As recent and long-term history clearly shows, disasters can strike at any time and with devastating consequences. For those who work in the medical field, natural and man-made disasters oftentimes mean a huge increase in the volume of calls, patients arriving with emergent conditions and having one's facilities and capabilities stretched to their absolute limits. If disaster recovery planning has been undertaken diligently, this also means an efficient and effective system of resources has been put into place that guarantees patients the care they need, even in these desperate circumstances.

Nurse telephone triage is oftentimes the first, and most vital, of these services. When patients are coming in with sometimes life-threatening issues, there needs to be a way of prioritizing those who need immediate care and those who can wait a while so that those in the most distress can be effectively treated. A tiage nurse, working with a competent medical call center, can start the process of triage working with the telephone answering service so that callers can be dealt with in the most beneficial order for both doctor and patient. Proper training in such methods is a vital part of the disaster recovery solutions offered by any physician answering service.

Call center services must also be constantly available. This means that any doctor answering service should have several locations, spread over a wide region, that ensures that calls can be routed to another center should a particular medical call center itself be affected by a natural or other type of disaster. Medical services, unfortunately, are oftentimes most vital when other infrastructure services have collapsed and people find themselves in desperate situations. A good answering service is prepared to deal with such crises on all levels and to continue providing services without interruption.