Efficiency of a clinic largely depends on the front desk staff and these professionals can contribute hugely towards patient satisfaction. These two basic reasons call for training the front desk specialists. It has proven to not only help enhance collections but also to reduce the accounts receivables age. Medical practices should step up their efforts to train their front desk staff because they create the first impression on your patients. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that patients go back to a clinic only when they are happy with the services.
The front desk staff is responsible for collecting and electronically filing insurance and demographic data of a patient. They need to maintain accuracy otherwise it can affect the billing and collections procedure of the practice. Constant distractions and stress can affect the front-desk environment, creating room for errors. Physicians need to coin ways to reduce chaos in the clinic.
Many physicians continue to overwork and underpay their front desk employees. Considering they are the hosts of your clinic and the responsibility that lies on their shoulders, these professionals should be paid accordingly. This will boost their morale too.
Importance of Training the Front Desk Staff
The Front Desk staff should be trained for the following:
- Efficiency in appointment scheduling.
- Maintaining a professional image.
- Right attitude when dealing with patients.
- Effective patient payment collections.
- Prepared for handling difficult situations.
- Telephone skills.
- Maintenance of productive work flow.
Here are some of the ways through which practices can improve office efficiency and make the front desk positions manageable:
- It is better to hire qualified people and offer them a competitive compensation. Turnover of front desk staff can cost your practice dearly because they invest a lot of time in knowing the patients, on idiosyncrasies of physicians and the patient flow. Thus, retaining this staff is extremely important. Practices should be prepared to offer a few thousand dollars more than the average salary to these employees in order to keep them working.
- Providing training is also essential as it will help the staff to learn about the system. They should be taught how to use the software for administration, input insurance data, etc. Front desk employees should be given sufficient information related to co-payments, laboratory information, pharmacies and requirements of each insurance company. This will empower them with the right knowledge about collecting co-pays and deal with the patients in a better manner.
- Apart from hiring qualified front desk staff, practices also need to give them the right tools for the job. The right equipment or the latest operating system is very important for the staff to function effectively.
- If the front desk staff is busy taking calls, it takes their attention away from patients who are in front of them. It is important to cut down the number of daily tasks expected from them so that they get sufficient time to handle patients in and out.
Do you wish to free up your staff’s time and enhance patient engagement? Are billing and coding tasks stopping you from handling clinical and admin tasks? If the answer is yes, outsourcing your billing tasks to companies like MedicalBillersandCoders.com can end all your worries. MBC has a team of skilled billers and coders who will handle all your revenue cycle tasks and give enough time to you and your staff to focus solely on patient care. The team at MBC is trained in handling the complexities of coding and billing and they also ensure compliance to HIPAA and other healthcare reforms.