Medical Center
prepares for area code shift
BY MIKE GOODKIND
With thousands of calls a
day coming from patients, businesses, physicians and
others outside the local area, the medical center is
gearing up for the switchover on Saturday, Aug. 2, to the
new 650 area code.
"We are a center for
complex care that draws patients from a wide area,"
said Paul Lavoie, program manager for communication
services at the medical center. SHS clearly isn't unique
in the need to prepare for the changeover, he said, but
because clinical services and departments receive
literally thousands of calls daily from outside the
immediate area, the may want to make special efforts to
alert such callers to the need to dial 650.
The 650 area code will
cover the southern part of what is now the 415 area code.
This includes most of San Mateo County, the northern
portion of Santa Clara County and a small pocket of Santa
Cruz County.
Parts of Daly City,
Brisbane, San Francisco and Marin County will remain in
area code 415.
Lavoie said he and other
communications specialists have been meeting with SHS
clinical personnel, making suggestions about how to help
patients and others who will be affected by the
changeover. "I'm recommending that people working in
clinical environments change their voice mail greetings
to highlight the area code, and I'm suggesting that they
post notices in the clinics and elsewhere in the medical
center," he said. "Clearly, we will need to
reprint business cards and stationery, and in some cases
reprogram fax and voice speed-dial numbers, modems and
ISDN [Integrated Services Digital Network] phone
lines."
Before reprinting business
cards or stationery to reflect the new area code, SHS
departments might want to make sure they receive their
updated mailing addresses expected in early August
as the medical center changes from a route system to the
zip-plus-four mail code system used by Stanford
University, noted Steve Feilner, SHS mail supervisor.
A special concern arising
at the medical center with the change to the 650 area
code, Lavoie said, is that about 1,000 long-range pagers
will now require dialing the 415 area code because the
access number is in the 415 area. Pager access through
the Stanford switchboard by dialing 222 is not affected,
he said.
"One initial
challenge could be remembering to dial the area code when
calling Marin, San Francisco or other places that we are
used to dialing directly," Lavoie added.
Communications with UCSF
under the anticipated merger of clinical services this
fall will be streamlined to avoid the need to dial an
area code, said Judy Frabotta, spokesperson for UCSF
Stanford Health Care. The plan, she said, is to create a
simplified system that will allow calls within the merged
organization to be routed with a short access code plus
five-digit dialing (e.g., 5-1111) in a manner similar to
the internal dialing system now used at Stanford.
In general, people placing
calls involving the 650 region will have a grace period
of several months during which they will be able to dial
either 415 or 650 and get the correct number. After that,
people dialing 415 to reach the 650 area will get a
recording saying they need to use the new area code. The
use of the recording is expected to begin around Feb. 1
or earlier if unassigned numbers run out, said Lavoie.
Information on the area
code changeover at the medical center is available from
MedNET on the World Wide Web at
www-med.stanford.edu/center/areacode.html. And as always,
noted Paul Watkins, SHS director of engineering and
security, medical center phone users with technical
questions or problems related to the changeover can seek
assistance from the Communications Help Line at 725-HELP.
If you're calling from
afar next week, make that 650-725-HELP. SR
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