Phone solutions for multiple practices

Phone solutions for multiple practices

Connie Chelenza, CO, L

7/27/2018

Good evening all,

 

We are in the process of launching a satellite office and have been experiencing some difficulty in regards to phone company issues, transferring calls, voicemail capabilities, forwarding between offices, etc.

 

We are interested to know how other practices with multiple locations handle phone calls, forwarding, messages, etc. (We recently resolved a similar issue with faxes and started using MetroFax. Best. Thing. Ever… )

 

Current methods:

 

Since the satellite office is not officially open, I have not hired additional staff so we are on a skeleton crew for now. The current staff travels between the offices various days of the week depending on patient flow in our main office. We close our main office while we are at the new office getting things setup and running trials with a test patients. We forward the phones back and forth between offices depending on where we are open for the day.

 

Issues:

1. Ease of forwarding calls with different phone service providers. My offices are in different states and we have two different phone providers. I can remote in on a website and forward for one office, and the other I have to forward while physically in the office. Each forwarding task has to be done each and every time we arrive/leave for the day. Sometimes we get busy and forget to forward the lines for a couple of hours. I know I can sign up for online access for the second office, but before incurring additional expenses, I’d like to see what other offices do.
2. Messages/voicemail retrieval delays. Separate phone services with separate voicemail. Messages aren’t being heard for a few days unless someone remotes in before phone lines are forwarded.

 

Goals:

I’d like to find a service that we can use that allows us to use our current numbers while handing the traffic all in one interface. I’d love to be able to check voicemails from anywhere, have them transferred to text possibly so we can print the messages, scan them into charts, etc. I’d also love it if we could have more than 1 outgoing voicemail greeting so we can have a default/ regular hours greeting, after hours greeting, and special closure announcement greetings without erasing the default message. With MetroFax, we can use apps to manage faxes on the go, as well as get alerts as soon as we receive a fax. It would be nice to have the same type of notifications when necessary.

 

We will soon be operating with two separate offices that will eventually both be open regularly, so I would like to solve our woes before it becomes more of a headache than it already has been. With our growing pains, we have found the hosted OPIE interface to be a huge relief as well as MetroFax. I’ve researched a few online phone interfaces, but thought I would reach out to my fellow business owners. I know if I’m frustrated with the phone issues, our patients and referring sources are as well. Something so simple as a phone call has become way too complicated and it shouldn’t be.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Connie Chelenza, LPO, owner, & the wearer of many hats…

 

Texoma Orthotics & Prosthetics

Innovation Makes the Difference

 

Oklahoma Location

1915 W Gore Blvd. Ste 1, Lawton, OK 73501

Ph: 580-699-8690 * Fax: 580-699-8692

 

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804 Brook Avenue, Wichita Falls TX 76301

Ph: 940-234-5347 * Fax: 580-699-8692

 

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