In February 2010 30” of snow hits the east coast and shuts down many offices. According to the newspapers it is the worst storm since 1922 and before that 1772! Many areas of the East Coast that were hit by this blizzard were left without power and phone service. According to reports and our own firsthand knowledge many medical offices were closed and answering services were having problems getting staff in to answer phones resulting in long delays and emergency calls going unanswered.
Why weren’t answering services able to take calls from medical offices? It’s a question that many are still asking today. Most answering services have generators and can supply power to their operations for days at a time. The problem is getting employee’s to come into work when the entire city is shut down. Many answering service employee’s are reluctant to come into work because they know they might get stuck there and need to sleep in an office that was not set up for overnight stays.
The other issue that comes into play is that many answering services also answer calls for plumbers, heating contractors, and heating oil companies and as a result they are flooded with calls from commercial clients so medical calls take a backseat to the more profitable business clients. Since the answering service is already understaffed and overworked many medical calls may go unanswered or hold for long periods of time.
By utilizing a medical answering service that is located outside of your area you ensure that when you are affected by any disaster we will not be. We will continue taking calls and providing information to your callers. MedConnectUSA has redundant systems in place to make sure we are here when you need us!
During the blizzard we had an increase of over 70,000 calls that came into us from our clients on the East Coast and were all handled without delay and busy signals. Our operators were dedicated and made sure every call was professionally handled.
MedConnectUSA has operators in several offices that are ready to take calls 24/7/365 and in the event of any problem in one office calls can be handled in one of our other facilities.
