The Magic Apple Difference,” and positively impact the healthcare industry on a broader level. Contact us today, and let’s elevate patient care together.
