sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Auto Dialers

Looking for a auto dialer for a doctors office. Would like to send general test results back to patients.

I have no immediate suggestion for equipment, but I can imagine one legal reason that it's a bad idea:

"HIPAA"

Yes, that would be a great big no-no. Indeed, that could cause a doctor to loose his medical liscense, face fines and possible jail time. I would not do that at all. (I really would not want someone calling in and being able to get my last EKG information, for example. I have too many nosey extended family members who would be calling every other day to get any 'good tidbits' about my health.)

If you really want an auto-dialer, there is an older WECO unit on e-pay right now.

Best,

Joe

They will be just telling the patients the test result were in normal range. They will not be giving any specific results.

DO you still feel the doctor should stay away from this.

I would certainly mention it to the doctor when I presented the quote , but my experience has been they are VERY aware of HIPPA requirements .

is still information, and any information is privileged information. Even the fact that a person visits a doctor is privileged.

What happens when the doctor's machine reaches out to a phone number, and the wrong person answers, or the message is recorded on a family's answering machine?

I can't even discuss my minor children's medical conditions with the family doctor unless my name is on the HIPAA release.

Are you talking about some sort of system that would be loaded with patient contact info (telephone number) and some canned announcement, which then would start auto-dialing all the loaded numbers, and announcing the test results upon an answer? Would the target person (patient) need to respond with a password to allow the info to be transmitted?

This sounds pretty complicated and expensive, requiring a great deal of up-front labor cost each day, just to send some messages.

It also sounds like what a secretary does. A secretary who can exercise discretion, unlike a robotic telephone system.

Doctors’ offices are my bailiwick. We use a hosted service for appointment reminders, linked to the appointment calendar database. This saves an incredible number of man-hours daily.

Auto dialer for test results? Walk away from this one.

I have experienced this type of application as a patient but never looked into what or who makes it as aprovider. The way I have seen this work is that the patient is given a PIN code which they must enter when the automated system calls them. This insures that it is the patient that is on the recieving end of an automated call. If a proper PIN is not entered or no PIN is entered in an alotted time frame, the system will then play another message of a call back number which could be recorded by a home answering machine.