| Areas of
communications
Local Phone
Service:
The first area that a business
affected by a natural disaster will want to make sure they have
covered is incoming calls by clients/patients/business partners.
Contact your local telephone service provider to arrange to have
your incoming phone calls transferred to an answering service or
some alternate phone number that you have arranged to take your
phone calls. BellSouth, the dominant local telephone service
provider for the region, with a network that is also vital to
cellular phone systems, said as many as 1.75 million customers
along the Gulf Coast may be without service. One reason the
service will be so difficult to restore is that the damage is so
wide spread. Unfortunately in the New Orleans area many local
phone company central offices are under water and have no power.
We have been notified that until they have power restored to
these locations, local phone service will continue to be
affected. They also can do no programming for phone lines or
services, such as call transfer until the central offices are
operational.
To help your business receive
incoming calls, VGM’s telephone answering service, Call 4
Health, is working with health care providers across the
southeast affected by the hurricane. Joe Pores, President, said
he will help members in any way he can. If you need to get a
number for patients, providers or even your employees to call
for information, Joe can provide that service. If your local
phone company central office is operational you can have calls
transferred to a service like Call 4 Health. To talk personally
to Joe call 888-422-7352, ext. 1510 or go to his website
Call4Health.com. Joe is very familiar with VGM and he can get
help for your patients through to Freedomlink. After you have
made arrangements to have incoming calls handled, make sure that
your local telephone service provider knows the extent of damage
that you have sustained. If you have other service providers for
Internet access or any other type of data network, make sure
that provider is notified immediately. If you are making
arrangements for a temporary office, you want to get on the list
to have your service reconnected at the new location. The
service providers in your area like BellSouth are going to be
very busy just getting their facilities back in operation. It
may take a while for them to get to your business needs. Don’t
hesitate to tell your local phone company that you are a medical
business and that you provide critical patient care. This may
help moving you closer to the top of the list.
Long Distance
Service:
Contact your long distance
provider and notify them of your situation. If you have toll
free service, ask the carrier to repoint your service
immediately. Advise them that you’re are a medical company and
patients will be calling this number. They should be able to
repoint your toll free calls to an answering service, cell phone
or another phone number. Also let them know if you are going to
be in your building or not. You may want to consider having them
suspend your long distance service just in case someone might
have access to your facility. Any calls that are made on your
service (if your phone system is operational) are your
responsibility. Once you have moved back into your building or
have located to another, they can re-establish your service and
repoint your toll free calls back to your office.
Cell Phone
Service:
If any of your cell phones were
lost during the hurricane, contact your carrier immediately. In
many areas affected by the storm, cell phone service will be
intermittent to non-existent. Cell towers will be affected by
floodwaters and some have experienced wind damage. Also there
will be more calls on cellular networks than normal, which means
that some calls won’t go through because of busy circuits. As
mentioned before the cellular networks rely on companies like
BellSouth for service. Many companies are currently sending
technicians to tower sites to hook up generators up for power to
get the tower back on line.
Phone
Systems and auxiliary equipment:
If your phone system has been
completely destroyed by the storm, you will need to contact your
equipment vendor as soon as possible. There will be thousands of
businesses ordering replacement systems. As soon as you can get
access to your building, remove as much of the equipment as
possible to a place where you can store it securely. You will
need it for your insurance claim. This would also include your
fax machine/s, or any other communication hardware. If you
cannot remove the equipment, pictures or video will probably
suffice to show that the equipment was destroyed. You will want
to contact your insurance carrier immediately to find out what
process you need to follow to get replacement equipment paid
for.
Because of the delays in
getting your phone system replaced, you might consider an older
generation phone system as a temporary replacement system until
you get a new one. If you don’t have a disaster plan in place
with your phone system vendor, you will need to see what options
they have for your business. If you cannot contact your vendor
you can do an Internet search for “refurbished telephone
systems”. There are hundreds of companies listed online. You can
also call VGM Technologies and talk to one of our consultants
and we can give you some direction with some of our vendors.
Another option for you is to
see if you can locate a “hot site”. These are disaster recovery
sites to you that you can temporarily move your business into.
These sites are designed as temporary locations for businesses
and will have phone systems, computers, faxes, copiers, etc.
This would be an option while you wait to get back into your
business location. A quick call to your insurance carrier would
let you know if the cost of this option would be covered by your
policy.
As always the associates at VGM
Technologies are here to help. Please call our office at
800-824-8468 if there is anything we can assist you with during
this period of recovery.
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