Every single medical practice around noon experiences the same challenge. The phone continues to ring. Patients are still in need. However, the staff at the front desk need to eat. It’s one of those logistical issues that don’t seem like that big of a deal until you consider everything going on during that hour.
The simplest solution? Someone eats at their desk, trying to answer the calls coming in while putting a morsel into their mouths between ringing tones. Alternatively, the phone rings and goes to voicemail for thirty minutes while everyone has a quick break. Neither of these options are feasible, nor do they solve the problem, and both create challenges for the remainder of the day.
The Lunch Hour Challenge
But here’s the reality in most practices. If the medical receptionist stays at their front desk, they’re eating on company time; either they’ve been scheduled to eat on their break for pay or their morale will suffer if they are told they must work through lunch without compensation for the sake of the practice. If the phone rings and goes unanswered, patients are frustrated with no avenue for help; some take the time to leave a message that won’t be returned until after lunch, some get angry and hang up and call another practice.
For small offices, the situation gets worse. A solo practitioner or one with one or two front desk employees have no additional support to fill breaks should staggered lunches be needed. When that person is out of sight, out of mind, there’s no one else to help. Similarly, it’s not just lunch; what about bathroom breaks? What about those quick meetings with the office manager? What about ten-minute deep dives into insurance verifications that take longer than expected?
What Missed Calls Mean
But every missed call in the course of lunch means something. An opportunity to book an appointment has been lost. A request for prescription refills has not been acknowledged. Something came up and a previously scheduled appointment needs to be moved.
It’s not about missing one call. It’s about a litany of missed calls in succession that create frustration. Patients who’ve called multiple times without response begin to feel that they themselves are not respected enough for support. They remember this feeling when it’s time to receive subsequent care elsewhere when deciding whether to return or see someone new down the line. A missed call in isolation is fine; a missed call in a similar time frame daily reveals a pattern.
The Traditional Solutions
Some practices opt for a rotating lunch schedule so there’s always someone at the desk to answer calls, albeit poorly, but more than nothing. This still isn’t an ideal solution; the staff who is off on their break is eating alone without taking an actual break, and the staff member who is covering lunch coverage is simultaneously managing his or her responsibilities while attempting to field calls, meaning their attention isn’t there.
Other practices use an answering service to cover lunch breaks. A third-party answering service picks up and takes messages with no phone ringing constantly. However, an answering service doesn’t have access to scheduling appointments or knowing when an office policy allows for an answer or what should be discussed. An answering service is a service that reads from a script and plays glorified voicemail.
Finally, some offices allow everything to go to voicemail and return calls post-lunch. The triage at the front desk upon return from lunch gets settled within the first half-hour after, with upset patients who’ve been waiting for returns to their calls without immediate feedback.
How Remote Support Changes Everything
The staffing model on the rise brings this dilemma to another level. Outsourced medical receptionist support assists for lunch with no caveat or sacrifice on either end. Remote employees can continue fielding calls while in-office staff take their breaks, no rushed breaks, no voicemail catastrophes, even missed calls among in-office staff get covered.
The reason this works out so seamlessly is that remote medical receptionists don’t just answer phones. They know each practice’s procedures, they have access to scheduling systems and they can do exactly what an in-person medical receptionist can do during these times of stress. Therefore, when a patient calls during lunch, they’re getting support as if they weren’t on lunch instead.
Why This Benefits Operations
Not only does this prevent missed calls from becoming an issue, but it also prevents the annoyance for everyone in the afternoon who has had their call unanswered needing attention for other reasons. When it’s settled, it’s immediately done; there’s no callback list; there’s no patient waiting 60 minutes for someone to get back to them.
For the front-desk medical receptionists, it means they’ve actually gotten a break. While this seems obvious, any staff member who’s ever worked in a practice knows how hard it is to step away from the front desk without worrying about what’s looming over one’s head. Now that people can take a lunch break, they step away with refreshed minds instead of convoluted ones. Most practices don’t realize how much this matters.
Coverage Beyond Lunch Breaks
Once remote coverage is secured for lunch break coverage, practices often realize it’s valuable for other times as well, what if the medical receptionist is sick? What if they’re out on vacation? What if the phones are going off like crazy but in-person staff can’t keep up with what’s going on?
Remote support increases opportunity where traditional support does not. For example, if call volumes jump during flu season due to many patients needing additional guidance and support, it makes sense to bring someone else in; remote support can be there to bridge that gap between what’s workable and what isn’t. If someone has a training session during office hours and a message needs to be transferred during those times, it’s covered.
Thus, it’s important for coverage remote from lunch breaks, the flexibility exists beyond just that without anyone realizing when bringing attention to it comes best during those hours.
Making Transition Work
Transitioning over usually comes over time, a gradual implementation. Most practices start with lunch break coverage since it’s easily identified for any team and tested preliminarily how well it works with systems and integrations already established for general reconciliation amongst what’s occurring before expanding it into other hours during an easy trial.
Ultimately, it’s important that coverage isn’t just some random answering service; support needs to know how medical offices work from top-down perspectives since general answering services don’t have the context or system-integration access needed to help patients effectively.
What This Means for Patient Care
Ultimately, patients don’t care where they’re getting their answer: if they’re able to book appointments, ask questions and get feedback without missing a beat or frustrated tenor extended towards them for lack of success achieved within a day then they’re happy.
Lunch hour phone coverage, decreased along with predictable missed opportunities, which happens throughout everyday ensures reliable access more consistently than anticipated.
Those practices that finally figure this out see it reflected in their reviews, retention rates and how new patients gravitate toward them. People talk about how easy it is to get through and how efficient their help becomes from start-to-finish.
Medical practices don’t need to sacrifice proper breaks for great patient services; an answer exists; they need to rethink who needs to be present in-office and more fulfilled as part of a team than anticipated otherwise.