Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Duplicate phone calls and messages.

Hi All. This may be something non-solo practices have already figured out. True Scenario: Have a new NP working with me. Patient calls and gets staff member A. Message with the question sent to me. I am awaiting test results and don't respond the same day. The next day, the patient calls again and leaves a voicemail. Staff member B gets the message and sends it to NP. Neither knows that I am already working on it. NP calls the patient back and leaves a message with her response. And, later I do the same. The recommendations are embarrassingly different.
Solutions, please. Thank you in advance.

You could have the staff send messages to the provider group inbox, thus both of you would receive the message.

You would have to figure out between the two of you how to notify the other of response. Perhaps make only one of you responsible for answering messages. Perhaps CCing the other with response prior to saving to the chart.

Thanks Wendell. Tried that in the past. With over 25 messages a day, it is difficult. Also it creates duplicates again. For instance, if we (NP and I) talk and she deals with the issue and sends the message back to staff member B to respond, I still have no idea what has been done. Also, staff member A has no idea of what is happening when the patient calls again, because the message is in B's inbox.

We ask our staff to keep such message in Nursing Pool. They all can see it. I wish providers could see the pool messages also. I did ask AC for this and have not heard back!

When you or NP sends message back to the staff, also save it in the patient's chart. When staff gets that follow up call from the patient, they can check the previous encounters first to see if there's already a reply.

We use the provider inbox for messages and chart forwards. But for Imported Items review, it's sent to the doctor's inbox so at least that's separated & provider inbox is lessened (a bit).