A staggering 88% of healthcare appointments are booked by phone, indicating that calling remains the preferred way of scheduling appointments and receiving other assistance. Because of this, healthcare organizations need strong communication technology.
That’s where cloud telephony plays a vital role in this mission. For instance, global voice coverage and remote consultations, facilitated by cloud technology, empower patients to access care and connect with your organization from anywhere.
Virtual phone numbers are another cost-effective and feature-rich cloud solution revolutionizing healthcare communication globally. These are cloud-based phone numbers that use VoIP technology to transmit calls over the internet, eliminating geographical limitations.
In this article, we’ll explore how healthcare organizations can use virtual numbers to:
- Prioritize Patient Experience with Phone Communication
- Provide Global Toll-Free Customer Support
- Centralize Communication
- Forward Calls for Improved Staff Accessibility
- Connect and Research Globally
- Maintain Privacy for Telehealth Consultations
- Enhance Outreach for Public Health Initiatives
- Set Up 24/7 Support Hotlines for Non-Emergency Needs
- Prepare with Disaster Recovery
Cloud Telephony Solutions for Healthcare
The healthcare industry thrives on innovation, constantly seeking ways to bridge the gap between patients and service providers. And healthcare communication technology is one place where advancement is needed.
Traditional phone systems often create gaps in healthcare communication due to:
- Limited accessibility — Traditional systems are bound to physical locations, meaning healthcare and life sciences companies must remain at specific locations to provide care. This can be limiting, especially in large healthcare facilities or for providers who need mobility to check on patients throughout a facility.
- Lack of integration with digital health records — Unlike cloud phone systems that have no-code integrations, it is hard to connect regular phone systems with web-based portals and other digital management systems.
- Scalability issues — Adding international coverage, additional phone lines, locations, and features often comes at a higher cost with traditional systems.
- Limited remote access — With telehealth and remote consultations becoming increasingly common, traditional phone systems fall short. This is because users cannot make and receive calls outside the physical network, limiting remote and flexible access.
These gaps can lead to delays and downtime in patient care, miscommunication among healthcare professionals, and ultimately, a decrease in patient satisfaction.
Here, healthcare organizations may benefit from a more flexible and scalable solution like VoIP phone systems.
What Cloud Telephony Helps With?
Cloud-based phone systems, on the other hand, offer healthcare organizations more flexibility and reliability. They address a myriad of challenges faced by healthcare providers, including the need for global reach, secure telehealth options, and efficient call management.
With VoIP, you can cost-effectively scale up or down based on demand, integrate seamlessly with management systems, access call management features, and provide remote access. This will help organizations meet patient needs and deliver the best possible care. And it is particularly significant during health crises, where timely communication can drastically influence outcomes.
Furthermore, new developments in cloud telephony, such as AI insights, call analytics, and advanced integrations with telehealth platforms, will continue to revolutionize patient interactions.
By leveraging cloud-based communication solutions, healthcare organizations can overcome geographical barriers, enhance patient privacy, and streamline communication processes with ease.
How Healthcare Organizations Use Virtual Numbers: 9 Use Cases
Virtual numbers offer a powerful and flexible communication solution for healthcare organizations. And the best part? They come packed with an array of advanced calling features for efficient call management.
Here’s how healthcare companies can leverage virtual numbers to improve patient care, streamline operations, enhance outreach efforts, and more:
1. Prioritize Patient Experience with Phone Communication
Phone conversations continue to be the preferred communication channel when discussing healthcare concerns, followed by video and text. This means healthcare organizations must prioritize accessible phone channels.
Increase healthcare accessibility and customer satisfaction by using virtual numbers in target regions where your customers are located. Virtual numbers offer a reliable, secure, and convenient way to connect with patients, fostering better communication and improving the overall patient experience.
2. Provide Global Toll-Free Customer Support
For global healthcare organizations, providing accessible and affordable customer support is crucial. Long-distance and international calls via traditional phone systems can be expensive, leaving patients hesitant to reach out. Eliminating or reducing the cost of long-distance calls removes a major barrier to communication, encouraging patients to reach out for support or to schedule appointments.
Virtual toll-free numbers offer a game-changing alternative. You can get international toll-free numbers for your target countries. These calls will be cost-free for callers calling within those countries, even if they are ultimately forwarded elsewhere. This means you don’t even need a physical presence in the country or region.
With a global virtual phone number provider like Global Call Forwarding, you can get local and toll-free numbers from more than 160 countries around the world. And our phone numbers come with advanced telephony features like call forwarding and routing features for better call management. View our country coverage.
Renowned healthcare company Novartis used toll-free numbers for various Latin American and Caribbean regions. With these numbers, Novartis could route important customer calls to their regional centers and boost global customer support.
3. Centralize Communication
Medical establishments like labs and clinics operating across different cities and countries can use virtual numbers to centralize business communication. You can do this in a few different ways:
- Purchase local numbers for target regions and have all incoming calls forwarded to one central location.
- Get one nationwide phone number (also known as national numbers) for that target country instead of multiple ones for each location within the country. Calls to this central virtual number can be automatically routed to the appropriate clinic or specialist based on the patient’s needs.
This way, you prioritize making it convenient for patients and medical facilities to reach your business—no matter their or your teams’ location. And since these are local or toll-free numbers, callers won’t have to pay high long-distance fees. When you consolidate communication technology like this, you improve call handling and caller experience.
4. Forward Calls for Improved Staff Accessibility
Call forwarding is also beneficial in improving staff accessibility. You can redirect incoming calls to healthcare providers’ mobile devices and ensure patients and international medical tourists can reach doctors, nurses, home healthcare workers, and other medical professionals wherever located. These professionals too can respond promptly to patient inquiries, emergency situations, etc., regardless of their location.
For example, home healthcare agencies that employ mobile nurses can use virtual numbers to connect patients with nurses. This will enable teams and agencies to coordinate care plans, schedule patient visits, and quickly forward emergency calls directly to nurses’ mobile phone devices. This ensures everyone involved in the care process stays informed and facilitates a collaborative approach.
You can further improve and centralize call handling with IVR for healthcare services. When patients call, the IVR presents them with a menu of options, like scheduling appointments, requesting prescription refills, etc. Based on the caller’s input, the IVR will direct calls to the right destination, without the need for human intervention.
By distributing calls efficiently, you can improve patient satisfaction by allowing them to reach healthcare providers when they need them most.
Related: IVR Templates for Medical Answering Services
5. Connect and Research Globally, Including Hard-to-Reach Areas
Virtual numbers bypass traditional phone limitations, allowing researchers to connect with participants and partners anywhere in the world. Advertise these local numbers on marketing and outreach material to encourage interested participants. This broadens the pool for clinical trials and ensures valuable data isn’t limited by location.
For clinical research organizations operating in diverse geographical regions, virtual numbers can offer extended global coverage, including access to hard-to-reach areas. You can smoothly communicate with research participants to collect data efficiently as well as facilitate collaboration among stakeholders.
6. Maintain Privacy for Telehealth Consultations
Virtual numbers with an outbound calling solution allow healthcare providers to manage their caller ID when calling patients. This feature is particularly useful for private consultations as telemedicine professionals can display a business caller ID, keeping their personal numbers private.
On the other hand, masking the outbound caller ID with your business phone number offers a sense of familiarity to patients receiving the call. This improves the chances of patients answering calls.
Providers like Global Call Forwarding offer a number masking feature that can be used for outbound caller ID management. Read our article on ways to use number masking.
7. Enhance Outreach for Public Health Initiatives
You can leverage toll-free numbers for public health outreach initiatives. Engage with the community on vaccination drives, preventive care campaigns, health education programs, etc. through dedicated 24/7 toll-free hotlines.
Toll-free numbers are free to call, making it easier for the public to connect and work with your organization. This can further help establish your business as a reliable source of healthcare knowledge.
8. Set Up 24/7 Support Hotlines for Non-Emergency Needs
Similarly, you can also set up 24/7 patient support hotlines to:
- Provide non-emergency medical advice,
- Streamline medical tourism processes,
- Answer basic questions, and
- Offer guidance to patients outside of regular office hours.
This reduces unnecessary emergency room visits and improves overall patient care coordination.
9. Prepare with Disaster Recovery
As virtual numbers are cloud-based, they are not tied to a physical location. And with features like call forwarding and routing, calls can be quickly rerouted to alternate locations like remote service centers, mobile devices, employees’ homes, etc in the event of a disaster.
And you can easily scale virtual phone systems up or down as well as add more destinations depending on demand. This provides additional flexibility and capability to handle high call volumes during emergencies.
This ensures that healthcare organizations can maintain communication channels even during emergencies or disruptions at their physical facilities.
How Can GCF Help?
As the healthcare landscape evolves, with tech advancements and shifting patient expectations, the need for innovative communication solutions becomes increasingly clear. Cloud telephony equips your organization with communication tools to improve patient care and access.
Embrace the future of healthcare communication with cloud telephony. Global Call Forwarding has been helping healthcare organizations worldwide with our virtual numbers and call handling features. Reach out to us and find out how your business can benefit from virtual numbers.
Speak to our experts today, contact us now!
