Medical appointments now 'seamless' with new phone system

All medical appointments for NACC are now booked through a central call center at Naval Hospital Jacksonville. The transition, which began March 1, will help patrons in two ways. People who used to handle appointment duties at Kings Bay are now free to help with patient care, and the scheduling of all medical appointments will be more efficient with one central phone center handling the load.

''They have a big staff in Jacksonville whose full-time job is setting up appointments,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Rick McCarthy, business specialist and public affairs officer at NACC. ''This allows corpsmen to do the job they are trained for instead of clerical work like scheduling appointments.''

The call center will schedule appointments for all bases in Navy Region Southeast. Personnel can call the center directly at (800) 529-4677, option 2. Before the direct line was implemented, people calling the NACC were transferred to the center. Due to phone line problems, many customers could not get through or got a busy signal and were not able to schedule needed appointments. By calling the center directly, one line handles all calls.

''They old way of calling caused problems with getting through to the new call center due to the phone lines on base,'' McCarthy said. ''The beauty of the whole transition is, if you use the toll free number, you get service directly and do not have to go through two or three phone lines to get an appointment.''

Another advantage over the old way of making appointments is patients can make an appointment on weekends. The phone center hours is open 6:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. on weekends, which should allow those who fall ill on a weekend to beat the Monday rush for an appointment.

''The appointment desk is manned seven days a week. This is an added bonus for military and family members,'' McCarthy said. ''You don't have to get up early Monday morning to try an get in line for an appointment.''

The overall purpose of the transition is customer service and patient care. NACC has four members deployed to Iraq and, to pick up the slack, everyone is needed to man the medical center. The call center helps the efficiency of the clinic by placing staff members in the positions they are meant to perform.

''The overall goal is to streamline the appointment process,'' McCarthy, said. ''We have made the transition smoothly and have extra people doing their job of providing excellent patient care to our customers.''