When your EHR is down
What 2care does with your calls while your EHR is unavailable, what your staff receive, and how to catch up once it is back.
2 min read
Key terms
- EHR outage. A time when your EHR or practice system cannot be reached, whether planned maintenance or an unplanned fault.
- Hand-off. A request the agent passes to your staff with the caller's full details, instead of writing it into your EHR itself.
- Write. Any change the agent makes in your EHR, such as a booking or a cancellation.
What patients experience
The agent keeps answering every call while your EHR is down. Patients still reach a friendly voice on the first ring, and urgent calls still reach a person as usual. See how urgent calls reach a person.
For requests that need your EHR, such as booking, rescheduling or cancelling, the agent takes down everything your team needs. It tells the caller that the practice will confirm the appointment, so nobody leaves the call with a time that is not in your schedule.
What your staff receive
Each request is handed to your staff with the details needed to act on it.
| Detail | Example |
|---|---|
| Caller | Name, date of birth and callback number |
| Request | Book, reschedule or cancel |
| Preferences | Provider, visit type, site and preferred days or times |
| Context | The call transcript and a short summary |
The agent confirms a booking to a caller only once your EHR has accepted it. While your EHR is down, bookings come to your team as hand-offs, and the call log shows each one.
After the outage
- Open the hand-offs. Work through the requests the agent passed to your team during the outage, oldest first.
- Book and confirm. Book each appointment in your EHR and let the patient know their time.
- Check the call log. Look over the calls taken during the outage to make sure every request was picked up.
- Plan for next time. If your EHR vendor schedules maintenance, let your onboarding specialist know in advance.
Reliability on 2care's side
2care runs at 99.9% uptime, separately from your EHR. An outage in your EHR does not affect the agent answering, and the agent goes back to booking in your EHR once it is reachable again.
Questions
Will the agent book into the wrong slot after an outage?
The agent reads open times live from your EHR and reads the slot again at the moment of booking. Once your EHR is back, it books against your schedule as it stands, including anything your team booked by hand.
How do patients hear back?
Your team contacts each patient using the callback number in the hand-off, once the appointment is booked. Patients know to expect this, because the agent told them on the call that the practice would confirm.
Do we need to switch off forwarding during an outage?
No. Keep forwarding on. The agent keeps answering and hands bookings to your team, which keeps your phone line covered while your staff deal with the outage.
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