The Highest Quality Telephone Answering Service in the United States

Centratel

Telephone Answering Service

hospice answering service

Secure, Reliable, and Compliant: The Benefits of Using Centratel’s Answering Service in Home Health and Hospice

October 11, 2023
Home Healthcare & Hospice
By Centratel

Introduction

In the labyrinthine realm of Home Health and Hospice care, the necessity for a steadfast and reliable telephone answering service is non-negotiable. Centratel’s Answering Service provides an unerring beacon of support, seamlessly fitting into the landscape of patient-centric care where emergencies are unpredictable, and responses need to be swift and accurate.

The Unpredictable Nature of Home Health and Hospice

Home Health and Hospice environments are dynamic, presenting a myriad of emergencies daily—falls, medication errors, and breathing difficulties, to name a few. Amidst this, an after-hours answering service plays a pivotal role in providing timely, reliable support, acting as a linchpin for efficient communication and rapid response.

Addressing Emergencies Efficiently

Rapid Response to Falls

In the delicate tapestry of home health, falls are urgent crises that demand immediate attention. Each call at Centratel is not just answered; it is responded to with alacrity, providing immediate support and connection to the necessary assistance, underlining the importance of a 24/7 answering service.

Managing Medication Errors

Medication errors are precarious, often teetering on the edge of a medical crisis. Centratel acts as the conduit for swift communication, facilitating instant connection and information exchange for urgent medication adjustments.

Handling Breathing Difficulties

Breathing difficulties are silent, sudden, and need an immediate response. Centratel’s agile and adept team is trained to provide support instantaneously, ensuring that help is dispatched without delay.

Navigating Through Challenges

Acute Symptom Management

Efficient communication is the cornerstone of acute symptom management. With Centratel’s answering service for healthcare, the bridge between caregivers and medical professionals is fortified, ensuring that symptom management is not just reactive but proactive and informed.

Handling Caregiver Stress

Centratel recognizes the silent struggle of caregiver burnout. Through our empathetic and reliable communication services, we provide an invisible support system that caregivers can lean on during stressful times.

Crisis in Caregiving Support

During a caregiving crisis, support needs to be tangible and immediate. Centratel stands as a pillar providing the necessary communication scaffolding, ensuring that support is not just promised but delivered.

Centratel’s Unwavering Support

Our 24-hour answering service offers uninterrupted support, providing a fixed fee per call service that guarantees not just efficient communication but also dependable billing.

The Centratel Advantage

In the world of health, every call matters. With our live answering service for small businesses, Centratel offers a professional service that is profoundly human. We avoid AI technology, ensuring that every call is handled with accuracy and speed, providing a service that is transparent and consistent in billing.

Conclusion

Centratel’s services are not just about answering calls; it’s about providing secure, reliable, and compliant support in the sensitive environment of Home Health and Hospice care. For a service that stands as a paragon of reliability and efficiency, visit Centratel’s specialized answering service for Home Health and Hospice. For a detailed price quote tailored to your unique needs, please visit our price quote page.

Image by Freepik

A Telephone Answering Service Representative taking calls at Centratel

Centratel, based in Bend, Oregon, is a leading national telephone answering service with a specialized focus on the Home Health and Hospice sector. This service offers unmatched support to a wide range of healthcare businesses throughout the United States, ensuring effective and seamless communication solutions around the clock. Renowned for its exceptional quality and reliability, Centratel is recognized as the top answering service in the Home Health and Hospice industry, consistently outperforming competitors in both performance and client satisfaction.

Taking the Next Step

For more specifics on cost, to start the onboarding process, or if you have questions, fill out this form with your basic information and if it’s during regular working hours (M-F 8am to 8pm EST or 5am to 5pm PST), we’ll get back to you within minutes. Or, during the above hours, you can simply call us at 800-664-7159 or send us an email to inquiry@centratel.com.

(And note: for a quick orientation on how we operate, take a moment to review one or more of the key points listed below.)

For more specifics on cost, to start the onboarding process, or to just talk to us, fill out this form with your basic information and if it’s during regular working hours (M-F 8am to 8pm EST or 5am to 5pm PST), we’ll get back to you within minutes. Or, during the above hours, you can simply call us at 800-664-7159 or send us an email to inquiry@centratel.com.

(And note: for a quick orientation on how we operate, take a moment to review one or more of the key points listed on the right.)

 
Terms of Service

Why Choose Centratel

BY SAM CARPENTER
December 1, 2024

1.CENTRATEL’S UNIQUE 30-DAY FREE TRIAL

Why is this important? Because it will provide you a truly accurate estimate of cost (we bill monthly), it will demonstrate our quality, and it gives both sides of this equation—you and Centratel—the necessary time to refine and perfect operational details.

Here’s a testimonial from a new medical client that had just finished their 30-day trial: “Of course, I love the cost as it is close to the amount I was allowed by the president of the company. I told him that if we did not continue with Centratel, I would resign as the Director of Customer Service, and I meant it. It’s a great fit. We have had NOT ONE complaint from a patient or in-house which, as you know, we received daily with our former answering service. I love you, Centratel, and the price. I’m ready to sign whatever documents you require. Thanks for the great service, and the free month! To a great partnership! -KB, Phoenix“

2.STATISTICALLY, THE BEST IN THE U.S.?

Answering service quality is 100% dependent on human action and reaction, and in the course of a single day a multitude of human decisions are made by the people who process the calls: Telephone Service Representatives, or TSRs. (Some answering services refer to them as “agents.” Others, “operators.”)

Like any other answering service, at Centratel we’re dealing with real live human beings and so human errors occur. But within this labor intensive service industry that is historically known for marginal quality, Centratel’s error rate is light years ahead of established standards. Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (July through September, 2024) was 1 customer-reported error for every 6,077 message transactions processed. That statistic is unmatched.

There’s no artificial intelligence manipulation, we do not offshore calls, and we were founded and have always operated within the United States. (Note that since early 2020, the COVID six-foot social distancing mandate drove thousands of small-to-medium sized answering services out of business. Large, foreign-owned multi-nationals, often disguised by the name of the local answering services they acquired, now thoroughly dominate the industry. Hence, an even further decline in general service quality. See this analysis.)

3.CUSTOMER SERVICE EXTRAORDINAIRE

Your concerns and requests will be instantly acted upon. It’s a work ethic that stands out in stark contrast from the general quality decline in human-to-human business-customer communications. You’ve seen it yourself, all around. At Centratel you will know the customer service people you’re working with by name, appreciating their special listening abilities as well as their take-action-now comportments i.e. see the testimonial in point #1 above. ‘Nuff said!

4.GETTING STARTED: IT’S SIMPLE AND FAST

Getting your new Centratel answering service 30-day free trial started is accomplished within 24-48 hours. From the start, your “onboarding” customer service representative will be with you every step of the way, listening carefully to your concerns, answering questions, and offering suggestions.

5.NEW TO USING AN ANSWERING SERVICE?

A majority of our current answering service accounts switched to us from another service because of quality problems. However, if you have not used a service before, you are not familiar with the options, benefits, and pitfalls. As noted, our 30-day free trial provides you—and us—plenty of time to precisely refine your desired message-taking and delivery protocols; to get things exactly the way you want them to be without any financial risk, undue pressure, or obligation. 

6.PRICING

Starting at $89 per month, our rates rank in the mid-range of the industry. For call processing, we charge by the “transaction unit” rather than the duration of time spent handling calls. Large “mega-services” operating in the U.S. prefer time billing because it ensures the company is compensated for lower-paid/high-turnover — and thus slower — agents. No matter the quality or how long they keep your callers on hold, they still make a profit. And yes, it can get expensive.

In any answering service, it takes a long time for a new agent to become fast, efficient, and stable. At Centratel, we pamper and reward experienced agents (via higher pay and great benefits) and therefore have extremely low staff turnover. Needless to say, experienced agents make fewer errors than trainees who learn on-the-job.

7.ACCURATELY COMPARING ANSWERING SERVICE PRICING IS COMPLICATED

It’s apples and oranges. There isn’t an industry standard for billing, and each answering service has its own formula. Also, as noted above, some services charge by agent “time” while others charge by “work units.” Some others combine the two. At Centratel, we charge for the work we do, not by the time we spend. The raw truth is that the only reliable way to determine monthly cost for a new service is to use that service for a solid month. Most answering services offer a 7-day free trial or no trial at all.

8.BEWARE: MONTHLY OR 28-DAY BILLING?

Important! At Centratel, we use a “monthly” billing cycle in which invoices are compiled from the first day of a month to the last day of that month. When soliciting quotes from other services, be sure to ask if the base-rate charges are billed monthly or on a “28-day billing cycle.” There is no good reason for a 28-day billing cycle! It’s bait-and-switch: customers billed on a 28-day cycle actually receive thirteen billings per year and therefore the overall cost is higher.

9.NO CONTRACT AND SIMPLE TERMS OF SERVICE

We do not require a yearly contract for service because we believe you should have the opportunity to evaluate us real-time, without restraint. Our terms of service are simple and straight-forward.

10.VALUABLE FREE GIFT FOR CONTACTING US

If you take the time to discuss answering service with us, on the same day we will ship you a hardcover copy of Sam Carpenter’s bestselling book, Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, now in its 5th edition. We’ll send you a copy just for contacting us. (Sam is the founder and President of Centratel. December 1st 2024 marks his fortieth year of ownership.)