"Frustrated with phone communication"

Dear decemberdm99,

I am responding to your story as the person who provides the executive support to the Kerang Medical Clinic (KMC).

Thank you for sharing your observations. You bring up a really good point and one that we are all feeling frustrated with when trying to phone the Kerang Medical Clinic ( yes, we all have this frustration from the hospital when phoning the Clinic).

It is an issue that the KMC reception staff and practice manager are currently working on. They are working on getting a recorded message, and also some functionality to put people on hold, and to be placed in a phone queue. It is taking some time to work out how the phones actually work though, so we are all feeling frustrated at this lack of progress.

We have recently put in place Hot Docs so that you can make appointments online, if this helps in any way.

I will follow up with the Clinic staff and will be back with information to you within a week.

Again, thank you for bringing up this important matter- no one wants the phone to ring out when they are trying to contact their Doctor's clinic.

Kind Regards

Chloe

Dear decemberdm99,

I have not been as timely as I had intended, however a full review of the phones at the Kerang Medical Clinic has been undertaken.

A phone message has been scripted and is now being put onto the message system, so that when you phone and the line is busy you will hear a recording of one of the staff explaining that you have phoned the clinic. We are anticipating this will be done in the next few days.

We found that in the reception area there was a phone at the nurses computer area, and if the nurse was caring for a patient this line would go unanswered if the others were busy. This has now been corrected, so that when you phone you go to one of the receptionists phones only.

We have the script to put a message on the phones for after hours or weekends, and this is expected to be done this week.

What we are working on is the ability to queue the phone calls, so that you know you are waiting in a line. This isn't quite operational yet, but the plan is that this gets put in place within the next week.

Please accept my apologies for the time it has taken to respond to your story. I hope that these changes will make a difference to when you phone the clinic and the response times to your calls.

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your experience. I appreciate that it is very frustrating when you cannot get through on the phone to who you wish to speak to. I wonder if you have tried the Hot Docs online booking?

Kind Regards

Chloe

Dear decemberdm99,

We have now updated our phone system so that calls will queue when our lines are busy rather then persistently ring as if we are not answering the phone.

We are now able to switch our phones to a night message when we are closed.

We will be monitoring the system closely to make sure we have put a good solution in place.

Kind Regards

Tim