Discover the top Medical Answering Services that deliver professional customer support & appointment scheduling services for healthcare organizations to fulfill your requirements:
Hiring call answering services or call outsourcing is a popular practice among businesses today.
Since customer services play an important role in maintaining the goodwill of a business, answering services are in great demand by businesses of all sizes.
Medical Call Answering services are used by medical practitioners, hospitals, health care centers, etc. so that no call gets missed. Their patients can get their calls answered 24/7 for inquiries, scheduling appointments, or even contacting the doctor urgently.
Table of Contents:
Answering Service for Medical Office – Market Trends
The medical answering services have teams of trained professionals who offer the following services:
- Take calls and messages on behalf of a business.
- Schedule appointments for them.
- Transfer calls when required.
- They convey the messages received from your customers to you via emails, calls, text messages, etc.
- They offer mobile apps that give you access to various features like your account, call history, recordings, bills, and more.
- Some apps let you have an audio or a face-to-face video call with your patients
The answering service providers can patch the call so that the patient can talk to the doctor directly when needed. This way, a patient can access the doctor anytime, if an emergency arrives. This makes a good impression on the medical service-providing organization and thus a medical answering service proves to be a highly beneficial investment.
Studies reveal that answering services cost significantly less as compared to hiring a receptionist. Plus, these service providers take your calls and messages 24/7, which improves patient experience and makes your business look more professional.
Types of Medical Call Answering Services
Types of medical answering services according to the kind of service offered are as follows:
- Appointment Scheduling Answering Service: They schedule appointments for you; cancel or reschedule them, if required. They also offer services for reminding patients about their appointments.
- 24/7 Call Answering: They will answer your calls to solve patient inquiries, or patch the call with the concerned doctor in an emergency, or for another pre-specified reason.
- Message Taking: They take messages from the clients and send them to the specified authority via their desired method (email, text messages, etc.).
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In this article, you will find a list of the top answering services for medical offices in the USA. We have provided details about each one of them, along with a comparison table that lets you get quick information about each one of them.
Who is this article for?
This article is for all kinds of medical service-providing organizations that are looking for a service that can outsource call answering for them, take calls and messages 24/7 courteously, transfer calls, schedule appointments, etc., at reasonable costs.
As stated by PR Newswire, a survey has revealed that the top feature businesses look for in an answering service is good call quality, followed by their responsiveness, hours of operation, use of innovative technology, pricing, knowledge of the industry, setup speed, reporting and call analytics, multilingual capabilities and free trial offering.
List of the Best Medical Answering Services
Here are some popular medical office phone answering services:
- WellReceived
- AnswerConnect
- PerfectServe
- Answering Service Care
- AnswerFirst
- Call 4 Health
Comparing the Top Answering Service for Medical Practice
| Company | Best for | Founded in | Prices | Top Benefits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WellReceived | 24/7 Service from HIPAA Certified Medical Receptionist. | 2020 | Contact directly to get a price quote. | • Bilingual Receptionists • 24/7 Call cover • HIPAA-trained medical receptionists • Mobile and desktop app. |
| AnswerConnect | Offering bilingual, quality answering services at affordable costs. | 2002 | Contact directly to get a price quote. | • Bilingual receptionists • You can access all call records, bills, etc. • A feature rich mobile app • Integrates with your current systems • Reasonable prices |
| PerfectServe | Offering a secure, feature-rich app with the medical answering services | 1997 | Contact directly to get a price quote. | • A 30-day risk-free trial • Good security features • 250+ integrations • Historical data reporting • An advanced feature set |
| Answering Service Care | A well-trained, friendly and knowledgeable team of call answering personnel. | 1974 | Starts at $25 per month (+ minutes) | • A 21-day money back guarantee • 5,000+ integrations • A flexible pricing model make their services suitable for businesses of all sizes • Bilingual agents to take calls on your behalf |
| AnswerFirst | Delivering industry-specific answering services at reasonable costs. | 1998 | $30 per month + Per minute charges ($1.25 – $1.70) | • Volume discounts • Reasonable pricing, pay-per-second policy • A mobile app to access detailed call reports • Useful integrations • Suitable for businesses of all sizes |
| Call 4 Health | Being an all-in-one answering service for medical practice. | 1997 | Contact directly to get a price quote. | • An answering team trained specially for medical industry • Online messaging, patient demographics, medical records and more useful features • Standard data security |
Detailed Reviews:
#1) WellReceived
Best for 24/7 Services from HIPAA Certified Medical Receptionist.
WellReceived is home to HIPAA-trained medical receptionists that will serve as an extension of your healthcare organization’s team. They will take calls at your behest round-the-clock and notify you through the Well-Received app, email, or any there CRM tool. The receptionists you get from Well-Received are bilingual.
You can count on them to receive your calls in both English and Spanish. To get started, all you need to do is get in touch with the folks at WellReceived and have your call script customized. This call script is then used by the receptionists as a reference point to gather information from patients who’ve called in. The messages are then delivered to you in real-time via the app, SMS, or email.
Found In: 2020
Headquarters: Portland, Oregon
Number of Employees: 1001-5000
Clients: Dentists, Chiropractors, Mental Health Clinics, Optometrists, etc.
Estimated Annual Revenue: —
Who is it for: Healthcare Industry
Services Offered:
- Call cover on weekends, after-hours, and holidays
- Customizable scripting
- Bilingual call answering (English and Spanish)
- Appointment scheduling
- Live chat support
- Secure desktop and mobile app.
Pros
- 24/7 receptionists
- Flexible pricing
- HIPAA-trained medical receptionists.
- Get notified with messages in real-time via the app or SMS and email.
Why we like WellReceived:
With WellReceived, you are guaranteed a HIPAA-trained team of medical receptionists receiving calls at the behest of your medical or healthcare organization 24/7. These receptionists will be able to receive patient inquiries, schedule appointments, etc. in English and Spanish. Plus, you also get a secure mobile and desktop app that makes you privy to all messages you’ve received in real-time.
Price: Contact directly to get a price quote.
#2) AnswerConnect
Best for offering bilingual, quality answering services at affordable costs.
AnswerConnect is the best medical office phone answering service provider. They are currently offering many services that make remote working easier. Medical practitioners can get their phone calls answered, or forwarded to them, anytime, anywhere.
Watch this video that presents an overview of AnswerConnect:
Medical and Dental practitioners, Private hospitals, Care Homes, Clinics, Medical Receptionists, and Health Insurance service providers trust AnswerConnect for answering services.
AnswerConnect adopts sustainable methods of operation. They plant 1 tree for every customer, each month. They have planted over 1,592,000 trees till now.
Found in: 2002
Headquarters: Oregon, USA
Number of Employees: 501-1000
Clients: Fresh Coat Painters, Agape Match, Intertrust, GEEK911, Interview2Work, Gourmetmiles and more.
Estimated Annual Revenue: $21.1 million
Who is it for: Healthcare, eCommerce, Finance/Insurance, Franchise, Legal, Marketing, Real Estate and more industries.
Services Offered:
- They have a team of customer service experts, to take your calls and messages 24/7, on your behalf.
- They let you set times when to transfer calls to you.
- They book your appointments and add them to your calendar
- They give you access to the AnswerConnect Portal, from where you can access recorded calls and messages; verify and personalize contacts, view call history, track billing, and more.
- Their app allows collaboration through video calls and offers screen sharing and more useful tools.
Pros:
- Real people to talk to your prospective customers through calls and chat.
- Their team has industry-specific knowledge.
- Bilingual virtual receptionists, who speak English and Spanish.
- Seamless integration with your current systems like Salesforce, Zoho, Freshsales, Webhooks, Insightly, and many more.
- Affordable services.
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android users.
Why we like AnswerConnect: They have bilingual professionals to take your calls 24/7 and are known to train their teams for industry-specific knowledge, so that your customers can have the best experience. The range of services they are offering is commendable. Their customers have expressed good reviews about the services they received.
Read how AnswerConnect helped many businesses in their growth, from their website.
Price: Contact us directly to get a customized price quote.
#3) PerfectServe
Best for offering a secure, feature-rich app with medical answering services.
PerfectServe is one of the best medical answering service providers. It has served over 30,000 health organizations to date.
I must say, the platform offers a good set of features while maintaining the security of your data. 24/7 customer support ensures that you can always get solutions to the issues that you face with the software.
Founded in: 1997
Headquarters: Tennessee, USA
Number of Employees: 300+
Clients: The Harbin Clinic, Prisma Health, Hospital for Special Surgery, Cherry Creek Eye Physicians and Surgeons, Savannah Neurology Specialists (SNS), and more.
Estimated Annual Revenue: $73.4 million
Who is it for: Hospitals & Health Systems, Medical Practices, Nurses, Physicians, Schedulers, Finance and IT.
Services Offered:
- You can read call transcriptions to check whether a call is urgent or a routine call.
- You can call the patients from your phone. Your number will be masked and the call will appear as coming from the office.
- Get personalized alert notifications.
- Let you assign call-takers.
- They offer 800+ templates for workflow management.
- Tools for automating manual workflows.
Pros:
- A 30-day risk-free trial
- Text, call, and video communication tools
- SOC 2, HIPAA-compliant platform
- AES-256 encryption for data at rest
- TLSv1.2+ encryption for data in flight
- 24/7 customer support
- Affordable prices
- Historical data reporting
- More than 250 integrations including Electronic Health Record (EHR), Nurse Call, Scheduling Systems, and more.
Why we like PerfectServe: PerfectServe offers a scalable medical office answering service, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. They are offering commendable security features, considering the need to take solid actions against data breaches. The customer reviews about the platform are good.
Price: Contact directly to get a price quote.
#4) Answering Service Care
Best for their trained, friendly, and knowledgeable team of call-answering personnel.
Answering Service Care is offering services that enable the medical systems to provide 24/7 care to their clients. It is a well-known, trusted company that has a team of bilingual personnel who are trained specially for the medical industry so that they can deliver more efficient answering services.
You can integrate the application they provide with more than 5,000 platforms, allowing you to manage appointments, patient data, and more.
Founded in: 1974
Headquarters: Florida, USA
Number of Employees: 180+
Clients: Bankers Healthcare Group, Stanford Medicine, Zander Insurance, and more.
Estimated Annual Revenue: $30 million
Industries Served: Medical, Legal, Home Services, Business Services, Real Estate, Financial Services, Insurance, Beauty and Wellness, Education, Funeral Homes and Small Businesses.
Services Offered:
- Trained, experienced personnel to answer your calls.
- Bilingual agents to take calls on your behalf.
- They can schedule appointments for you.
- They let you set up a customized call script.
- Call recording, spam blocker, and more useful features.
Pros:
- 24/7 answering service
- HIPAA compliant platform
- A 21-day money-back guarantee
- Over 5,000 integrations
- Web and mobile applications
Why we like Answering Service Care: More than 4,000 organizations, including Stanford Medicine and Keiser University, are clients of this platform.
The clients of Answering Service Care have reported their services to be secure and reliable. They have a 97.6% client satisfaction rate. They have different plans for businesses of different sizes. I would recommend this medical office phone answering service for businesses of all sizes.
Check out a video with a client’s feedback:
Price: Their plans are as follows:
- Starter Plan: $25 per month (Plus minutes)
- Small Business Plan: $169 per month (Plus minutes). 100 minutes are included in this plan
- Pro Plan: $289 per month (Plus minutes). 250 minutes are included in this plan
- Enterprise Plan: $599 per month (Plus minutes). 500 minutes are included in this plan.
#5) AnswerFirst
Best for delivering industry-specific answering services at reasonable costs.
AnswerFirst has handled over 100,000,000 calls to date and has thousands of happy customers in its account. It is an award-winning, popular medical call-answering service provider. The reason for their popularity is the spirit of professionalism that their team has.
They deliver customized services to varied business types. You can provide them with scripts on how to greet your customers and get appointments scheduled for you, or they can even patch calls if needed.
Founded in: 1998
Headquarters: Florida, USA
Number of Employees: 100+
Clients: AMN Healthcare, Coast Dental & Orthodontics, Heart of Adoptions, Inc., and more.
Estimated Annual Revenue: $34.5 million
Industries Served: Healthcare and Social care, Agriculture, eCommerce, Construction, Finance, IT, Manufacturing, Mining, and many more.
Services Offered:
- Real people to take live calls and messages, schedule appointments, patch calls, and more.
- You can set up customized scripts about how to greet your clients.
- They adopt multiple methods to deliver your messages, for example, emails, text messages, faxes, voicemail, secure apps, and more.
- A mobile application that allows you to access detailed call reports, 24/7.
- Easy integration of the software with your existing applications like Zoho, Blackbaud, PipeDrive, and more.
Pros:
- 24/7 answering
- HIPAA, HITECH compliant platform
- Suitable for doctors, dentists, medical centers, hospitals, and other healthcare businesses.
- They offer volume discounts
- You will pay as you go
- Reasonable prices
Why we like AnswerFirst: The customer reviews about the platform are impressive. Their pay-per-second policy ensures that you are charged for just what you use. Their average time to answer a call is 6 seconds and their average call abandon rate is less than 2%.
Their mobile app allows you to access your AnswerFirst account anytime, from anywhere. And I must say they are offering a very good value for money. Businesses of all sizes can benefit from their services.
Price: $30 is the fixed monthly fee. Call rates range from $1.25–$1.70 Per Minute. The rates go down as you scale.
#6) Call 4 Health
Best for being an all-in-one answering service for medical practice.
Call 4 Health is a dedicated answering service for medical offices. They have an experienced team that has medical training and are known for their friendly and caring behavior with the callers.
It is an award-winning platform. They offer a mobile app that integrates with your systems and offers your patient data in one secure place. They take messages and convey all information to you via text messages/ emails or any other method that you like.
Founded in: 1997
Headquarters: Florida, USA
Number of Employees: 500+
Clients: Peak Vista Community Health Centre, Rio Community Health Centre, and more.
Estimated Annual Revenue: $51 million
Healthcare Institutions Served: Doctors, Hospitals, Healthcare systems, Homecare agencies, Medical equipment companies and more.
Services Offered:
- Call dispatching, message taking, appointment scheduling, and medical answering services.
- They convey the information collected from your patients to you via text messages, emails, paging, and/or voice messages.
- Electronic communication tools allow doctors to communicate with patients.
- Online messaging, patient demographics, medical records, and more useful features.
- They train their answering team specifically to deliver services for the medical industry.
Pros:
- 24/7 answering services
- Their software integrates with your existing Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and practice management systems
- Standard data security features
- HIPAA compliance
Why we like Call 4 Health: Watch some videos of client testimonials about Call 4 Health, and you will know how Call 4 Health is proving to be a highly beneficial investment for many healthcare providers in the USA.
They claim that their answering services would significantly increase the average number of appointments per month and the hold time decreases by up to 5 minutes, as compared to hiring a receptionist.
Price: Contact directly to get a price quote.
How do we Select these Medical Office Answering Services?
We have selected the top medical answering services after examining the following points about many of the leading service providers in the industry:
- Reputation, customer reviews about the platform
- The popularity of the answering service in the medical industry
- Pricing
- Services/Features offered
- Data security features
Frequently Asked Questions
How does an answering service assist the medical office?
An answering service can be beneficial for a medical office in the following ways:
It allows the patients to talk to a real person, for an inquiry, for appointment scheduling, etc., 24/7
The medical office can instruct the answering service on how to greet their clients/patients
If there is an emergency, the call can be transferred to the concerned doctor immediately
It saves significant costs, as compared to the costs incurred in hiring a receptionist
Calls are being answered in less time, leading to a higher patient satisfaction rate and increased revenue for the medical organization.
What should I look for in a medical answering service?
Look for the following features in a medical answering service:
They should offer 24/7 call answering, and call patching service.
The team must have some knowledge about your business. A team trained for medical call answering would be a great fit.
Check the experience and reputation of the company.
Check the customer reviews.
Check the security features they are offering.
What are the languages they speak? It’s better if the team can speak multiple languages.
Look for the integrations they are offering, to get the best results.
How does an answering service work?
Answering Services takes calls and messages on your behalf so that you do not lose potential clients. They provide required information to the callers, schedule appointments for them, transfer calls to the concerned authority if needed, etc.
Most of these services charge you for each minute they are on a call with your clients.
Who needs an answering service?
Since customer support services play an important role in making a good impression on a business, businesses from all industries including Medical, Retail, eCommerce, Insurance, Education, Finance, etc., would find investing in an answering service to be quite profitable.
What are the disadvantages of answering services?
The one answering your call may not have proper knowledge of your business, which can make a negative impression. So choose a reputed service that trains its team and provides knowledge about specific industries, so that they sound professional.
Most of them let you hear how they talk, before investing in their services. They also provide call recordings and detailed call history, and you can always access reports about how it is going. All these features make a service trustable.
What is the average cost of an answering service?
Answering services will cost you a minimum of around $50 per month. Some charge a monthly fee in addition to the per-minute charge. Some others charge a fixed fee for a month and give a specific number of calling minutes.
If you are willing to take the services for a very small number of calls, then a pay-as-you-go plan would be best for you.
Why does my office need a medical answering service?
An answering service can be very useful for medical offices. It takes the burden off your shoulders by taking calls on your behalf, answering your clients’ inquiries, scheduling/rescheduling appointments for you, and much more.
Moreover, an answering service ensures that no call from a client gets unattended, which increases client satisfaction.
How do medical answering services work?
The medical answering services work in the following manner:
They will take a call on your behalf and will greet your patients according to the customized scripts you have provided them with.
They will solve patient inquiries if they have, set an appointment if they want, or patch the call with the doctor or a concerned authority if needed
They send you messages regarding the data noted through calls, or you can get appointments scheduled in an integrated app automatically if this feature is available.
You will be billed according to the number of seconds or the number of minutes spent on calls.
You can access detailed call history, recordings, etc. through a mobile app.
Conclusion
Our research suggests that medical answering services bring good ROI to the healthcare industry. So the demand for these services today is at an all-time high.
With a medical call answering service, you can get your calls and messages received, get calls transferred at your preferred time/condition, get appointments scheduled, and much more.
The pricing for medical answering services ranges from approximately $0.90 per minute to $3.10 per minute. Most times, the cost-per-minute goes down as you scale, because of the volume discounts. Besides the per-minute charge, pay some fixed monthly fee, which varies with the service providers.
We can now conclude that the top 5 best answering services for medical practice are AnswerConnect, PerfectServe, Answering Service Care, AnswerFirst, and Call 4 Health. These are reputed, well-established companies that have experienced and trained staff to answer your calls.
We have thoroughly studied the customer reviews and clients in the medical field about many of the answering service providers and then provided you with a list of the best of them.
Further Reading => Most Popular Healthcare Software Testing Services of the Year
Research Process:
- Time taken to research this article: We spent 28 hours researching and writing this article so you can get a useful summarised list of tools with a comparison of them for your quick review.
- Total tools researched online: 35
- Top tools shortlisted for review: 05