Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 10

185 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 10 FONEMED “When COVID hit Newfoundland and Labrador last year, we brought on a group of nurse practitioners to escalate calls from our nurses to nurse practitioners for diagnosis, and treatment, and prescriptions when needed. That has had a tremendous impact on keeping patients out of the emergency departments in the province. I see more of that happening in Canada, and in the U.S., where we can escalate calls to doctors, as well.” BVM: How will Fonemed continue to achieve such great success? Brophy: “Much of our success has happened because of valuable partnerships we’ve made and Calls Plus, our backup call center, is one of those. It’s important when you’re running clinical services that you don’t have patients waiting for someone to say hello on the other end of the phone. Our systems are set up so that if our nurses don’t answer, the calls overflow into Calls Plus. They’ve been a phenomenal partner for a number of years – a woman-owned, woman- run organization that is committed to the same quality of care as we are. And they’re only one example of so many partnerships we’ve built. Because we should be out there supporting one another. “The foundation of our success is quality service and offering timely access to care. We will continue to build upon our current client base keeping our focus solely on patient care. Most of our growth has come from word of mouth and we are proud of the fact that our existing clients refer others to us as well. We place high priority on advancing our cutting-edge technology and interest in leasing our software platform is growing steadily. We also keep a close eye on the demand in our communities and developing innovative solutions to meet the gap in care.”