Comm One OnCall

Absolutely not.  The contract is month-to-month, so you can cancel any time.  We prefer to keep you with a fantastic reliable service and great support, not by locking you into a long term contract.

Our service works with all modern smartphones, and all pagers.  Our system typically sends out SMS (text) or MMS messages to your smartphone.  And we support virtually all the paging companies.

You’ll be impressed with how easy this is to set up and get going.  Once you go into our online Practice Configurator and spend a couple minutes entering your medical practice info, we can attach a toll free number to it, so you can dial in and see how it sounds and how it works.  We can oftentimes get your toll free number attached within an hour or two.  Click the ‘Get Started‘ button at the bottom to get rolling.

You forward your calls to our service the same way you would for a traditional operator-based answering service.  We give you a unique toll free number on our system; at the end of your business day, on holidays, or whenever you wish, you forward your phone number to our service.  From that point on, all your calls are handled by our service, answered on the first ring every time.

The call script is quite flexible, and can support different specialties, departments, or whatever you require.  As as example, it could say: “If you are a new patient and are calling for an initial consultation, press 1.  For retina issues, press 2.  For other eye emergencies, please press 3”.  The call notification could then be routed to a different doctor, depending on what choice the caller entered.  We’ve done a handful of custom call scripts for our clients, and would encourage you to contact us about your requirements.

If you’d like it to, your call script can handle your “non-urgent” calls slightly differently, i.e. by taking a voice message and delivering it to the office email address to be handled the next business day.  After all, theres no point in waking up the doctor in the middle of the night for a prescription-refill call or an appointment change call.  (of course, we can also completely remove the non-urgent option from your call script, if you don’t want it…).

Great Question!

The below call-flow is only a typical example; please keep in mind that your call script is flexible and customizable.

When our service answers your call, a custom greeting is played to the caller in a female voice.  For example:  “You’ve reached the answering service for Riverside Internal Medicine.  If this is a critical medical emergency, please hangup and dial 911.  If you are a patient or are calling for a patient, press one.  If you are a doctor or other medical professional, press two.”

Our system then captures the caller’s Caller ID number, and plays a message such as:  “We recognize your number as 843-555-1234.  Press 1 to have the doctor return your call at this number.  Press 2 to enter a different number.”  Usually the caller will just press 1, but they always have the option to enter a different call back number.

Next, the caller is asked whether this is a ‘non-urgent’ message, in which case they can leave a voice mail which will be delivered to the office the next business day.  This is a good way to separate the truly urgent calls from the routine “prescription refill” or “appointment change” calls.  Urgent calls will of course notify the doctor immediately while non-urgent calls wont.

If voice mail is enabled for the current on-call doctor, our service will take a voice message from the caller.  The doctor will then immediately be notified of a new voice message waiting; once the doctor calls in to retrieve the message, he/she can then call back the patient or other caller.  If voice mail was not enabled, then our service wont take a voice message but will instead immediately send a text message or page to the doctor, such as:  “Please return call to patient at: 843-555-1234”.  (So, in summary, using voice mail obviously lets the doctor know what the call is about before calling back the patient, but it does require the extra step of listening to the message.  Some doctors want it, some don’t – fortunately, it can easily be configured on a doc-by-doc basis)

Thats about it for a typical call, but again, keep in mind we can script your call flow however you’d like.  Want to remove the question about non-urgent calls?  No problem.  Want to remove the question about “patient caller” vs “professional caller”?  No problem.  Or perhaps you’d like it to ask the caller if they are a “new patient” vs “existing patient”.  Its all doable.

No, there is currently no smartphone app for our service.

Yes, support is top-notch.  Just because we don’t have live operators fielding the answering service calls doesn’t mean you can’t talk to a live person if needed – you certainly can.  If interested, read a few of our user testimonials for comments on the support they receive.

Yes.  Our demo dial-in number is: (877) 752-1052.  Keep in mind this is simply our “standard call script”.  If needed, we can customize a call script for your group, to best suit your needs.

Yes, certainly.  If desired, you can use your toll free number on our service as an “always on” service that is ready to receive your calls around the clock, 24 hours a day.  This is useful for hospitalist groups and such that want to give out their own toll free number to reach them anytime, without using an office number to forward those calls.

Yes, on special request, we can setup your toll free number as text (SMS)-enabled, so incoming text messages will be routed to your current on-call doctor.  This allows you to have your own unique toll free number for your medical group that is both voice-enabled and text-enabled.  Granted, this isn’t the typical answering service functionality and most of our clients don’t need this…but it IS doable, if thats what you need.