Medcom Professional Services doesn’t have the luxury of taking a snow day.
The Levittown company provides telephone answering services, primarily to doctors’ offices, 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
With so many doctors’ offices closed because of the snow, Medcom’s call volume has skyrocketed.
“We normally answer 4,000 calls a day,” said Chris Bell, Medcom’s president and owner. “Wednesday we had more than 12,000 and today it’s just as busy.”
Bell said it’s been challenge to get the company’s 45 employees into MedCom’s offices in Levittown, Allentown and New Holland near Lancaster.
Tuesday night, he discovered a problem with the company’s back-up generator and was fortunate enough to get a service provider from Cummins Power Systems in Bristol to make an office call. The only problem was the Cummins service man pulled into the wrong parking lot about a quarter-mile away and got stuck in the snow.
“I had to run up there with a snow shovel and help dig him out, and I’m not a spring chicken anymore,” Bell joked.
A bad cell in the generator battery was replaced and sure enough, before the night was over the area lost power. Bell said Thursday afternoon the office was still being powered by the generator.
Bell said he can’t recall a snowstorm this bad since one that hit the region in 1996. Since that time, he said, the technology has advanced to the point that some answering services his company provides can be handled by e-mail. In addition, the company now has employees answering calls from eight remote locations in workers’ homes. “We’ve been relying heavily on the remote locations,” Bell said.
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