Emergency line

The GP is usually the first point of contact for patients. Good telephone accessibility is therefore important. It is no coincidence that the National General Practitioners Association recommends their members to have an emergency line in addition to the normal practice phone.

Research conducted several years ago showed that over 80% of the GPs participating in the survey had an emergency line.

Of the calls to these lines, 90% were answered within 30 seconds during this survey.

Emergency lines with multiple doctors

Emergency lines are often used by groups of doctors within one or even several practices. This allows callers to reach a doctor on duty at all times via 1 central emergency number.

How an emergency line works

An emergency line number is actually a virtual number. That is, calls from callers to this number first land on our platform. Our Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system then automatically connects the call to the on-duty, available doctor.

You can keep track of which doctor is on duty in a number of ways. For example, you can work with a simple calendar, which determines which doctor is on duty at the time of the call based on the day and time. You fill in this calendar once or periodically.

A more flexible and modern set-up uses our Employee Availability functionality in combination with our IVR. In this case, doctors mark themselves as 'available' at the beginning of the shift and then as 'absent' at the end of the shift. They do this easily via Belfabriek.app.

The big advantage of the latter setup is its extreme flexibility. A change in the schedule is no more than logging in or logging out a doctor.

Benefits of an emergency line at the Belfabriek

To use our Employee Availability functionality, you do not need to install software, read manuals or learn new things. Using the online or app interface is intuitive, you can get started right away.

The Belfabriek is the only service number provider in Europe to offer this functionality.

Find out more

If you would like to know more about setting up and maintaining your own emergency line, or would like to transfer your existing line to the Belfabriek, please feel free to contact us.