Every medical answering service claims that they provide quality service. But how can you know this for sure without first trying them?

You could ask around and see what other people think. Assuming you can find someone to ask, how much weight should you put on their opinion? It's hard to know. They're likely biased. Or you could look at online reviews, but those are usually from outliers who are either very happy or very upset. So how much do these reviews really help? Not so much.

However, there's one sure-fire way to know ahead of time if a medical answering service actually provides the high-quality service that they claim to offer. Are you ready for this secret? Here goes. 

The ATSI Award of Excellence

 Ask your prospective medical answering service if they have won any awards from independent, third-party organizations that test and evaluate answering service quality. The leading organization for this in the United States is ATSI (the Association of TeleServices International). They conduct an annual evaluation of leading answering services and award the best of the best each June.

If you want to hire a quality medical answering service, make sure that they've won the ATSI Award of Excellence. And for further validation, know that this is an accumulative award, so look for a medical answering service that has earned it for several years.

Here's why the Award of Excellence is so valuable.

Maintains an Independent Assessment​

A quality assessment conducted by an independent, third-party organization, provides conclusive results. Because an outside organization completed the quality review, you can enjoy confidence over the validity of the results. Winners of the ATSI Award of Excellence have a high level of proven quality that you can count on.  

Provides an Unbiased Evaluation​

To determine call quality, at least two trained judges independently assess each call. Since they don't know which answering service handled the call, there's no way for unintentional bias to creep into their analysis. And, in the unlikely event of a disagreement between the two judges, a third reviewer serves as the final arbitrator. The results are a score you can count on. 

Meets Established Criteria​

The trained quality judges follow a preset list of criteria to determine a numeric score for each call. Only those answering services that surpass a high, cumulative score on all their calls earn the right to receive the Award of Excellence. The benchmarks are so high that many answering services don't even bother to take part in the program. And of those that are brave enough to try, only a fraction of them meet the high standards needed to earn the award.  

Evolves to Meet Changing Expectations

Each year the judging criteria undergoes a re-evaluation to ensure it still meets customer expectations, which are ever-changing and more demanding. When needed, the evaluation standards are changed to meet the heightened expectations of answering service customers.

In case you're wondering, MedConnectUSA is proud to be a twelve-year, diamond-plus recipient of the ATSI Award of Excellence.

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.