This short talk (YouTube video) by Gene St. Louis urges medical practices to prioritize telephone skills at the front desk. The speaker argues the phone is the most valuable tool for initial patient contact, warns that poor phone handling (scripts, hiring, and responses to insurance/cost questions) loses new patients to competitors, and recommends training staff to improve scheduling and difficult-conversation skills.
Chapters
Let's talk for a minute about the telephone. It's our best friend and it's our worst enemy. That phone can ring and ring and ring. And sometimes we all know if you've worked the front desk, it's just like a love hate relationship. And the one thing that I can tell you is practices don't pay enough attention to what is occurring on the phone. How we're talking, who we hire to answer the phone, who we hire for the front desk, their skill set on the phone. The phone is the most valuable tool we have to make initial contact with patients. And when we don't answer that phone properly, and I don't just mean, you know, good morning, Dr. St. Louis office. This is Jean speaking. How may I help you? I mean, more specifically, when the patient starts asking questions about insurance appointments, cost, how are we handling those tough conversations and what are we saying with that patient? I know when I worked the front desk and Molly and Paige worked the front desk, who are our consultants, we often were faced with a challenge. And our challenge was, how do I get this patient in? And that was what we challenged ourselves to do because we knew our job was to get that patient scheduled. And if they're a new patient, they're calling other practices and they're judging how you answer the phone versus how those other practices answer the phone. So I would encourage you to take some training on phone skills.
