When working in a doctor’s office, of the receptionists most important tools are:

• 1: A Good Telephone system: the reason for this, is quite obvious but can be overlooked, as with today’s technology everything is PC based and most patients need immediate assistance with medical problems.

Any small problem with your telephone line can lead to too worse problems and or even death. Your telephone system should be able to give the receptionist the ability to operate the PC and telephone effortlessly and allow for cutting in on calls already transferred to the doctor in cases of emergencies and or any medical reason.

It should also allow your patients to be able to know what to do when in an emergency and the practice is closed, for example, emergency contact numbers to contact.

One of the best systems will even advise patients if they are on hold, while waiting for a call to answer on a busy day, what to have ready for their appointment.

• 2: Doctors Appointment System tool: One of the easiest and most common of these tools is a daily diary in the physical form, the one’s you buy at any convenience store or the one found on OUTLOOK.

The daily physical diary is usually used as an internal diary for appointments with local GP’s in hospitals and in small towns and can come in either standard issue but can be made specifically for that Doctors Appointment System, as it will allow different information to be written down.

The OUTLOOK diary is used mostly by your medical specialist as it not only allows more information to be loaded on it by the receptionists but also allows the specialist to view it immediately once it is saved and he or she can work accordingly.

This tool is great for those specialists who also have patients in the hospital and can work out when he or she needs or wants to have a quick chat with hospital staff and not disturb a patient he or she might be busy with or one that may be waiting for him or her

• 3: A Good, reliable and fast Internet line: This is highly important as per the diary system used on outlook as any changes made on your D A S, will be seen by the doctor immediately and he or she can see it immediately, especially in cases where he or she has to leave or must attend to an emergency but now the appointments were adjusted, so now he or she can communicate this back to their receptionists because they saw it immediately.
• 4: Good communication skills: When a patient calls a doctor for an appointment, it is not because he or she wants to, but needs to, and can be a bit traumatic especially if it relates to a child or a parent.

So when they do call to make appointments the receptionists should be able to communicate any information in such a way that the caller can understand the rules of the practice and its appointment schedules without offending or putting the caller under any more stress or trauma that they already are in.