In a message dated 97-08-17 11:57:08 EDT, (Dogwood Ridge) writes: > It was at lunch that I found out that all this time it > was the speaker phone on hold to an insurance company. I somehow had > missed the timed interruptions to the music that stated "your call is > important to us, please hold, calls will be answered in the order that they > are received....." How do you handle these referral calls- I don't think > that I refer that much but I sometimes need these wise subspecialist's > help. A common occurrance in our office. We have a full time employee who handles insurance, referrals, billing questions and collections. She spends many hours listening to the music on hold, and messages about how our call is important to them (if it was really important, why don't you pick up the phone and talk to me?) While on hold, she usually takes care of paperwork that doesn't require a phone call. Of course, she's not available to talk to parents about other problems during this time, so she always has lots of voice-mail messages to listen to. The more managed care patients we get, the more time is wasted doing this. I'd love to hear some suggestions. Moshe Adler, MD