Assuming you're HBLCs:

We use a small spiral bound phone message booklet available from any office
supply store.
Your phone contact sheet would be used when returning the call and note in
the booklet that the call was returned. You might add the name of the
interpreter and what language was used.

It does get a little problematic when the interpreter has to come back
repeatedly to try again for busy signals, mom not home, no answer, and for
check-status followups. Sometimes a male interpreter responds & we have to
request, again, a female interpreter.

Question is, what do you do with the phone record? You can't send it to her
hospital medical file because she's no longer an inpatient. You can't keep
it in your office. That creates a 'shadow' record that HIPAA & JCAHO
forbid. Maybe you can send it to her clinic or Peds office or OB office.
How else are any of her HCPs going to know she has a problem or a question
and what you did or said to help her?

In my hospital, this is an unaddressed grey zone. We are not allowed to
send reports to the clinics, either for situations we feel should be
followed up, or for documentation of phone contacts. Only if mom is using
our own insurance coverage, can her clinic check our system to read her or
baby's inpatient records. Otherwise, they have to request copies by mail or
by fax. But that comes in after the first visit has ended. I do need to get
in someone's face about this, but everyone is focused on preparations for
JCAHO, coming in Sept, officially.


--- Phyllis Adamson, IBCLC, RLC
--- Glendale, AZ, USA
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