How We Help
Live medical answering services from Absent Answer can help with:
Delivering 24/7 medical call coverage
Healthcare needs don’t stop when your office closes. And if your office is busy, patients won’t like waiting on hold. Medical answering services from Absent Answer are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Whether we’re answering after hours patient calls or simply providing overflow coverage for those busy periods when your front desk staff can’t take every call, you can always depend on our team of medical receptionists to be available and ready to take calls on your behalf.
Improving patient call quality
Calls to your medical practice are important, and every detail impacts the quality of care your patients receive. From the tone of the operator’s voice to their level of understanding and ability to efficiently process the patient’s request, every step presents an opportunity to either improve the quality of care or to make a bad situation worse. We recognize the importance of these calls and train every agent on medical accounts to ensure each and every call helps your practice deliver an exceptional patient experience.
Budget friendly medical receptionists
Hiring receptionists to handle your medical call center needs would be a significant expense. Whereas office staff may be busy all day, after hours call volume is often intermittent, and hiring dedicated staff to sit idle would be a waste of resources. Our medical answering service operators are available around the clock, but unlike employees, you only pay us for the time you need. With Absent Answer, you can ensure there’s always someone there to pick up the phone without increasing your payroll. Our medical call center agents are highly trained customer service representatives who can deliver the level of service your patients expect without the traditional costs of maintaining office staff.
Secure, HIPAA compliant communications
Every aspect of our medical call answering service is HIPAA compliant. From the telephone recordings and software systems to the encrypted methods used to deliver secure communications, every step of the process is setup to ensure patient privacy remains fully intact. Our secure text messaging service even allows your providers to send and receive secure messages on their smartphones using a dedicated secure messaging application.
Experienced medical answering service
Experienced medical answering service
Taking care of patients is your top priority, and taking care of your inbound calls is ours. Why risk sending important calls to voicemail, relying on error prone technology, or unnecessarily burdening on-call staff when you can depend on a trusted team of HIPAA compliant call center professionals? At Absent Answer, we have been answering calls for medical offices for over 20 years, and our solutions are designed to meet the needs of your practice while delivering an exceptional telephone experience to your patients and staff.


Eliminating unnecessary distractions while keeping you connected
Eliminating unnecessary distractions while keeping you connected
Medical answering services from Absent Answer give healthcare professionals a dependable, 24 hour solution for handling their inbound calls. Built with providers in mind, our medical call center services are designed to function as an extension of your practice, triaging calls per your instructions, taking messages, handling routine office calls, and ensuring only true emergencies reach on-call personnel. With over two decades experience managing the call center needs of medical practices throughout the state of Florida and across the United States, we have the expertise to deliver exceptional patient care without drastically increasing operating costs or provider overhead.
Whether you need an after hours medical answering service, daytime overflow support, or an on demand service that’s ready to take calls around the clock, our friendly receptionists are there to assist, answering calls in the name of your practice and delivering patients with the level of service they’ve come to expect from your office.
Answering Service Features
Why send important calls to voicemail after business hours? With Absent Answer, you never have to miss a phone call again. After hours answering services ensure there’s always someone available to take your calls.
After hours telephone answering services can help with:
How Medical Answering Services Work
Having Absent Answer answer calls for your medical practice is easier than you think. It’s as simple as establishing your account instructions, training our team, and then forwarding your phone lines whenever you want our agents to answer calls on your behalf. You can turn your calls over to Absent Answer at the same time every evening when your office closes for the day, during holidays when the office is closed, during busy periods, or on demand. We’re there to answer whenever your business needs us.
Here’s how a medical answering service works:
1.
A Patient or Provider Calls
A caller dials your regular office phone number. This could be a patient trying to reach an on-call doctor with an emergency, a facility or provider calling in a consult, routine office calls, or any other type of call that your office may receive.
2.
We Answer
Instead of ringing your office line and going to voicemail, burdening your on-call personnel directly, or sitting on hold while your office is busy handling other tasks, all calls made to your office are routed directly to our friendly call center agents, who immediately recognize that the call is for your practice and greets the caller accordingly. When setup as an overflow solution, calls will only reach us when your regular office line is busy.
3.
We Take Action
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to medical call center solutions, so our team is armed with your precise instructions and ready to handle each call per your expectations. We can perform triage and route the call to your on-call physician or nursing staff if certain criteria are met, refer callers to dial 911 or call back during office hours, take a message for the office, or complete routine administrative tasks directly over the phone, such as providing general information or scheduling appointments.
Comprehensive Medical Telephone Answering Services
In today’s 24/7, interconnected world, there aren’t many healthcare organizations that wouldn’t benefit from extended business hours and improved call center communications. As a result, the use cases for medical telephone answering services are almost endless. From solo physicians in need of daytime office support to large practices juggling dozens of on-call providers and after-hours patient emergencies, there are a multitude of medical professionals who rely on Absent Answer to support their call-answering needs.
Common uses of our medical answering services include:
- After Hours Medical Answering Service. Do you want calls to your practice answered live 24 hours a day? Do you wish you could keep your receptionist on-call around the clock? Our medical answering services have you covered after hours, delivering the patient friendly service you need, when you need it.
- Emergency Medical Answering Service. Our team can function as your front-line call center triage department, handling on-call requests and processing them per instructions that you put in place in advance. We answer and screen calls, then follow precise instructions to dispatch the call to the appropriate personnel, like an on-call doctor or nurse practitioner. We can also ensure only the right calls get through, saving you unnecessary interruptions.
- Overflow Office Answering Service. Don’t leave patients hanging when your office experiences a spike in phone calls. Our Overflow answering services for medical practices is a cost effective way to ensure you always have backup telephone coverage. When your phone lines are busy, excess calls overflow to our medical call center, where our agents answer in the name of your practice and handle calls as an extension of your office.
- Medical Appointment Scheduling. Give your patients the flexibility of scheduling or rescheduling appointments at their convenience. Our medical answering service can access web-based systems and manage appointment needs on your behalf.
Medical professionals that utilize our live answering services include:
- Medical Practices Large & Small
- General Practitioners
- Specialists/Surgeons
- Home Health Care & Nursing Agencies
- Hospitalists
- Hospitals & Inpatient Facilities
- Dentists
- And more!
Medical Call Center Solutions Built to Fit Your Practice
Each and every medical answering service account is setup to serve the specific needs of the organization and its providers, patients, and other stakeholders. We can custom tailor your account so that it delivers the precise mix of call coverage and messaging services that you need in order to maintain operations. Our medical call taking services can even be setup so that they’re dynamic and change based on the situation or time of day.
Examples of medical call center services include:
- 24/7 Medical Virtual Receptionist. We enable you to improve patient care by ensuring there’s a live voice to take calls at all times. Routine requests can be automatically handled and scheduled with no need for the on call personnel involvement. Our answering service enables you to deliver prompt patient care while reducing the number of concerns reaching your providers.
- On-call Paging and Call Patching. Even though your office is closed, patients may still encounter an urgent issue that requires immediate attention. Our medical on-call scheduling software enables practices to define the exact contact and contact procedures for their on-call personnel, which is then used by our agents whenever a call needs to be paged or patched through to the provider on-call. Urgent messages can be immediately text messaged, paged, emailed or directly called out to your on-call so your patient concerns are addressed as quickly as possible.
- Automated Telephone Attendant. Many clients reduce their costs by 40% by using our specialized voicemail pre-screening service. Many medical practices use our pre-screening service to inform patients of office hours or other information. The caller has the option of leaving a voicemail for the office or speaking with an agent in our call center.
Medical Answering Service Features
- Fully HIPAA compliant. Absent Answer’s medical answering service provides HIPAA-compliant encrypted messaging and call taking procedures to safeguard all private patient data.
- Call recording and reporting. All calls are recorded and time stamped, with detailed call reports made available so that you can track usage and maintain compliance.
- On-call scheduling software. If your staff has rotating on-call coverage or specialized instructions based on the time or date, our specialized On-Call Scheduling software will ensure the correct person is contacted every time. When changes are made, they instantly update our agent screen so they may page the call to the correct person.
- Smartphone integration. Our medical call center allows you to update on-call status, view directory information as well as send text messages. You can also let us know that you’ve received our messages with our ‘one button check-in’ feature.
- Secure message delivery. Information is securely delivered via SMS or email. Have information delivered to you the way you want it. We can utilize SMS text messaging delivered directly to your mobile device, encrypted email, direct phone call to your cell phone for urgent matters after hours, voicemail delivery, integrated messaging, or pager.
About Absent Answer
At Absent Answer, we’ve been answering medical calls since 1985. In fact, before we were Absent Answer, we were known as the Physician’s Answering Service.
Each and every call, message, order and appointment gets handled accurately – 100% of the time. That kind of reliability allows you to focus on managing your practice while we worry about handling your important calls and serving as your virtual medical receptionist. The personal touch that your callers feel is the same personal attention you can expect every day.
To your patients, we are a friendly, helpful extension of your team.
To you and your providers, Absent Answer is an accurate and reliable virtual assistant who knows you and your practice. We are your virtual assistants who never miss a call, take a day off, or call in sick.
The Absent Answer Difference
Why choose Absent Answer as your medical office answering service?
Positive, Outgoing Staff
When we say we have the best personnel in the industry, we mean it. Our medical call center specialists have been with us an average of 8 years. The industry average is a mere 18 months. Some of our staff has been with us since the beginning.
We only hire positive, outgoing people to assist your patients, so you can have peace of mind knowing your calls will be handled in the most courteous and professional manner. Our extensive training program ensures that all of our employees are prepared to answer any question a caller may ask.
Highly Trained Virtual Receptionists
Absent Answer works closely with you to develop service benchmarks and create a consistent training program to ensure that all agents are fully trained to provide your physicians, nurses, office staff, and patients with exceptional service.
We would welcome the opportunity to have someone from our management and training team visit your office and review how to best implement your procedures.
Superior Quality Standards & Reliability
Our clients consistently rate the quality of our service as good/excellent 97% of the time.
Our service quality is just one reason that successful medical offices turn to Absent Answer to help them grow. Our call center has taken great care to make sure we have redundancy wherever possible in our operations. We realize that being available on a 24/7 basis for you requires us to have excellent up-time.
US-based call center
All our agents work and live in the USA. There is no offshore outsourcing.
FAQs
Can you answer patient calls the way I want you to?
Yes, we set up each account per your instructions so that we fully understand your requirements and train our agents on the correct procedures. We work as an extension of your office and can handle every patient situation accordingly.
Do you archive all messages taken after hours?
Yes. We keep a history of all your messages for 1 year. This also includes all voice-recorded conversations. All message storage systems are fully secure and HIPAA compliant.
Does Absent Answer offer medical answering services nationwide?
Yes, because of Absent Answer’s advanced technologies and 24-hour availability, it does not matter where your medical office is physically located. We take calls for healthcare organizations nationwide.
Do my patients still call my office number after hours?
Yes, your patients call the same published business number after hours. The only difference is that you forward that line to us when you’re unavailable, and the calls reach our medical answering service personnel instead.
Related Healthcare Call Center Solutions
- Medical Answering Service
- Physicians Answering Service
- Secure Messaging Service (HIPAA Compliant)
- After-Hours Medical Office Answering Service
- Emergency Medical Answering Service
- Hospitalist Answering Service
- Medical Appointment Scheduling Service
- Virtual Medical Receptionist
- Veterinary Answering Service
Get Started Today
Ready for a medical answering service you can depend on? We are ready to help. Contact our account team today to discuss your medical telephone answering needs and learn more about our affordable pricing packages.
We deliver medical answering services nationwide and throughout Florida, including Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and more!