Peace and clarity on the phone line
At General Practice De Residentie in The Hague, the telephone had long been a symbol of busyness and unrest.
Patients would call en masse in the mornings, assistants felt controlled by the phone line, and there was little room to distribute work effectively.
The result: stress, no breaks, and dissatisfaction among both patients and staff.
The challenge
Together with their telecom and IT partner YouP Telecom, the practice had been searching for a way to improve accessibility and distribute workload more fairly.
But time and again, the right approach seemed elusive — until practice owner Diederik discovered Plainwise on the website of the telephony system Xelion.
The solution
By implementing Plainwise, a callback structure was introduced that gives patients more certainty and provides assistants with breathing space in their daily schedule.
Where previously the entire call queue had to be cleared first, patients can now select a callback time themselves — bringing calm and order.
The system also shows exactly how many callback appointments are still scheduled and when.
This allows the practice to plan care more effectively and ensures patients know they will be called back within the agreed time.
Implementation
Integrating Plainwise turned out to be surprisingly straightforward.
In collaboration with YouP Telecom and Plainwise, the entire process was managed — from configuration to linking with the existing phone system.
For the practice, this meant all technical complexity was fully handled.
Training the assistants was no obstacle either.
The system is intuitive and easy to use.
One of the assistants said during the first introduction:
“Oh, is this it? That’s not bad at all.”
Within a short time, the team felt confident with the new way of working.
The results
The impact was immediately noticeable:
- More control and peace: Assistants experience that the workload is better distributed and can adjust the number of available callback slots in real-time to prevent peak pressure.
- Patient satisfaction: Patients appreciate receiving a concrete time window and not having to wait endlessly on hold.
- Flexibility during absence: If an assistant is unexpectedly absent, the practice can directly adjust the availability downward in Plainwise. New callback appointments are automatically spread throughout the day, so the pressure doesn't fall on the remaining colleagues.
- the repeat prescription line
Christa, practice manager:
"Previously, a sick colleague meant immediate crisis: everyone had to jump in urgently and clear the queue. Now we adjust the capacity in the system and the work remains manageable. We just have a normal working day."
Looking further
Besides callback appointments, De Residentie is also exploring how more of their telephony can run through Plainwise, such as:
- the test results line
Thanks to smart questions and automatic transcriptions, information comes available in an organized way for the team, without assistants having to listen to long voicemail messages.
In collaboration with Juvoly, phone calls can moreover be converted to text, making triage by assistants and doctors directly available as both transcription and summary.
Collaboration
De Residentie experiences the collaboration with Plainwise as pleasant and reliable: short lines, direct action, and the certainty that they are truly being heard.
"If we have a question or request, action is taken quickly. That gives confidence."
Future
The practice sees opportunities to expand the system further with additional features and reporting.
Their advice to other practices that are unsure?
"Feel free to come and see how it works in practice."
