Health Clinic and Pharmacy After-Hours Answering Services

The Vendor is required to provide health clinic and pharmacy after-hours answering call handling services during evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays and have scalability capacity to keep up with our anticipated growth in both service lines and additional clinic locations.
- The answering service will triage incoming patient calls, document messages accurately, and route urgent matters to on-call providers according to clinic-specific protocols.
- Service coverage:
•    Weekdays: Monday – Friday 4:30pm – 8:00am depending on location 
•    Weekends: Saturday and Sunday: 24 hours except as stated for urgent care and pharmacy locations
•    State holidays: 24 hours except as stated for urgent care and pharmacy locations 
•    *Other times as designated by corporation
- Call handling requirements:
•    Answer incoming calls using clinic-specific greetings
•    Verify patient identity when appropriate
•    Document patient messages clearly and accurately
o    Keep record of all calls, including time stamping and recording of each call.
1.    Patient name and contact info
2.    Reason for call
3.    Actions taken
4.    Time message delivered to provider
o    Message delivery options may include:
1.    Secure email
2.    Secure message platform
3.    Fax
4.    Secure web portal
5.    Integration with clinical systems where possible
o    Keep record of call volume and missed calls for performance improvement; monthly reporting available and sent upon request.
o    Copy of the records shall be available to corporation, within two (2) hours of the request being made.
•    Determine urgency based on scripted triage guidance
•    Route urgent calls to on-call providers using escalation protocols
o    Vendor must be able to contact on-call providers by phone or secure messaging
o    Escalate unanswered calls according to defined escalation paths
o    Track acknowledgement of urgent provider notifications
o    Maintain documentation of all call attempts and responses
•    Deliver non-urgent messages to clinics by the next business day no later than 6:00 am state standard time
•    Provide language service support for callers as required.
•    All work performed by vendor as part of the agreement shall be HIPAA compliant; vendor shall have an active HIPAA compliance plan that includes regular staff training.