How to Choose the Best Medical Answering System for Your Practice

Adding a medical answering service to your medical practice can have many benefits. For patients, it allows them to connect with medical care 24/7, 365 days of the year. For providers, it can improve an office’s organization and give providers confidence that their patients are cared for outside of office hours. 

There are many different medical answering services available that a practice can choose from, each with its own unique service package. As you browse your options, here are some important questions to keep in mind to help choose the best medical answering system for your practice.

Is It HIPAA Secure?

Many businesses use answering services to handle calls after-hours. Medical office answering services are special because they must put a premium on security. A HIPAA secure answering system will require patients to verify their identity, provide secure messaging, and more. By using a HIPAA secure answering system, doctors and patients can be confident that sensitive medical information will remain private. 

What Does It Cost?

An after-hours answering service can be invaluable to your patients’ and providers’ peace of mind, but the cost could put a real dent in your budget. Depending on your practice’s needs and total budget, you may have to be strategic about which answering service you choose. Answering services often offer a number of different service bundles. For larger practices, an expansive bundle that offers mobile apps, doctor paging, and secure messaging may be ideal to maximize your office’s efficiency. For smaller practices, a mobile app alone might do the trick. 

It’s also important you understand how much you can expect to pay for actual calls. Check to see if you’ll be billed by call volume, call time, or some combination of the two. Some answering services also charge a fee to set up call integration software with your practice, so be sure to factor that into your budget as well and choose the service that offers your practice the most value. 

Who Is The Service Staffed By?

When patients need help after hours, the person they connect with through your chosen after hours answering service becomes a direct extension of your practice. You want to be sure your patients are receiving the same level of care and respect they would receive if they were sitting in your office. An answering service that provides a full call list and access to recorded calls for your review is a great option for ensuring your patients are receiving the care they deserve. By choosing a medical answering service that places customer service at a premium, you never need to worry that your patients aren’t getting outstanding service when your team is away.

Can It Integrate With Your Practice?

Many calls placed to medical practices after hours deal with appointment scheduling. If you don’t use an answering service, catching up on scheduling messages that may have been left after hours likely takes up a lot of your office staff’s mornings. If you choose an answering service that integrates with your office’s software, the service’s staff can handle after hours appointments and keep your scheduling clean and up to date. Instead of spending hours playing catch-up and returning phone calls the next morning, your in-office staff can pick up right where answering service operators leave off. By choosing an after hours answering service that can integrate with your practice’s workflow and procedures, your practice’s organization and efficiency will increase dramatically. 

Medical answering services are not one-size-fits-all. Your practice has unique needs, and by using these questions you’ll be able to find the answering service that best fits your office and your patients.

Why Your Business Needs a Strong Quality Management System

If you want your business to remain competitive in the modern era, you need to think carefully about having a strong quality management system in place. It is important for you to find the best possible quality management system because this can help you place your business in the best position possible to be successful. Even though you might be comfortable with how your business currently operates, there are always ways to get better. For example, you may want to take a look at Advisera ISO 9001 if you are trying to get the most out of your quality management system. Why does your company need to have a quality management system? 

You Can Reduce Your Mistakes

One of the first benefits of having a strong quality management system in place is that you can reduce your frequency of mistakes. There might be situations where things fall through the cracks. Unfortunately, even though mistakes happen, your customers are not going to be very forgiving. They are simply going to ask for their money back and go somewhere else. Furthermore, your employees might have too much to do during the day, causing them to make mistakes from time to time. A quality management system can figure out what your company needs to do to improve. Then, you can reduce the chances of important tasks getting overlooked. 

You Could Increase Your Productivity

Another significant benefit of having a quality management system in place is that you can increase your productivity. For example, if you orchestrate a strong quality management system, you can identify potentially redundant steps. Then, if you can remove them from the process, you might be able to increase your productivity. This will make it easier for you to meet client deadlines, keeping them happy. Furthermore, this could help you increase your order productivity, generating more revenue for your business. If you want to improve the bottom line of your company, you need to put a strong quality management system in place. This can make a major difference when you are trying to carve out a spot in a competitive market. 

You Build a Strong Brand Identity

Finally, the right quality management system can also help you build a strong brand identity. This is more important than it ever has been in the past. If you want your company to succeed, you must have a clear brand identity. You want your business to be synonymous with productivity, results, and satisfied clients. The only way you will be able to do this is if you continually audit the procedures you have in place. That way, you can figure out what is working well, what is not, and what you have to do if you want to improve your business. If you show your customers you want to improve your daily operations, you can build a brand identity that convinces them to come back in the future. 

Construct a Strong Quality Management System

There are countless benefits that come with having a strong quality management system. At the same time, this is not something you need to go through on your own. It can be difficult to build a quality system from the ground up, and there are experts who can help you. That way, you can reduce the amount of time you spend creating your quality management system and more time tracking the results. Then, you can follow your quality management system over time, making tweaks that can help you capitalize on your strengths while improving your weaknesses. Use a strong quality management system to help your company stay one step ahead of the competition. 

Elevating Operational Efficiency with Hydraulic Machinery Investment

Investing in high-quality hydraulic machinery can significantly enhance the operational efficiency of your business, aligning perfectly with the objectives of a strong quality management system. Hydraulic systems, particularly a robust hydraulic power unit, are known for their precision, reliability, and ability to handle heavy-duty tasks with ease. By incorporating these advanced machines into your operations, you can achieve greater control and consistency in your production processes, leading to higher quality outputs. Moreover, hydraulic machinery often requires less maintenance and has a longer lifespan compared to other mechanical systems, ensuring sustained productivity and reduced downtime.

3 Affordable Small Business Communication Options

Small businesses are vital to our communities because they provide incredible products and services with a more personal touch. Many small businesses are looking for ways to ramp up their customer base, but they aren't sure they can handle an increased volume with their current staff load.

There are several ways to deal with higher volumes of customer inquiries, such as outsourcing customer support or getting a toll-free phone number, but many business owners worry that it will cost them too much to get started. Check out three affordable communication options for small businesses below! 

1. Business Phone Number

Business phone numbers have been around for decades now, and they provide a sense of trust among customers. It used to cost a small fortune to get a business phone number for small companies, but now there are some free business phone numbers offered by quality companies.

Small businesses with their own phone line, instead of an employee's cell phone number, seem more official, and customers appreciate the opportunity to speak with a real person. Depending upon the size of the business, a business number may connect directly to a person, or it may guide a customer through a series of questions to find the right agent for them to speak with. 

2. Live Chat

Some customers prefer to speak with a customer support agent via online chat. This allows them to type out their questions and get written responses quickly. Agents are still required for live chat to work, and customers enjoy this option because it connects them with a real person, but they can write out their responses instead of talking them out. 

3. AI Support Bots

Support bots that use artificial intelligence appear to be the way of the future. These support bots are similar to live chat, but they don't require an agent to do the responses. This is a great option for businesses who get huge volumes of emails, voicemails, or chats with many of the same questions that can easily be answered automatically. 

AI support bots may be able to answer a customer's inquiry on their own, like looking up the shipping status of a product using the tracking number, reporting business hours, or giving directions, or it can forward a more advanced question to an agent during normal business hours. 

Many businesses find that it's helpful to have a mix of two or all three of the above communication options to give customers a choice about how they can get the help they need. Having open communication channels can help build a sense of trust with customers and keep them coming back again and again. 

A short guide to setting up your own business

Making the decision to leave a stable position of employment and set up your own business is an exciting time for any would-be entrepreneur. Becoming self-employed gives you a huge amount of freedom: you can work to your own rules and working practices and organize exactly when and for whom you work. On top of all this, you can dedicate yourself to a business that you are truly passionate about and are consequently willing to put in 100% to make sure that you are successful. However, setting up your own business can also become exceedingly stressful and could prove to be a disaster if not thoroughly planned. Considering these points, read on for a short guide to setting up your own business.

1.   Education

You might have all the necessary expertise needed to create and carry out the products and services your business will offer, but product knowledge alone is not enough to ensure that your endeavor is successful. You will need a strong foundation of business practice knowledge that you can take into your own business practices. If you do not come from a business background, you could consider taking some online business courses. These online business courses will provide you with the essential skills required in areas that are much used when setting up a business, for example, bookkeeping, grant writing, and project management.

2.   Write a business plan

Writing a business plan is an essential task that should be undertaken when setting up any business and reviewed and updated every couple of years to reflect your current circumstances. There are plenty of guides available showing you how to write an effective business plan, but there are several points that you should always look to include. An analysis of the market which you are entering, for example, along with a detailed description of your business’s unique selling point, to clearly demonstrate how you will fit into that market.

3.   Secure financing

Setting up your own business is an undeniably expensive endeavor, and as such, you will need to make sure that you have secured financial backing. There are several federal loans you can apply for, such as the Small Business Administration Loan, to help you to set up your business. Alternatively, you could approach a bank for a loan, but make sure that you are able to pay your loan off and do not put your house as collateral, in order to prevent a disaster from occurring if your business does not prove to be successful.

4.   Premises

During the early days of your business, when you are just starting to get off the ground, you might decide to work from your own home in order to reduce overheads from expensive rented offices. However, you might require some extra space in order to house supplies and products for shipping. If this is the case, you could consider renting a storage space from which you can store and package items away from your home.

A Guide for Startup Owners: How to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Has your startup come face-to-face with that dreaded glass ceiling? Have you recently maxed out your company’s profit potential? If so, it sounds like you need to propel your business to the next level — pronto! You cannot afford to waste any time in this instance, as doing that will increase your organization’s chances of stagnating. Once this happens, you will find it ten times harder to grow, develop, and scale your startup in the future. 

If you want your company to scale the lofty heights of its industry one day, you cannot ever afford to stand still. Here are three things you must do to take your business to the next level:

Optimize your marketing model 

You might provide an industry-leading level of service, but all of your hard work in this instance will ultimately amount to nothing if you fail to promote your business. If you are to reach, engage, generate, and retain your leads in a highly efficient and effective fashion, you need to go above and beyond to optimize your marketing model. 

If this means trying new things and taking different advertising approaches, so be it. There are many different routes that you can take to freshen up your promotional endeavors, one of which being to embrace SMS marketing. This simple yet effective advertising technique will help you to reach your target audience interactively and instantaneously. To find out more about this form of promotion, be sure to check out Tatango. Being one of the world’s industry leading text message marketing companies, they understand the intricacies of what it takes to run an effective SMS advertising campaign. 

Enhance your brand strategy

To ensure that your enhanced marketing model yields positive results, you must build yourself a strong brand image. To enhance your self-promotion strategy in this instance, you need to:

1. Focus heavily on providing customer satisfaction

2. Improve your social profiles

3. Showcase your expertise by producing insightful online content

4. Go above and beyond to educate other people/organizations

5. Broaden your network and forge appropriate partnerships

Improve your overall efficiency 

You are never going to get anywhere with your attempt to take your startup to the next level if you fail to improve your overall efficiency. Quite simply, everything that you do on a day-to-day basis must be incredibly productive and effective. Anything less, and you will fail to provide your consumers with the high level of service that they want, expect, and need in this day and age.

To improve your company’s overall efficiency, you must:

1. Set your employees many S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) regularly

2. Become an effective delegator

3. Take advantage of productivity-boosting software solutions

4. Incentivize your staff members to operate efficiently by providing them with performance-related benefits  

If your startup business is ready for that next all-important step in its development, be sure to heed all of the advice laid out above.

How to Improve Your Remote Workplace, Tips for Online Entrepreneurs

Remote workplaces are growing quite fast among businesses given that most want to take advantage of benefits such as lowering costs, collaboration on different time zones, access to global talent pools, and much more. That said, it is not all unicorns and rainbows as there are hurdles that come with managing a distributed team. You ought to learn how to do it the right way if you are to build a successful remote business. We have compiled some tips that can help you get started and grow the business without spending too much.

Tips to Help You Manage a Remote Team

Get the right remote team

Hiring the right employees to work for your company remotely can be a problem, not just for new entrepreneurs. The problem is that not all qualified candidates are cut out for remote work. As such, you will need to consider the skills it takes to be successful in a remote environment. You can, therefore, look out for candidates with the following traits:

●      The propensity towards action: Hire a self-driven employee who will know what to do without having to be pushed around.

●      Ability to prioritize: Find an individual who can focus on the right tasks and one who knows to ignore the less impactful.

●      Proficient writing: Most communication is likely to happen through text. That is, via email, team chat, or even private messages. Well, you should hire someone who doesn’t struggle to write clearly and concisely.

●      Local support system: a remote worker with a support system around him or her will perform better. This is because they can share their worries and frustrations and get help even without having to reach you physically. 

You should strive to get the right remote team for your business first. That makes it easy to manage them.

Create the right work environment

Creating the right environment for your team means that they can do the work without having to be micromanaged. You can create this environment by setting clear goals and communicating them to your organization. As a result, your team members will spend the company time working to realize those goals.

Besides, you should set realistic timelines and describe how projects should be submitted. That way, you will keep them on toes, and hence, you will not need to keep following them every so often.

Improve your IT Infrastructure 

Managing and working with a remote team can be challenging if you lack the right tools. Fortunately, there are lots of useful technologies that have made collaboration easy, even for small businesses. Well, you can get Electric IT support to help you set up the right infrastructure that will help make your communication seamless. You are better off outsourcing IT support for a remote workplace than hiring in-house staff, given that you will save more cash.

Tip: Keep an eye on cybersecurity as you collaborate. It’s another reason why you should outsource IT services to help secure your workplace.

Hold regular meetings

Working remotely can make employees feel like they are on their own. That is why you should make a point of holding weekly virtual meetings via collaboration tools like Skype, Zoom, or any other appropriate video conferencing tool.

During the meetings, you can make a point of clarifying anything your employees may bring up. You can take the opportunity to ask them for ideas and contributions to specific topics. For example, you can engage them to find out how best they can be motivated. That will make them feel appreciated, and therefore, they will be more engaged with the goals of your business. 

You can also have ice-breaking activities with members discussing issues that are not necessarily about work. You can encourage them to talk about their diverse cultures, their hobbies, and such. This will help in bonding with each other and in creating a great work family, albeit remotely.

Be a good manager

Your team members want a person who can understand them and relate to their issues and position as employees. They want to feel that you trust them with advancing the vision of your organization. Hence, you should demonstrate to them that you trust their skills, knowledge, and talent are appreciated in achieving the goals of your organization. You can show your trust in your employees by letting them make independent decisions on how to go about tasks, and only get to intervene when they request you to do so. In the end, they will feel independent and free, and that will contribute to higher performance.

Additionally, you can show them empathy and demonstrate understanding during their points of need. A remote employee may request time to take care of their ailing loved ones. It is only gentle of you to allow them some time, and perhaps even offer them allowance during the leave. That will increase their trust in your leadership and foster their loyalty in your business organization. As a result, they will stay, and the employee turnover will be reduced to the economic advantage of your business.

Final word

Managing a distributed team is not always an easy task. However, with the right skills and tools, it is doable. We hope the tips we have covered will help improve your remote workplace and in turn grow your team’s productivity.