The most common way to get your practice or clinic's telephone calls to your medical answering service is by using call forwarding. Though there are other options, call forwarding is by far the most popular and the most flexible.

Most of the time call forwarding works exactly as expected, fast and reliably. However, sometimes problems occur. A common one is forgetting to manually activate call forwarding before you leave for the day. And what if you accidentally forward to the wrong number? That's a second concern. Another issue is a phone system problem, which keeps you from accessing your phone lines to activate call forwarding. A fourth is when weather conditions and natural disasters keep you from getting to your office. Finally, a fifth potential problem can happen when a phone company update interrupts your phone service.

These scenarios do not usually occur, but when they do, that's a problem for both your practice and your patients. Fortunately, some advanced medical answering services have solutions to address this. 

Call-Forwarding Monitoring

Call forwarding works most of the time and we take it for granted, but when it doesn't work, it catches us off guard. Unfortunately, most organizations don't realize there's a problem with their call forwarding until someone tells them. But very few people will take the time to let you know there's a problem. Most will just ignore it and continue with their day.

That's why it's important to periodically check call forwarding and make sure it's working. This ensures you will never miss a call. Though you can do this yourself, will you remember? Will you have time? Or you can ask your medical answering service to check for you. Many will. 

Call-Forwarding Activation

If call forwarding isn't working, the usual recourse is to activate it from your office. That's a problem if you're not there. And call forwarding seldom stops working when it's convenient to go to your office and forward your phone lines.

Fortunately, advanced medical answering services can do this for you. If your phone lines aren't forwarding properly, they can forward your calls for you. And they can do this quickly. Imagine, no more panicked trips to your office in the middle of the night to forward your lines. If you've gone with the right answering service, they can do it for you. It's simple and fast. It saves you time, and it saves you aggravation. 

Call-Forwarding Assurance​

When you combine call-forwarding monitoring and call-forwarding activation, you end up with call-forwarding assurance. Call-forwarding assurance provides you with peace of mind that your calls are being answered, 24/7. This gives you confidence that when your patients need to reach you, they can. And isn't this why you have a medical answering service in the first place? 

Conclusion

Call forwarding your calls to your medical answering service is easy to do and puts you in control. However, even though call forwarding is highly reliable, it's not foolproof. That's why you need call-forwarding monitoring and call-forwarding activation to provide you with call-forwarding assurance.

Contact your medical answering service today to make sure they can provide you with call-forwarding assurance. You'll be glad you did.

Learn how medical answering service from MedConnectUSA can help your practice, clinic, or facility. Then get a free quote to discover how affordable their healthcare communication services are.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer and call center authority.