How to Reduce Missed Calls with an Effective Answering Service

Background

Women’s Health Associates is a fully women-owned OB-GYN clinic providing obstetrics and gynecological care to the Lubbock community. The private practice prides itself on serving medically complex women’s health cases and receives referrals for patients with unresolved medical challenges.

Office Coordinator Jaylee Campos oversees administrative and scheduling duties for the clinic, which is run by two providers: Summer Richards, PA-C, and Dr. Christina Belle-Henry, M.D., FACOG, who provides care at the clinic as well as labor and delivery care for her patients at a neighboring hospital. An LVN and RN also provide care and take calls when Summer or Dr. Belle-Henry are not available.

Challenge

Seeing more than 50 OB patients a week, it’s common for Dr. Belle-Henry to leave the clinic at a moment’s notice to care for her patients who are in labor at the neighboring hospital. With their previous answering service, the clinic experienced a variety of frustrations, including:

• Incorrect call transfers, especially during holiday hours
• Missed messages and calls
• Confusing messages
• Incorrect schedules that led to calls going to the wrong provider
• Patients expressing feelings of neglect
• Variable pricing with steep increases

Something had to change to meet patients’ needs and keep up with the complex and often fast-paced schedule at Women’s Health Associates. The clinic sought a more advanced solution to manage inbound calls and messages.

Implementation

Women’s Health Associates implemented PerfectServe Practice Communication to improve their call management service both during and after working hours. The implementation specialist was able to quickly get call prompts set up with Jaylee to get the clinic onboarded and up and running as quickly as possible.

“[The implementation specialist] was very helpful in being able to create the lines and the scheduling and being able to send me information about how to use the app and how to get set up.”

—Jaylee Campos | Office Coordinator

Solution

Women’s Health Associates has seen a much-improved call management workflow. During working hours, Jaylee can easily switch who’s on call when either Summer or Dr. Belle-Henry needs to make a change to their schedule—no need to wait hours or days on a call center to make it happen.

Inbound calls are now routed correctly every time, and providers can easily send, receive, and forward messages and calls in the PerfectServe Practitioner app. Patients have a much improved call-in experience, and when Dr. Belle-Henry needs to go into the hospital with her patients, on-call routing can be adjusted with a simple click of a button.

Results

After implementing PerfectServe, Women’s Health Associates improved their call management, boosted provider satisfaction, and improved daily operations in a way that yielded happier patients. Other areas of improvement include:

Conclusion

Women’s Health Associates provides much-needed obstetrics and gynecological care—the kind of care that should never be delayed by outdated call workflows. So when their call management solution became a frequent source of missed messages, incorrect call transfers, and other issues that led to neglected patients and frustrated providers, they knew a change was in order.

Regardless of practice size, managing inbound calls and messages does not have to be a process filled with misrouted calls and long wait times. Thanks to PerfectServe, Women’s Health Associates now has a modern call management system that facilitates quick and reliable communication with patients and colleagues even when call schedules change at the last minute.

“Once we switched to y’all, it was very easy access for us. One, specifically because it’s an app that we can use. And we’re able to add on our nurses in case one of the providers is out for vacation.”

—Jaylee Campos | Office Coordinator