VoPorta On Call
Automated Answering Service
(updated 2/12/2007)
Overview
VoPorta On Call is an automated answering service for physicians and medical practices. The system can be tailored to others as well, such as veterinary practices. Instead of using live operators, who are prone to making mistakes, dropping messages, and putting callers on hold for extended periods, VoPorta On Call uses a computer telephony platform to handle the calls. The system will answer incoming calls, play customized greetings, take voice mail, and send out notification pages and text messages to doctors.
Central to this service is the On Call calendar, which allows the administrator to set the on-call doctor schedule, weeks or months in advance. This calendar is built into the VoPorta Practice Manager software, which comes included with the service. The software also allows full control over the practice settings, the doctors in the practice, each doctor's individual settings (including pager and cell phone information), etc. For practices that use a "backup" on call doctor, each day of the calendar can be configured with the primary on call doctor and a backup on call doctor. The backup doctor is only notified in the rare case that the primary doctor does not respond. The system can be set to send a message to the doctor's pager, cell phone, or both. If the doctor is in an area where one device doesn't have a signal, the other one probably will.
If a caller’s needs are non-urgent, they are given the option to leave a message that is then sent via email to the office. The attached message is sent as a .wav file, which can be listened to on any PC with speakers. The office staff can retrieve these messages during the next business day. Handling these non-urgent calls in this manner reduces the call load the doctor has to take in any given call period.
For practices that sometimes share call with an external practice or doctor, the system allows the administrator to setup call sharing. Up to 5 call share numbers may be assigned in the practice configuration. Any of those numbers can then be assigned in the On Call calendar screen.
VoPorta Practice Manager Software
The VoPorta Practice Manager software is what the practice administrator and/or doctors use to configure the service. This is a standard Windows software application that can be installed on any PC or server. It uses the internet to connect to our VoPorta server for configuration changes, database access, on-call schedule, etc. (The VoPorta server is run and maintained by VoPorta). The Practice Manager software is password protected; the user must know the practice id and the password in order to log on and edit the practice configuration.
Using VoPorta Practice Manager, you can: setup a new practice, add and edit doctors in the practice, edit pager and cell phone information for the doctors, access the on call schedule, setup primary and backup on call doctors for each day, configure the call sharing entries (if applicable), enable the lunch message function (if applicable), and access the ‘Send message’ screen which allows you to send a quick message to any doctor in your practice.
The VoPorta Practice Manager software comes included with the VoPorta On Call service. You can install and run the Practice Manager on multiple PC’s, in your office or home. As the software is updated, you will be able to download and install updates to the software, free of charge.
All of the configuration data for your practice resides on our secure, internet server. All communications with the server are encrypted, and the server is protected in every way by name/password combinations. In addition, we have a backup redundant internet server to fill in, in the very unlikely event that our primary server develops problems or becomes unreachable.
Doctor Notification
The service notifies the on call doctor in 1 of 3 possible ways, depending on the doctor's personal preferences:
Level 1 -- Simple caller id notification
The system accepts the call and sends a page or text message to the on call doctor. The message contains the caller id (or callback number) of the caller, so the doctor can return the call at his/her convenience. This is similar to simple one-way paging; there is no direct confirmation that the doctor received the message.
Level 2 -- Voice mail, with page/text notification
The system accepts the call, and takes a brief message from the patient (name and reason for the call). The caller then hangs up. The system sends a page and/or text message to the on call doctor; the message contains the caller id of the caller, and the 800 number that the doctor should call to retrieve the message. The doctor calls in to get the message(s), and then he can return the call to the patient or professional.
If the doctor doesn’t call back into the system to retrieve the message after being paged, the system will continue to page/text the doctor.
If the on call doctor doesn't respond after a number of tries, the system will page/text the backup on call doctor (if applicable).
Level 3 -- Direct connect (for professional callers)
This is available only for medical professional callers, such as other doctors and nurses. (patients are not given this option). The system accepts the incoming call, takes a brief message, and attempts to directly transfer the caller to the on call doctor’s mobile phone. The doctor is able to hear the name of the caller and reason for the call prior to accepting it (call screening).
If this method fails, the call will drop back to Level 2, as described above.
Notification methods (pagers and/or cell phones)
Currently the VoPorta system can send notification messages in snpp format, or email format. Multicom pagers accept snpp and/or email messages. Most cell phone companies accept text messages in email format, and some also accept snpp. Snpp is the preferred method, and is what we recommend. Almost all cell phones will receive a text message by default.
General Setup
Each practice is assigned an "800 number" by VoPorta. At the end of the office day (and during lunch hour if desired), the medical practice will forward their office number to their VoPorta answering service 800 number. From that point on, calls to the office will be answered by the VoPorta answering service. At the start of the next business day, the number forwarding should be cancelled so that office calls can be answered by the normal office staff. Aside from the 800 number assigned by VoPorta, the only thing needed to configure the service is the VoPorta Practice Manager software, running on any internet-connected PC.
DEMOS
It is very easy for us to setup the system for you to run a demo test. We can easily setup your practice in our system, and give you a temporary 800 number to call in and test.
Please contact us if you are interested in setting up a demo.
Dennis White, Multicom
(662) 234 2337 email: voporta@multicomit.com