HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service: A Complete Guide 

Introduction 

As a healthcare practitioner, there is no way you wouldn’t be familiar with HIPAA – The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. you might also be aware of the rules of this act that regulate how patient information is stored and shared; and the safeguard in place to protect ePHI. We’d like to highlight that this act is not just limited to HIPAA-compliant medical texting, but is also extended to the calls you make and receive at your practice. If you’re dealing with hundreds of patients on a daily basis, have limited time to deal with each of them and yet want to provide great patient expeirence; you need a HIPAA-compliant medical answering service. 

What you must understand is that HIPAA compliance is not an option, but is required by the law. It is essential for all businesses dealing with PHI to comply with HIPAA guidelines irrespective of their size. Whether you’re informing about a simple medication refill, asking for insurance information, or communicating test results; you need a HIPAA-compliant answering service that can help you improve the patient experience while keeping their private information protected. 

This blog will give you some detailed insights related to HIPAA-compliant medical answering services. Here are some key takeaways for you:

• What is a HIPAA-compliant medical answering service and why is it important? 
• How does a HIPAA-compliant medical answering service work?
• The future of HIPAA-compliant answering service
• How Emitrr’s advanced capabilities can help you maintain HIPAA compliance 

Are you ready to learn everything about HIPAA-compliant answering services for medical offices? Let’s get started! 

What Should A HIPAA-Compliant Answering Service Do For Your Medical Practice?

A HIPAA-compliant answering service is a virtual receptionist that offloads your front desk from handling excessive calls and reduces the time spent on phone calls. 

What’s even better is that a HIPAA-compliant answering service helps you interact with your patients even when you’re busy. Here are some scenarios wherein a HIPAA-compliant virtual receptionist can engage patients:

How To Know If An Answering Service Is HIPAA-Compliant?

Not all answering services are HIPAA-compliant by default. 

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 outlines the federal rules and regulations about the way healthcare organizations must use and disclose Protected Health Information. 

If you’re a healthcare provider, a hospital or clinic, an insurance agency, or a pharmacy; you’re a Covered Entity as per HIPAA rules. It simply means that you are responsible for safeguarding patient information and ensuring that all communications happening on calls are secure and encrypted. Both Covered Entities and Business Associates must comply with the HIPAA guidelines; particularly the administrative, technical, and physical safeguards.  Hence HIPAA compliance is a requirement, not a choice because it safeguards PHI and your answering service needs to comply with the HIPAA rules. 

If you’re looking for a reliable HIPAA-compliant medical answering service, then here are some things you must keep in mind: 

• The answering service for medical office must encompass strong encryption protocols for both incoming and outgoing calls and text messages. 
• HIPAA compliance must be maintained while communicating with patients and team members; there must be no inclusion of any sensitive patient health information. HIPAA mentions 18 PHI identifiers which you should know about before you start communicating through an answering service. 
• Your answering service should not be sharing any PHI on non-HIPAA compliant platforms like Gmail, Microsoft Teams, or Slack.

Benefits Of Investing In A HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service

Here are some key benefits you enjoy if you sign up with a HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service for your healthcare practice: 

Put an end to missed calls 

With the help of a HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service, you get to bring all those missed calls to a stop. You will be able to handle patient calls seamlessly not just during working hours but also after business hours. This is because every time someone calls you when you’re away, the smart virtual receptionist will take care of it. As soon as you miss a call, an automated message will be sent to the caller. 

Ensure HIPAA compliance (Avoid penalties) 

A HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service saves you from hefty fines that result from non-compliance of HIPAA rules. With virtual assistance, you ensure effective communication with patients and providers without compromising on HIPAA rules. 

Allow patients to communicate freely 

Since both incoming and outgoing calls are encrypted in a HIPAA-Compliant Answering Service, your patients can freely voice their concerns and get their queries resolved in a timely manner. The HIPAA-compliant after hours medical answering service is developed in such a manner that it can route calls to the right person when patients call during business hours and can answer general queries pertaining to appointment scheduling, reminders, operational hours, insurance-related information, and prescription information.  

Offer 24/7 support 

The best part about a HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service is that it promises round-the-clock support to the patients. Whether it’s someone who wants to schedule an appointment, voice urgent health concerns, or get access to their medical information; they can simply rely on the HIPAA-compliant after hours answering services for medical offices for the same. As a healthcare provider, such a virtual receptionist will reduce the in-house call handling burden off your shoulders, will keep patient information secure, and will ensure the provision of appropriate care. 

Boost staff productivity 

A HIPAA-compliant medical answering service reduces the manual effort taken to answer and respond to calls because the initial stages of the query can be handled by the virtual receptionist itself. This means that the human receptionist will only handle queries that are more detailed in nature and need more attention. This will reduce the number of incoming calls and will eliminate phone tag as well. 

Deliver better patient outcomes 

When you invest in a medical answering service that offers assistance to the patients 24/7, they feel assured that you’re always there for them. Whether it’s during office hours, being always available for the patients will improve their health outcomes, which will further improve patient engagement and satisfaction.  

Use cases of HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service

A HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service encrypts both incoming as well as outgoing calls, thereby ensuring that no PHI is accessed by unauthorized people. Here are some important use cases of such a secure answering service for your medical office. 

Appointment scheduling 

If a patient calls you to schedule an appointment, you can simply create a workflow that allows you to send the link to your appointment scheduling page. This will make it easier for the patient as they won’t have to wait on call to speak with someone, and they can simply click on the link and schedule the appointment at their convenience. 

Follow-up calls

A HIPAA-Compliant virtual receptionist for medical practice can help you improve patient care by allowing you to call and check on the progress of your patients. Doing so will enhance patient care while keeping all patient information secure. 

After-hours patient care 

Be available for patients whenever they need you with a HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service. Here’s how you can provide after-hours patient care: 

• If a patient calls you after office hours seeking a prescription refill, you can give them the option to hang up and receive a text message containing the details of the refill. Here the voice call gets replaced by a text message that your staff can respond to. 
• If a patient is feeling unwell and calls your clinic explaining their symptoms, you can give them the option to either leave a voicemail or press a key to stay and speak with someone in person. 

Prescription refills 

With the help of a HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service, you can handle prescription refill requests of your patients on call as it allows you to verify patient information in a secure manner, thereby making the entire process smooth. 

Digital patient intake 

You can use the HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service to gather basic information about a patient before their scheduled appointment. When you complete the same prior to the appointment, you streamline the entire patient intake process. 

Provider communication 

Suppose you wish to communicate with other providers about a patient’s medical condition urgently. In that case, you can use a HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service for the same that will allow you to discuss basic patient details over call to provide immediate care.

HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Services: Present vs Future 

HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering services are experiencing a paradigm shift. Gone are the days when human receptionists used to handle all patient calls. They used to experience a high tide of incoming calls and excessive burnout. 

However, now human receptionists are being slowly replaced by virtual receptionists or answering services. These answering services help providers deal with incoming calls seamlessly. Such a system allows you to create an automation workflow with which you can automate certain common responses, thereby eliminating phone tag and reducing burnout.

The future of HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Services looks quite bright, with AI replacing human receptionists completely. Gen AI will take up most common queries, which will further eliminate the need for human interaction, and yet ensuring sound patient communication and HIPAA compliance. 

How Does A HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service Work? 

This is how a HIPAA-compliant medical answering service works: 

A patient calls you, you can set in a manner that gives them four options:

• Press a key to get an automated text message from your practice 
• Press a key to leave a voicemail 
• Stay on the line and speak to a staff member
• Hang up and get an automated text message from the practice 

Your virtual receptionist makes each process streamlined and takes care of each stage of the patient journey. Here’s the difference it makes: 

• Patient gets to choose how they want to communicate with you 
• You can even get in touch with them outside your business hours 
• Your staff gets to deal with less volume of incoming calls during business hours
• Voicemails can be responded to via text, thereby eliminating phone tag 

Get Started With Emitrr’s HIPAA-Compliant Medical Answering Service 

If you want to eliminate missed calls, reduce high call volume, make the entire communication process smooth, and improve overall patient experience, you need Emitrr’s advanced capabilities. 

With Emitrr, you can achieve your healthcare communication goals much more efficiently. Whenever you miss a call, you can immediately send an automated message to the caller and address their queries. Here’s how you can use autoresponders in Emitrr: 

Step-1: Go to Emitrr > Settings > Business Settings 

Step 2: Select location 

Step 3: Set working hours/business hours 

Step 4: Go to auto responses > Missed call auto-replies 

Select whether you want only voicemail, only text, or both

Send a text message, during or after office hours and a follow-up if you miss another call 

Step 5: Set up incoming message auto-replies 

Step 6: Set up general auto-replies 

Step 7: Set up keyword-based auto-replies 

That’s it! You’re all set! 

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion 

A HIPAA-compliant medical answering service is the answer to meeting patient expectations, while also adhering to HIPAA guidelines. If you’re a business dealing with PHI, like a healthcare practitioner, an insurance agency, or a pharmacy, you need to ensure that you adhere to the HIPAA guidelines pertaining to the protection of patient information. As a business dealing with PHI, you need to ensure that you communicate with people in a HIPAA-compliant manner. If you’re handling a lot of calls at your business and managing tasks pertaining to patient support, appointment scheduling, and insurance information; you need a HIPAA-compliant medical answering service. Eager to explore how Emitrr’s capabilities can make operations an absolute breeze at your practice? Book a quick demo here to learn more!