Today’s instant-everything/digital-everything world means that we’re only a few years away from not needing a landline phone in your office, right?
Despite what you may think, that day is not going to happen anytime soon. And despite society’s desire to digitize everything, the medical sector remains a bit of an outlier. A substantial number of people still want the personal experience of calling their medical professional and talking to a human being.
Today, the person answering your phone and following up on your voicemails is as important as they would have been to a medical practice in the 1980s.
And here are three modern statistics to prove it.
Surprised by this? Yes, almost 4 out of every 10 Gen Z-aged patients still want to talk to you on the phone.
We recently wrote a blog about how to appeal to younger patients without alienating older ones. In it, we talked about the need to offer online booking and digital services/messages for younger patients, which is true. But offering exceptional customer care in 2025 means blending both cutting-edge technology and old-school personal interactions.
Being inaccessible over the phone will be a problem for most of your senior market, as well as almost 40% of your younger market.
Someone needs to be present to answer when a patient or a would-be patient calls, whether they’re calling from a rotary phone or an iPhone.
This stat encompasses all age demographics combined, and it represents Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.
This means that you can essentially expect just about a 50-50 split in terms of phone bookings compared to online bookings. You can see how catering to one and not the other would be a bad business move.
Here’s something to remember. The people who prefer to book online really prefer it. It’s a deal-breaker. If you have a clunky or unreliable online experience (i.e., they book it online but it doesn’t show up at your end), these customers are probably going to start shopping around for a practice with a better online experience.
The people calling your office are slightly more forgiving, but they still have a certain expectation of service. They know you’re busy and are willing to wait on hold to speak to someone. But they won’t wait forever. How long will they wait? The average person’s patience is directly proportional to how important they view the task. They will probably wait longer for you than they would for a pizza shop. But it’s been estimated that their temperament will change around the 9-minute mark.
It’s also been reported that over 60% of surveyed people prefer receiving a callback rather than waiting in a queue, so offering that option whenever possible would be a great asset.
This one is less surprising. Almost half of all people, of all ages, prefer to talk to you over the phone.
There are countless reasons for this. There is the instant gratification of asking a question and not having to wait for a follow-up email or portal message. There is the discretion and security of being able to talk to your physician in a private one-on-one session. There is the comfort of an empathetic human voice on the other side when talking about sensitive health matters. And there is the feeling of hearing optimism in that voice when they talk about options.
Of course, you know all this. But you also know that there is a finite number of hours in a day. How do you carve out more time for more attentive patient calls?
If you’re a sole practitioner, you’re also probably the one who has to answer the phone, return voicemails, and answer emails. It’s been estimated that about 30% of all calls to medical practices go unanswered. If you’re a one-person show, the number is probably considerably higher.
At the same time, you have even less time for phone tag. If you have to chase people down after they leave a voicemail, that’s time wasted for both of you. In general, if you can call someone back within 1 hour, you are 7x more likely to get a hold of them. But that may not seem like an option for you.
But the good news is that you have options:
In a lot of cases, overworked owners/physicians will assume they need another physician when they feel their days are sliding out of control.
That could work, but a far less costly option could be to hire someone to take on the secondary and tertiary tasks that are silently eating your time every single day. This person could be a receptionist who also responds to emails, or a medical assistant, or an office administrator/manager to handle more of the business side of things.
Now, you have the time to focus on patient care, which is how your practice makes money, while your correspondence is still handled in a timely fashion. Existing patients are happier, and potential patients turn into customers without slipping through the cracks.
If you cannot afford to hire a full-time/on-site staffer yet, you can still get relief from some of the non-medical tasks that are currently weighing you down.
More and more cash-pay, functional medicine, concierge, and direct primary care practitioners are hiring virtual assistants (VAs). This helps them offload a number of the time-consuming tasks that are keeping them from being with their patients and generating more money for the practice.
You can hire a capable and hardworking VA to handle tasks such as:
And all this can be removed from your plate at a fraction of the cost of an on-site employee.
We provide a do-it-all EHR, practice management, and patient portal solution that helps you slash the time spent on administrative tasks, freeing up your time to work ON your business instead of being trapped by tasks IN your business. At the same time, Cerbo offers online scheduling, text message reminders, and supports integrations with your CRM.
“While it takes a while to customize Cerbo to fit your practice, it is well worth the investment and ultimately saves time and money. The best part is that this translates into successful patient outcomes while minimizing the burden of charting, educating, and day-to-day administrative tasks on the practice team.”
— Dr. Kristann Heinz, MD, RD, Red Hill Medical + Wellness, Pennsylvania.
