Netherlands
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
France
United States
Austria
UK
Spain
ItalyOne on-call number that always rings the right doctor.
Who is on duty changes every evening, every weekend and sometimes every hour. With an on-call number from CallFactory, patients and colleagues always call the same number, while the call reaches the doctor who is logged in at that moment.
- LUMC — emergency and blood transfusion lines
- Bie Bijen — shared veterinary emergency line
How an on-call number works
This is the setup we build most often for practices and departments. You can leave out or extend any part of it.
One fixed number for the service
A national or local number in the country where your patients are. You put this number on the website, in the practice voicemail and in referral letters, so it never has to change again.
A welcome message
So the caller knows straight away they will reach whoever is on duty.
“You have reached the evening and weekend service of Linden Family Practice. You are being connected to the doctor on duty.”
The on-call page
Doctors log in on the on-call page or in the app when their shift starts, and log out when it ends. Swapping is no more than that: one logs out, the other logs in.
Escalation if nobody answers
If the person on duty does not answer within the set time, the call goes to the next person in the chain, such as a backup doctor or the practice owner. You decide how long it waits and in what order.
Opening hours around it
In the daytime the number can go to the practice staff or the front desk, and out of hours to the on-call service. You set this up once, and after that it follows the clock by itself.
No app and no internet needed for the doctor
The call arrives as an ordinary phone call on the mobile, over the mobile network. So no app has to be open and no Wi-Fi or 4G data connection has to be good enough. Forwarding to a desk phone or an existing phone system is possible too.
For the rest of the practice telephony, such as the morning rush and the selection menu, see telephony for healthcare providers.
Two on-call lines we run
LUMC
Several emergency lines and blood transfusion lines on our platform. Hospital staff change which doctor is on call themselves, at any hour of the day and on weekends too.
What decided it: calls do not run through an app or an internet connection, they go straight to the mobile of the doctor on duty.
Bie Bijen
A night and weekend emergency line shared by several practices, so there is always a vet available, wherever the animal is registered.
What decided it: every vet has their own login and sets their own availability, and each practice gets its own invoice for its share of the line.
What an on-call number is used for
Medical practice
The urgent line next to the regular practice number, which goes to the practice staff in the daytime and to the doctor on call out of hours.
Midwifery practice
Reachable day and night for expectant mothers, with a duty that rotates weekly or daily between the practice’s midwives.
Pharmacy
One number for evening, weekend and holiday cover, where the pharmacist on duty logs in and nobody has to update forwarding numbers every week.
Dentists and vets
Out-of-hours emergencies, often on a line shared with other practices, as at Bie Bijen.
Hospital department
Emergency lines and critical numbers that stay up around the clock, with escalation to the backup if the first person does not answer.
When something breaks, the length of the chain counts
We run our own intelligent IVR platform and are licensed in fifteen countries. That is not a boast, it simply changes how quickly a problem gets fixed.
- You call your provider
- They call their platform supplier
- The supplier looks into it
- The supplier reports back to your provider
- Your provider reports back to you
Five links, and nobody in that chain can change your line themselves.
- You call us
- We look into our own platform, right down to carrier level
- We make the change
One link.
What it costs
An on-call number runs on the phone system that comes with every number, with the welcome message, opening hours and the on-call page included. Call queues and the selection menu start with the Customer Service plan (up to 8 people): €49 per month. A setup with several departments or practices is something we configure together with you.
Frequently asked questions about the on-call service
A fixed phone number for the duty service that forwards every call to the doctor or staff member on duty at that moment. Callers remember one number, while the schedule behind it can change as often as it needs to.
Someone logs in or out on the on-call page or in the app, and the routing follows straight away. There is no shared calendar, group chat or forwarding that someone has to change by hand.
No. The call arrives as a normal call on the mobile, over the mobile network. No app has to be open and no internet connection is needed.
Then the call goes to the next person in the chain you have set up, such as a backup doctor. You decide how long it waits for each person and who is next.
Yes, routing by day and time is possible too. In practice, logging in and out is more reliable, because swapped shifts and unexpected absences are then reflected straight away.
Yes. Every doctor or vet has their own login, and for a shared line we invoice each practice separately for its share of the costs.
In most cases, yes. An existing number can be moved to our platform, so patients and referrers do not have to learn a new one.
We can usually activate a new healthcare line within a few hours and route it to your team, including the welcome message and on-call routing.
Yes. Our support mailbox is monitored in the evening, at night and at weekends too. If an on-call schedule needs updating at midnight, there is someone on our side to help.
CallFactory has been in business since 2001 and is a licensed telecoms provider with its own IVR platform. Healthcare organizations such as LUMC and Bie Bijen run their on-call and emergency lines on that platform.
