Home Forums Discussions General Discussion After Hours Call Service

Curious how others handle after hours calls. We're a small practice and rarely get urgent calls after hours, so we're trying to see if there's a less expensive option than the call service. The big issue is we need to be able to easily switch call between our two providers (they alternate weekends), and they need to be able to return calls without patients seeing their personal phone number.

One of our providers found Spruce - anyone using them?

add another cell phone to someones plan it becomes the oncall cell phone

Our telephone system makes a call / sends a notification when an urgent message is left. I just block my caller ID (*67) when returning the call.

We have NOT ever used a call service. They are useless as they cannot answer any medical questions anyway. They are a human paid forwarder, like a telephone operator that switched phones 60 years ago.

Our phone company set us up with a separate mailbox on their system. We forward the phones at the end of the day to that box. It has a menu option to press 1 for a message, press 2 to have the doctor. The on call doctor's number is in there, so when you press 2 it forwards to your cell phone. Unforward in the morning.

I feel very blessed to have this patient panel. They are very respectful and I get called less than once per month by the thousands of patients. Can hardly believe that! But having same-day scheduling access really helps a lot - they know they can get in next morning.

That sounds amazing. I think Alaska is living the dream. While my patients respect me, it would be more like 30 or more per month.

I use Doximity on my cell phone to contact patients after hours. Their free service, once set up, allows you to call from your cell phone but the office phone number shows up on the patient's phone.

I have used a company called directpage.com. Originally they supplied me with a pager. For over 10 years now, the number is forwarded to my cell as a text message. While it has the ability to leave a voice message, my message states do not leave a message only text. It has been running about $12/ mo.

I typically get 1-4 pages a day. Many are fairly straightforward. My voicemail states "we do no give refills on routine medicine nor make appointments" I will tell patients who don't follow the rules to call the office for that problem, I won't help them, but that doesn't happen often.

I am now testing one of the "free*" telephone number systems. I have put it on one office but not the other. Many patients "know" the pager number so they don't go to my voicemail to look it up. If it works well (essentially identical to how the directpage system worked, I will probably switch to that. * Although free I picked up a package for lifetime unlimited no ads and such.

I'll report back in a couple weeks.

Things have been hectic over the last several months, nothing bad just busy. I have checked in on the board, but haven't posted much. I'll try to be more interactive

I pay too much, but I hate to change now. The best thing (which is probably no big deal) is they send text and email, so I NEVER miss a page and it is Caller ID. Just click on it. Plus, there it forwards to my email in case I leave my phone home. And, there is a record.

90% of my pages are easy. There are 10% where I want to throw the phone across the room. This is why I would hate to just answer the phone and not know what the deal was.

Ours is the exact same as Boondoc. Our doctor gets only 1-2 urgent calls per week. The message says, "if you have an urgent medical problem, press 2" and this has helped cut down the number of calls tremendously. (The system used to be, the office number is just forwarded to the doctor's cell phone and she would get 2+ calls per day.)