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Setting Up Paging for Individuals on Your Staff
To request a pager, complete the Paging Access Form, and send it to the secretary in Communication Services, Box 800290, Room 1075, McKim Hall. If you are requesting more than one pager, complete a form for each staff member.
A manager's signature and charge code is required on all paging request forms. Your department will be charged an initial deposit of $235.00 and $23.00 per pager per month for usage. One of ITC's responsibilities is to bill user departments for their pagers based on rates set by the hospital. The pager customers are typically Hospital and School of Medicine staff.
Some of your staff may need two pagers: a hospital pager when they are in the Medical Center and the local Charlottesville area and a pager from an outside vendor or a cell phone when they are out of range of the paging system. Paging system pagers have a range of 25-30 miles, but the Blue Ridge mountains and other hills and valleys sometimes block the signal. In general, it is not a good idea to depend only on an outside pager because there are dead spots within the Hospital where non-SIMON pagers cannot be reached. Special cable was installed within the hospital to ensure that UVa Paging System pagers can be reached in all areas of the hospital. Also, cell phone use is prohibited in most parts of the hospital.
PIC numbers are assigned when pagers are issued. The same PIC number may be associated with an outside pager or cell phone. This enables you to use the PIC number to contact a staff member, regardless of whether they are using their hospital pager, their outside pager, or their cell phone. To make this work, the user must keep their status up to date in the system and they must have registered their outside pager or cell phone with Communication Services. Keeping their status up-to-date simply means that they notify the University Operators when they are using their hospital pager and when they switch to their outside pager or cell phone and vice versa. There is an option on the Paging Access form for associating an outside pager or cell phone with a PIC number. See the user documentation for information on when status can be updated via the automated system and when users must call the operators to change their status.
Staff who only have a pager from an outside company or a cell phone may obtain a PIC number. There is no charge for this, but they must submit a Paging Access form to Communication Services to provide the necessary information.
While cell phones may be registered just like outside pagers, the system cannot send a page to a cell phone. If a person has indicated that they are reachable on their cell phone when you enter their PIC number, you will be given their cell phone number to call.
Interfaces exist to all outside paging companies in use in the Medical Center: (MetroCall, Arch, Ntelos, and University Wireless (formerly V-Tec). If someone on your staff wishes to use another paging company, then the secretary in Communication Services in McKim Hall will work to set up an interface with that company.
A person's PIC number may be kept private. PIC numbers are generally available in the University Phone book, on the Health System website, the paging directory that is distributed by Communication Services, in the Medical Information System(MIS), and from the University Operators. You may request that a PIC number not appear anywhere.
For more detailed information on PIC numbers and paging individuals, see the user paging documentation.
Setting Up Paging for Groups
A manager or Chief Resident may create a group and specify a text message by calling the Communication Services Office Manager at 924-2550. If there is a set of people that you contact periodically, then you should consider creating a group with these people as members. You can specify a text message when the group is created or when you call the University Operators to have a message sent to the group. The message may vary each time you page the group. There is no limit to the number of people that can be in a group or the number of groups you can create.
When a group is set up, it is given a name and assigned a priority. The priority is based on the type of group. An emergency group will be given the highest priority so that it can preempt other pages being sent by the system. There is no limit on the message size. However, if a person has a numeric pager or their pager has a limit, then they will receive a default message telling them to call the University Operators.