Have you ever stopped to count how many scam calls your medical practice receives on a daily basis? Unfortunately, what was once considered a nuisance has become an epidemic, particularly since the start of the pandemic.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, the proliferation of false phone calls and text messages is a side effect of well-intentioned government initiatives meant to help small businesses. Unfortunately, while some scam calls are merely annoying, others are sophisticated enough to swindle businesses out of money, with a typical loss of $1,200 per successful fraudulent call. For example, one recent spam call scheme involves using a recording of the recipient’s response to a seemingly innocuous question to authorize payment of fraudulent charges.
How Scam Calls Can Affect Your Practice
Medical practices are frequent targets of spear-phishing attacks and other scams that aim to steal money or information. Falling victim to these schemes can lead to significant expenses, loss of patients’ trust, and wasted staff time. The costs of receiving scam calls include:
- Jammed phone lines prevent patients from getting through to you or require staff to wade through countless false messages and texts.
- Poor productivity and morale as your staff needs help keeping up with spam calls that take time away from other work and calls.
- Potential release of confidential information into the wrong hands, leading to compensation for patients, loss of reputation, and loss of trust.
- Increased time and effort spent reaching out to patients who no longer answer their phones due to frustration with fraudulent calls.
- RingRx’s HIPAA-compliant phone service provides a comprehensive phone system that simplifies communication between your practice and your patients, offering features far beyond other medical phone services.
Protect Your Practice from Scam Callers
Industry experts predict that scam callers are becoming more sophisticated in their approach. To help protect your practice, RingRx includes Call Reputation and Privacy Defender in every plan. Telesign powers these features and uses global mobile identity attributes to verify the identity of every call. Here’s how it works:
Call Reputation
A feature that identifies the nature of the calls to your practice. It provides visibility into valid and telemarketing calls by performing reputation lookups on all inbound calls. RingRx will indicate with a notation before the caller ID if scams or fraud are detected. Call Reputation works with Privacy Defender to provide a multi-layered approach to filtering spam and unwanted calls.
Without the ability to distinguish between important calls and unwanted spam calls, staff members must spend valuable time answering and sorting through each call. This decreases productivity and causes morale to suffer as staff members are forced to deal with frustrating and time-consuming calls. In addition, the potential release of confidential information into the wrong hands can also cause harm to patients and harm the reputation of your practice.
Privacy Defender
A unique feature minimizes unwanted telemarketing and spam calls. It identifies the reputation scores of inbound callers and presents risky calls with a challenge. First, callers must enter a two-digit randomized number to prove they are human. Then, calls are redirected to voicemail, and future calls are not challenged.
In addition to reducing fake calls, RingRx’s system decreases the cost-per-minute fees charged by your phone carrier. Furthermore, it reduces the risk of identity theft or other outcomes from fraudulent callers. This system confirms customer contact information, reducing your failed calls and messaging attempts. It also outsmarts robocallers by requiring them to enter a two-digit number on their keypad, a simple step for your patients.
With RingRx’s HIPAA-compliant phone system, you can set powerful protections in motion without inconveniencing or challenging any numbers automatically included in your trusted callers list.
Don’t let scam calls drain your practice’s productivity, morale, and finances. With RingRx’s Call Reputation and Privacy Defender, you can protect your practice from unwanted and risky spam calls in real-time, reduce the time staff spends dealing with them, and minimize the risk of identity theft or other outcomes from fraudulent callers. Contact us today for more information on how RingRx can offer your practice peace of mind.
