Skagway’s medical clinic can now field calls around the clock. The clinic has contracted with a national telemedicine company to offer assistance when the clinic is closed.

Skagway’s Dahl Memorial Clinic is typically open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. But for patients needing advice outside of the typical workday, it has contracted with Fonemed to serve as their after-hours nurse triage support line. As the clinic’s Administrative Manager Cara Cosgrove says, this adds a level of service for people needing non-emergency help after hours.

“This just allows for that screening and initial processing to be sure that the call is emergent. If the patient, of course, knows that it’s an emergent call, they can just call 911 Right away, and not go through the nurse triage line,” said Cosgrove.

She also says the service from the California-based telemedicine firm will take some of the non-emergency call responsibilities off of the plates of the after-hours emergency medical staff at the clinic.

“This is just an effort to provide more efficient service really. To protect our medical support staff from being woken at night with calls that are non-emergent, and therefore, they’ll be able to, you know, count on that rest time and be able to be more available,” said Cosgrove.

Basically, until now, anyone needing to speak to a medical professional after hours would have been routed to that provider, even if it was late at night. That might have meant waking a nurse up for something that could have been handled the next day. This new service adds a buffer so those providers can sleep through the night if no true emergencies arise.

Cosgrove says the new service will be the first option for after-hours callers who phone the Dahl Memorial Clinic so they won’t have to sort through a bunch of options on the automated answering service. If the caller needs to talk to a human after-hours, they’ll be routed to a Fonemed triage nurse who will assess the situation to determine whether the call requires emergency assistance. If it does, the Fonemed representative will contact the on-duty provider and give instructions from there.

But Cosgrove also says if there is an emergency, the on-duty provider will be ready to help in person.

“I think the important thing to get out there is that for emergencies, they’re going to be there as always and come running. So that I don’t, you know, think there needs to be concern about any loss in services for emergency services, we will be there,” said Cosgrove.

Fonemed’s recruiting ads say it requires its nursing applicants to have at least three years of field experience. They work from home, not in a call center. The company has headquarters in California and northeastern Canada.

Cosgrove says anyone seeking non-emergency information after-hours or over the weekend is still able to leave a message for staff.

“Calls that come in maybe over the weekend or such asking about, you know how to schedule a COVID vaccination, for example, and those kinds of calls, you’ll be able to leave a message on the line as usual and not be sent to Fonemed,” said Cosgrove.

The municipality has also extended an offer to hire a clinic interim executive director from California. Her name is Eileen Tremaine and she is being offered the gig on a temporary basis at a rate of $115 an hour. She replaces Estelita Fielding who has worked for the clinic since at least spring 2019. As of Monday afternoon, there’s no word whether she’s accepted the job.