Arty,
Pretty much any message is asking for a staff member to get a patient on the line or call a patient, or get Dr. X on the phone, I send it to my receptionist. She can send it wherever it needs to go. I never send those by AC. All my receptionist will do is jot a detailed note down on a note pad. All the calls are answered by her. While long-term things like a referral is in AC and the staff that handles referrals continues to update it, we don't write in AC "Call Billy's mom." If, for whatever reason the mom calls back and another staff member gets the call, they are going to put them on hold any way and ask if anyone called so and so. Usually, my receptionist will go out of her way to put her name on the voice mail.
I will only use AC to message my triage nurse with patient matters such as so and so has a HB of 10.1. Can you call them and start Niferex? If she has to leave a voice mail, she leaves her direct line.
As far as the quick messages that you are talking about or maybe I am, we use Instant Messaging. IM takes me five seconds. Finding the patient, dragging it to AC's message area, writing the note, and sending it to my receptionist is just too much time. They, if they deal with it, document it. And, they will document it if there is no answer by the end of the day.
As to what if I send an AC message to a staff member who doesn't show up, my staff KNOWS they had BETTER check that person's inbox.
I had to think about this a while, because it seems like a valid question and yet we have never had even ONE communication problem. In general, the staff knows what it is about and the worst thing that can happen is the original staff member still has the message, and the call the mom the next day, and the mom tells her it has already been taken care of. Get IPMsg for free, and you will never look back.
