Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Onebox ...A pagerless pager system

Hi all,
This is off topic of AC, but we are almost all doctors here and what doctor likes their pager?

I HATED carrying a pager.

Since July 2007 I have given mine back to the paging service that has been ripping me off for 2 years. Instead of $200-250/month, I'm now paying only $30/month.

How? onebox.com

Here's how it works. Subscribe to the Onebox Receptionist Plan. When you leave at the end of the day, activate your call forwarding system to the Onebox 800 number that you are assigned. A pt or doctor calls your office, they are routed to Onebox. They are prompted to press "1 or 2."

1 to leave a non-urgent message (i.e. prescription refill, etc) that will be dealt with the following business day.

2 to page the on-call physician. they hear music on-hold, the system starts calling you at any of one to dozens of phone numbers that you might be at. It can call simultaneously or sequentially, the phone #'s you give it. Onebox finds you, you answer, and you are connected directly to the caller.

Don't want to talk to them? Press 7 and they are directed to voice mail.

Missed the call? No worry, Onebox will send a text to your cell phone that you have a missed call.

The caller left a message, how do I listen? Easy, check messages via your cell phone, land phone, VOIP, email, or internet.

I have many call partners, is it easy to change the call schedule? Extremely easy. Just go on the website, login, and in less than 15 seconds you can change the doctor taking calls for the night or for the whole week.

I've been using this since July 2007, I've had no problems.

I highly recommend you stop wasting money on your answering service.

One more point, you are thinking: my patients like when a person answers the phone, not a computer right? Do you want them to be hearing a tired/grumpy operator w/ no face or name say "Doctor's Office," or would they rather hear their beloved doctor come on the phone HIM/HERSELF, and say, "Hi, this is doctor SO&SO, how may I help you?"

Seriously do yourselves the favor of at least LOOKING at it. I can't believe I didn't drop the pager YEARS ago, however I only learned about Onebox this past summer.

Nothing's off topic on AC. Just no flaming. The only bad part of the above system is when I am talking to Adam and he suddenly has to tell me, "Wait, can I call you back, it's OneBox?" AARRGGHH!!

I can choose to answer Onebox or I can chose to continue talking to Bert when we are on the phone. Since we talk like teenagers on the phone every day, it's easier to say, "Bye Bert, call you back," than to let Onebox take a voicemail and call the patient back.

Who's the most important person in the practice? the patient.

Sorry Bert, never personal but rather just being a good doctor.

Bert does remind me of the only tiny little inconvenience. When you are on the phone w/ someone, and Onebox calls. You either need to wrap up the current call and answer Onebox or just let the caller leave a message and return their call in a few minutes. What's the difference between a pager in the case?

Who's the most important person in the practice?

The biller.

can one box leave bilingual messages?

Your Onebox Recorded welcome voice can be recorded in any way you want. You are allowed a professionally recorded message up to a max number of words (?150-200?).

You may also record your own personal messages and upload them to Onebox. You can upload your own music on hold too.

Onebox is also a email, fax, telephone, paging, conference calling center.....all in one. It's ridiculous!

You won't believe such a cool thing exists, and it sounds too good and too perfect to be true. But it's only $50/month, or $30/month if you subscribe to Updox for $30/YR.

I've been using it for 8 months, no hidden fees (EXCEPT if you go over 2000minutes of usage per month, then it adds up). So I only use it as after hours/lunch hour paging system.

check out their demo at Onebox Demo

let me know if you have any questions after looking at the demo.

Here's where I deviate from the demo, I use our own phones during office hours therefore do not accrue air time on Onebox, but anytime we are on "answering service" then we use the "call forwarding" feature of our phone system to route calls to my Onebox 1-800 number, thus utilizing the features of Onebox.