The phone rings non-stop at your medical practice, and sometimes it seems like all you can do is put up with the incessant work it creates. Practice leaders struggle to develop proper phone strategies for staff but often give up before they've found the right ones. Sometimes, they simply move the phone answering function to a back room and try to ignore the noise.

But thinking that way is a mistake. Every day, potential buyers call your practice, and too often, experience poor customer service, which turns them away. Inefficient phone handling also frustrates existing patients and hurts patient retention. All told, poor phone management causes practices to lose much-needed appointments and revenue more often than they suspect.

Luckily, there's a way to turn this situation around. In "Own the Phone: Proven Ways of Handling Calls, Securing Appointments, and Growing Your Healthcare Practice," author Spencer Peller offers a detailed plan for phone improvement which can generate quick results for any medical practice. This includes in-depth instructions on how to set up office phones to your best advantage.

"The telephone is the lifeline of your practice," Peller says. "No matter what technology or medium exists today that allows patients to communicate with you and your staff, or how easy it has become for them to learn more about your practice from the Internet, the phone still sits front and center as the key ingredient in their doctor selection process."

Own the Phone provides high-level strategies to change the behavior of each member of your team and phone handling best practices that can be put in place quickly and easily (and made repeatable for everyone in the organization), as well as strategies for training.