Healthcare call center services are sold to hospital systems and searched for by small practices, and the two buyers need different things. A system needs a call floor; a practice with one receptionist needs the phone answered at lunch and the reminders sent without anyone dialling. This page is for the practice deciding what to hand to a call center, booking, reminders, confirmations, and what to keep at the desk, and it prices the choice against the published virtual receptionist rates and the cost of a missed appointment. The free reminder template on this site sizes the reminder load from your own diary first.
What to hand over: the call, not the judgement
A call center can book a visit into the practice's calendar, using the visit types and durations the practice set, and it can send the confirmation. It cannot decide whether a patient's symptom is urgent, and a practice that lets it try has handed over clinical judgement with the phone. The rule is that the center books, reminds and confirms, and anything clinical is routed to the practice on a line that is always answered. Ask the vendor how a caller who says the wrong word is handled before you ask about the price.
What it costs, against the missed appointment
Ruby publishes virtual receptionist plans at $250 a month for 50 receptionist minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200 and $1,725 for 500, which is the going rate for a person answering under the practice name. Kheirkhah et al. 2016 measured an average cost of $196 per missed appointment and a mean no-show rate of 18.8% across ten clinics, and found a centralised phone system moved the rate only from 16.3% to 15.2%. The arithmetic a practice should do is its missed calls a month against the tier price, and separately its no-shows a month against the reminder system that fixes those.
The reminders and the confirmation record can stay at the desk
The Cochrane 2013 review found mobile text reminders raised attendance from about 67.8% to 78.6%, risk ratio 1.14, and a text does not need a call floor to send it. Dantas et al. 2018 named lead time and prior no-show history as the two main determinants of a no-show across 105 studies; both are worked from the diary, not the phone. Recallvia Pro is $20 a month to send the reminders under the practice name at the lead time it chose, record who confirmed and keep the recall list of patients due with no booking. Buy the call center for the calls you cannot answer; keep the reminders and the record where the practice can see them.
Questions people ask about healthcare call center services
Do healthcare call center services work for a single-doctor practice?
Yes, at the virtual receptionist tier rather than the call-floor tier. Count your missed calls for a fortnight and buy the minutes that cover them.
Should the call center send our appointment reminders?
It can, but a text reminder does not need a person to send it, and the reply should land in the practice's own record. Keep the reminders and the confirmation record with the practice.
What must a call center never do for a medical practice?
Give clinical advice or decide urgency. It books, reminds and confirms; anything clinical goes to the practice on a line that is answered.
How much does a no-show cost?
Kheirkhah et al. 2016 measured $196 per missed visit in their clinics; the free template on this site uses your own visit value instead.
Sources
- Ruby, virtual receptionist pricing
- Kheirkhah et al., Prevalence, predictors and economic consequences of no-shows, BMC Health Services Research 2016
- Gurol-Urganci et al., Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2013
- Dantas et al., No-shows in appointment scheduling, a systematic literature review, Health Policy 2018