New Trends In The Health Care Specialty Of Answering Services-

While many of the larger answering service companies have a diverse group of corporate clients, from plumbers, to doctors, to property management, some companies have one specialty, health care. Health care or doctors answering service can be anything from the answering service business up the road, to a huge call center hundreds or thousands of miles away.

The advantage of these call centers is they can be staffed by doctors and nurses, or else technically trained operators who can answer the customers medical questions, and have the local doctors information available readily on their computer screen. Over the recent period, there has been a shift in the business to get a higher quality mix of information to patients. Patients are getting health information on-line, and ordering their prescriptions on-line. Most doctors are now going on-line every day. This ability to use the internet for communications is affecting the Answering Service business in a number of ways. First of all, the TSR (Telephone Service Operator) can readily access the doctors office from anywhere on the planet and send relevant e-mails about call center calls that will be read at least by nurses in the doctors office.

If there is anything the nurse judges to be immediately urgent, the doctor can be quickly consulted, and be able to e-mail the call center rapidly. The TSRs only deal with medical calls all day and develop the compassion and clarity necessary to deal with life and death matters, or more routine matters. With the Physician Answering Service there is also interaction and consultation between the patient and doctor that can literally supplement and in some cases replace visits to the doctor. You can discuss symptoms and treatment on-line or on the telephone. With the new computer camera technology, patients can talk to and see the doctor and vice versa. This audio-visual communication can not be done all the time, but its possible, its available. You have the ability to have a virtual medical appointment. The three steps are: to have an initial clinical review, have a licensed health professional (usually nurses) conducts a summary of a patient condition. Next there is a peer clinical review. A doctor at the call center, or the patients live doctor can make a medical opinion. Finally, the patient agrees upon the treatment advised by the physician. They can now communicate to each other through the Internet. Obviously, a follow-up in person consultation should be arranged to. Such virtual appointments are an additional help.