How To Handle Healthcare Calls After Business Hours - 31Wesst

After-hours call services have become a must-have part of your healthcare services, not just an optional extra.

Your clinic might close at a fixed time every day, but your patients may have concerns that can’t wait till the next day.

A worried parent may call at 5 AM because their child is sick or has a high fever.

Another patient may want to reschedule their appointment. Or, a patient may simply want to ask about the clinic’s location, doctor’s availability, and other basic questions.

Not every call can be treated the same way. Simple questions about the parking facility at the hospital can’t be redirected to the on-call expert, while an urgent patient’s call can’t stay in the voicemail until the next day.

This is why a proper escalation route and an after-hours process that handles each call carefully, based on urgency and priority, are important.

In this post, we will walk you through the importance of after-hours call services for a healthcare company and some practical tips on how you can handle patients’ inquiries and urgent calls after business hours.

Importance of After-Hours Call Services in Healthcare Practices

On average, a healthcare call center agency receives around 2,000 calls every day, out of which the available technicians respond to 60% of these calls.

Around 52% of these calls are for billing and payment-related queries, 41% ask about insurance questions, and 34% have health-related or medical queries.

The same report suggests that patients who are not satisfied with the phone interaction are four times more likely to choose another healthcare company.

Below, we’ve shared a few important reasons why after-hours call services matter more for healthcare providers than for any other industry.

Patients’ health can deteriorate at any hour

A patient might have left your clinic in good condition, but unusual symptoms can develop later in the day. They may not be sure if their symptoms are serious enough to require a visit to the clinic. So, calling the healthcare provider might seem the easiest option.
Prescription-related questions:

Someone living far away from the clinic and needing clarification about the medication they’re supposed to take at night will call. They may have doubts about the dosage, medication timing, and instructions regarding how to take it.
No voicemail backlog:

Imagine the level of burden on your internal customer support department if every call you received after the clinic was closed went straight into the voicemail. With an after-hours contact system, the less-important calls can be answered and resolved immediately, while the urgent ones can be redirected to the on-duty doctor.

How to Handle After-Hours Business Calls: Practical Tips for Healthcare Teams

Your after-hours support system should be built such that every patient’s question, no matter how small or urgent it is, is addressed appropriately.

Here are some practical tips that can help you build a solid after-hours support service while keeping costs under control.

Tip 1: Hire After-Hours Support Desk Services

Building a customer support department for after-hours operation from scratch can get hectic. With your in-house team already working a day shift, it may not be a practical option to ask them to work night shifts either. That’s where an after-hours support desk, such as 31 West Global Services, can help.

Our outsourced help desk support can extend your customer support operations beyond your hospital’s working hours, ensuring that support needed at unusual hours is addressed as smoothly as it is managed during the day.

Here’s how you can make your after-hours support system more efficient.

Provide your physicians’ contact details:

Your after-hours support team must have the contact details of the incident manager, physicians, nurses, and other hospital staff, with clear details of their work responsibilities and the type of issues they handle. This ensures that each call, when it needs to be redirected, is forwarded to the right person.
Define their responsibilities clearly:

The agents working after business hours must have a clear understanding of their job responsibilities. They must know the type of inquiries they can handle independently and the ones that require escalation. For example, they must be authorized to book appointments, share information regarding the hospital’s opening and closing times, doctors’ availability, parking spaces, etc. Complex, health-related inquiries, on the other hand, must be escalated to the designated duty doctor.
Have a Clear Handover Process:

After-hours support technicians must record every required detail of the incoming call to make it easier for the internal team to pick up where the external team left off. For example, they must record patients’ names, incident priority, contact details, call details, action taken, action due, and more.
Keep Them Informed About Updates:

Any changes to the on-call appointment booking procedure, the clinic’s operating hours, the availability status of different physicians, or escalation instructions must be communicated to the external team immediately. They must use the updated records when dealing with after-hours calls to prevent confusion.

Tip 2: Sort Calls By Urgency, Not By When They Are Received

The most critical element of a well-established after-hours support desk system is sorting calls by urgency, not by the time they are received. In other words, the first caller doesn’t automatically need resolution faster than an urgent call received later.

Divide calls into categories:

After-hours agents must be trained on how to declare P1 incidents, which queries must be marked as P2, P3, or P4 incidents, and which all categories the incoming calls must be categorized into. You can divide calls into these categories: routine questions, time-sensitive calls, and emergency calls.
Differentiate between urgent and non-urgent calls:

For example, a simple inquiry related to administrative accounts is less urgent than a patient calling about the new, unusual symptoms they are experiencing. The latter may be urgent, require immediate hospitalization, or emergency care in some cases.
Handling issues by priority:

You can document non-urgent queries for another day or handle them once urgent issues are settled. High-priority (P1) incidents require immediate action or escalation, depending on the nature of the inquiry.

Tip 3: Make Reaching Out Easier For Customers

When a patient wants to connect with you after business hours, they should feel guided through every step rather than feeling confused about what to do next. Here’s how you can make this process as smooth for your patients as it is for your team.

Make contact information accessible:

Share your clinic’s contact details, such as phone number, address, and emergency numbers, on your hospital’s website, prescription sheet, and appointment reminders. Share it on all relevant communication channels that your patients use to contact your clinic.
Provide 24/7 support:

This goes without saying. Many calls received after business hours are time-sensitive for a healthcare company. Providing round-the-clock support is no longer optional; it’s vital. There must be a technician who attends to calls after the clinic is closed, ensuring that each call is acknowledged, recorded, resolved immediately, or escalated, according to the incident management policy.
Easy and transparent communication:

Patients may already be stressed when reaching out. Your after-hours support team must address every single concern with patience and as smoothly as possible to increase your customer retention. Remember, a positive customer experience goes a long way in building a loyal customer base.

Tip 4: Have a Structured Escalation System

Ensuring that a priority call reaches the right agent at the right time is as important as sorting calls by their priority and urgency status. This requires a proper escalation path, which every technician working past your business hours must be well familiar with.

Each call should reach the right person:

Imagine a patient who walked home after treatment at your hospital develops certain side-effects. The doctor has left the clinic, and so has your in-house customer help desk department. All calls are now answered by the after-hours help desk. A qualified and trained team of agents must know which issues should be escalated to a physician.
Clear escalation route:

Ideally, when an issue requires escalation or immediate resolution, it’s forwarded to the on-call physician, but what if they are unavailable? The agent must know the next person authorized to handle such calls.

An escalation rule also shows which agent is responsible for receiving urgent calls, how they are supposed to respond, how quickly it must be resolved, and under what circumstances it should be escalated to a senior-level technician.

Tip 5: Document Everything Correctly

A good after-hours support system involves proper recording and documentation of every incident that occurred after business hours. This allows the team that will resume work the next day to understand every event without having to collect the same details from patients.

Maintain clear records:

Every detail relevant to the call should be clearly documented. This includes the caller’s identity, the timing of the call, what it was about, whether it escalated, how you responded, and what further action is needed from the technician’s end.
Make follow-up easier for the healthcare team:

When the in-house agent reviews overnight incidents, they should know exactly what happened. For example, if a patient called at night to ask about medication usage, dosage frequency, and other instructions, this must be clearly documented so the physician can provide necessary details to the patient without asking them to repeat everything.

Tip 6: Maintain Patients’ Privacy

Patient privacy should be treated as the most critical part of customer service. No matter who answers the calls and at what hour, their personal data should remain confidential.

An agent must follow the clinic’s identity verification protocols before sharing any patient’s health-related or sensitive information over the phone.

For example, if you receive a call about a patient’s test results from someone claiming to be their family, you must first verify their identity before sharing the patient’s medical details.

Final Verdict

After-hours support for a healthcare company requires much more than having an agent available 24/7 to answer incoming calls.

It’s equally important to clarify every agent’s responsibilities, set clear escalation routes, and provide adequate resources to your team to reach the right person and document everything for the internal team.

If you are considering hiring an after-hours support help desk team, verify their certifications and the company’s reputation first.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can an after-hours agent deal with a high volume of calls?

Structured prioritization and proper escalation rules can help make it easier to handle large volumes of calls efficiently.

Do agents need to resolve all issues immediately?

No, they are supposed to answer all calls, but they don’t have to resolve each issue right there. They must follow a structured incident resolution process, rather than attempting resolution for all tickets independently.

How to categorize calls?

Categorize them into: life-threatening emergencies, urgent clinical issues, and routine calls.

Which types of healthcare calls should the after-hours team be authorized to resolve?

Simple administrative calls or basic questions about doctors and clinics can be answered and resolved by the technicians.

What are the most common reasons patients call a healthcare company after business hours?

They may have simple inquiries, such as when they need follow-up, when they can see the doctor, what the busy hours are, or how they can book an appointment. Or, they can call to seek medical guidance from a healthcare expert.

What does an on-call physician do?

An on-call physician handles urgent medical calls when the healthcare team has signed off for the day. They can provide medical guidance, review the problem, and decide whether a patient requires an urgent evaluation.

When should agents hang up and ask callers to seek emergency medical assistance?

Medical emergencies, such as chest pain, difficulty breathing, persistent bleeding, an accident, and other such calls, require emergency support. The agent must ask the caller to reach emergency services immediately.

Which healthcare calls require escalation to a physician or an incident manager?

A fever in a child, post-operative pain, or side-effects from a procedure are a few examples of medical issues that require an on-call doctor’s assistance. Such calls must be forwarded to the duty doctor.

What should be the average response time for after-hours healthcare calls?

This depends on the urgency of the issue and clinical priority. Ideally, an on-call physician must respond within 30 minutes to an hour for urgent medical issues.