Procedure for notifying doctors of appointments

It is very important for staff AND doctors to follow this exact procedure.  Not following this procedure leads to instances of an appointment not being relayed to a doctor.  As a team, we need to stick together and each of us take responsibility for making sure that communication occurs correctly AND WITHOUT DELAY.

Here is the procedure and this involves both staff and doctors, so please read all the way through and make sure you understand and if you have any questions or concerns, please bring this up to your senior so that we can all adhere to the same procedure.  Disregarding this policy creates giant upsets for our clients, for our doctors and for our staff as well as for management.

This procedure applies for NEW APPOINTMENTS AND FOR CANCELLATIONS.

Upon confirmation of a new appointment or or a cancellation, the client care specialist immediately emails the information to the doctor (done automatically by submitting the appointment webform on our website) AND sends the doctor a text to let them know that there is a call for them (or that a call got cancelled).  Under no circumstances are you ever to rely on simply sending an email to a doctor and assume that the doctor has gotten notified that they have a call or cancellation, as it is always possible for an email to accidentally getting deleted or to go to spam.  The way to notify a doctor is by phone or text and you must receive a reply from the doctor or speak with the doctor directly.  The details of the call is sent by email.

Upon immediate receipt of the text, the doctor MUST reply to the staff BY EMAIL to the “ASSISTANT” EMAIL to let them know that they got it.  Do not reply by text because a text will only reach the person who sent you the text and if there is a change of shift by the time you reply, the next shift person will not know that the doctor replied.  The email to “[email protected]” is received by all of us.

At the end of a phone staff shift, you MUST verify that you have sent each appointment you have closed to the applicable doctor and that you have gotten an acknowledgement from that doctor.  If you have not received an acknowledgement from the doctor, text the doctor again before you end your shift and pass the information on to the next phone person so that they can continue to follow up with the doctor until they have received an acknowledgement.  Doctors, please note that the longer  you take to confirm receipt of a call, the more room there is for error as the information will need to be passed on to the next phone person and the next phone person, etc… So please reply promptly for your sake as well as for the staff's and the clients’.  We understand that you have a life and that you might not always be in a position to reply immediately, but please reply as soon as you can as the longer of a lag there is between the time an appointment is sent to you by our staff and your acknowledgement receipt, the more room for error this can create.

Once you have received an acknowledgement from a doctor, then and only then can you (the phone staff) check off the step “received ack from Dr” on your Prospect Form checklist.

Phone staff, at the beginning of your shift, if you were passed on a notification from the previous person that a doctor has not acknowledged a call, you will keep a list of unacknowledged calls and you will text the doctor to nudge them.  At the end of your shift, you will nudge the doctor again and pass this on to the next phone person (or the next morning person) and so on until you get an acknowledgement from the doctor.  

Ideally, the doctor will reply immediately and there will be no need to keep this up as this evidently opens up the possibility of more and more errors.

For cancellations, follow the same procedure.  You will need to cancel the appointment in the website per the procedure outlined in the policy entitled “Finalizing the appointment” and you will follow the same procedure described above for appointments and keep following up with the doctor until you get confirmation that they received the cancellation. 

Phone staff, when you start your shift, you will take a picture of your calendar for today and email it to the doctor(s) on call.  This includes any doctor on the schedule for that day.   You will send them a text and say:  “Hi Dr. ________!  This is  ___________,  Just letting you know that I am on now.  Here is the calendar for today (or the rest of the day).    Let me know immediately if something on your schedule doesn’t match.  Have a great day and let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”  
 
Doctors:  On your end, you should remind the staff to send you a picture of the calendar at the beginning of the day and in the afternoon so that you can, on your end, make sure that the appointments you have match our calendar.  

Following the above procedure consistently will avoid the disconcerting situation where a doctor has a call and has not been advised about it or a situation where a call cancelled the doctor shows up for the call.  Both of those situations are very upsetting for all involved. Avoiding this takes all of us, staff and doctors to follow the procedure exactly.

We ARE a GREAT TEAM!  For the most part, of course, things have been running smoothly despite how busy we are and a missed call is SUPER RARE, but it is creates such an enormous upset for all concerned when this occurs that the above policy is necessary.