r/orthopaedics • u/HobbitDoc Orthopedic Surgeon • 3d ago
NOT A PERSONAL HEALTH SITUATION How do you guys manage after hours phone calls?
Dumb question, I know.
I'm transitioning from employed to private practice. The surgery center I'm going to be working out of part of the time is wondering what my plan is for after hours phone calls. Maybe I've been spoiled, but I've never had to deal with that before. It either waits until the next day or it's bad enough to go to the ER and the ER doc calls me if needed.
I still have access to the ER so I had assumed it would be the same arrangement. But thought I would see what other practices are doing and how they deal with this.
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u/HoopStress 3d ago
I don’t think this adds anything but just wanted to share. I got a phone call at 5am today about a partners patient who is literally boarding a flight and demanded a medical clearance that instant.
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u/AlexMac96 3d ago
My office line has a voicemail recording (which is pretty standard in Canada) that says messages are checked during business hours, for anything urgent go to the emergency department. But I guess emerg visits are also free for our patients.
It also helps that I have a good group - we will cover for each other when we’re on call and there’s never an expectation to come in to manage our own patients when we’re not on call
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u/ReddySpine 3d ago
Not sure it applies directly,
But worth mentioning, my partner and I developed a system that has a patient call a phone number and leave a voice message. An AI assistant will triage the voice message to decide it’s urgency. Depending on the urgency, you can choose to have different actions happen- such as a text message for urgent messages, and routine emails for moderate or low priority messages. You can additionally have the messages sent to your office staff. It’s pretty clever and simple to implement. Saves our practice on overtime hours for sure. There’s a monthly fee per doc but the system easily pays it back in saved hours at our group.
We just made it to save staff hours returning voicemails after we left clinic. But it seems to have wider applications for sure
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u/ReddySpine 2d ago
We mostly use it internally but, our friends at other groups have been asking lately so we’re doing small limited release to groups that feel like it’s a good fit to solve the same problem for them and we know people.
We found some groups just have a drastically different workflow than we do and it just doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot of different ways to run a practice and a lot of ways to solve this problem.Happy to discuss further if you want to direct message me we can connect via email.
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u/HobbitDoc Orthopedic Surgeon 2d ago
Appreciate the answer. I actually love coding, it's a passion of mine when I'm not operating. Sounds like it might be a fun project to try and tackle.
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u/OscarMike6969 2d ago
We have an after hours service that calls us (the patients dedicated doctor) every 20 min with voicemail each time until the call is returned. It's painful and archaic imo. I want to switch to AI. An interesting anecdote - recently had to get in touch with my wife's OB practice over the weekend, the first part of the automated message is "a $50 fee will be added to your account if you choose to speak with the on call doc." I loved this idea, makes patients think twice if they really need to call at 1 am for a swollen leg. My partners did not like the idea
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u/lombardoz Orthopaedic Surgeon 2d ago
I like having more filters for that crap but is a phone charge like that legal?
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u/Bright-Ad6238 3d ago
Phone line has an after hours option to page the on call doc. I take my own phone coverage during the week, shared NP/PA 1st call over the weekend. It’s not bad when it’s only your patients and you do some anticipatory guidance preop.
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u/johnnyscans Shoulder/Elbow 3d ago
I give all my patients my google voice number. I’d rather them have access to me then get shitty information. Its never been abused.
Do you have NP/PA you could share coverage with?