Updated Text Paging to Cell Phones
Many UCSF physicians choose to receive pages on both their physical pagers and as a text message on their cell phones.
Receiving messages on your cell phone has historically had limitations:
- Long pages get chopped up into shorter chunks
- Those may arrive out of order
- You may receive only part of the page depending on your carrier/cell tower
- Recently, an automated algorithm by one cell company “detected” that UCSF must be sending spam text messages due to the sheer volume of messages and shut off our ability to send them without notice. Fixing this took emergency intervention by many individuals at UCSF.
Starting this week, UCSF Health is moving to a new and superior technology for sending pages to cell phones. Even very long pages should not be broken up into chunks, and those that do will always arrive in the correct, numbered order. The new technology should also prevent cell phone companies from erroneously detecting our messages as spam and blocking them.
For most, you won’t have to do anything – you’ll receive an email over the next few weeks telling you that your pager number is being moved to this superior technology, and then you’ll receive a confirmatory “page” on your cell phone after it has happened. You will notice your pages arrive on your cell phone from the 5-digit phone number “61008” rather than from a 10-digit number. A few physicians may receive additional instructions from the Clinical Communications team.
Many thanks to the Clinical Systems, Information Technology, and Health Informatics teams for making this happen!
