subject: Disaster Recovery For And By Medical Call Centers [print this page] Disasters can happen anywhereDisasters can happen anywhere. They can happen at your office, or they can happen in the vicinity of the call center that handles your after hours calls. Hopefully, none of them will happen in either place. In the event that they do, however, you need to make sure that your answering service will be prepared. There are several disaster recovery steps these companies take to protect you and your customers in precisely such an event. As a result of these steps, you can know that even if the disaster is as small as your office being closed due to inclement weather, your patients will at least be able to get in touch with someone.
Of course, the disasters can be larger than that, and those disasters can sometimes knock out your answering services' power supply if they aren't ready for that type of thing. That's why the best of these companies use uninterpretable power supplies. That way, they can continue to operate in the event of either a short or a long term power outage. Furthermore, the systems they use to protect your patients' sensitive information will not be compromised, either. While the systems which kick in automatically can usually only last for about two hours, gas generators can operate indefinitely. What's more, a responsible company will check these systems for maintenance on a regular basis.
Redundant phone lines are another important step. Sometimes phone lines go down but power doesn't. In such an event, if redundant phone lines are in place, calls can be routed to those lines. What's more, if the company also has satellite phone services available, those services can be turned to in the unlikely event of all land lines going down in a certain area at the same time. Combines with power generators, redundant phone lines create a situation where about the only thing that would prevent your calls from being answered would be the destruction of the building itself. Fortunately, even that can be prepared for!
All across the country, reputable physician answering services have created disaster recovery partnerships. As a result of these partnerships, calls can be routed to representatives that provide equal levels of professionalism and courtesy to your patients. Of course, this can come in handy in other situations, too, not just the destruction of buildings. It can also come in handy if say, for example, a snow storm keeps all the people who would normally be answering your calls stuck at home. In any event. Your patients will always have a friendly voice they can hear on the other end of the line.
