Cataract Post-Op Calls: Day One to Week One

Surgery date and operative eye are captured before anything else, so a post-operative caller is handled as one rather than being offered a new-patient appointment
Second-eye patients are asked which surgery they are calling about, because a staged bilateral patient is living with two different timelines and often calls about the older eye
Symptoms your surgeons want to hear about the same day route on the ladder they defined; everything else is answered from the post-operative instruction sheet your practice publishes
Restriction questions — when the shield comes off, bending, lifting, showering, swimming, driving, eye makeup — are answered in your surgeons' own words, held separately per surgeon because they genuinely differ
Drop questions are recognised and captured on their own branch with the drug, the schedule the patient describes and the pharmacy, instead of being answered from general knowledge
Calls arriving the morning after an operating day are tagged with the surgeon and the surgery date so the post-op wave reaches the team expecting it

How it pays back

One Operating Day Produces a Week of Phone Calls

A cataract block does not end when the last case leaves. It produces a predictable wave of calls the following morning and through the first week, all arriving on the same lines as new bookings and referrals. Answering them all at once keeps a technician on the post-op clinic rather than on hold.

Your Surgeon's Instructions, Not a Generic Post-Op Script

Ask three cataract surgeons about lifting, swimming or when a patient may drive and you will get three answers. A generic script gets one of them wrong every time. Instructions are configured per surgeon and per procedure, so the answer the patient hears is the answer in their own discharge paperwork.

The Red Eye Call Is Not a Judgement for Software

Pain, a red eye, or vision that got worse after being good are exactly the calls your surgeons want in front of them. The AI never assesses them. It matches the caller's description to the list you wrote and takes the routing action attached to it, with the caller's own words preserved.

Glasses Questions Stop Interrupting Clinical Staff

A large share of week-one calls are about when the new prescription can be measured and where to get glasses. Those route to your optical or dispensary path instead of consuming a post-op nurse's attention, while the clinical calls stay on the clinical path.

Unlimited concurrent calls

The morning-after surge is answered in parallel instead of queued behind bookings

24/7 coverage

Weekend and evening post-operative callers reach your protocol, not a voicemail box

Dozens of languages

The same post-operative instructions are given in the language the patient answers in

Frequently asked questions

Will the AI tell a patient whether blurry vision on day one is normal?

It will read the expected-course language your practice wrote for that procedure, if you configure it to. It will not assess the patient's vision, offer a prognosis, or decide that something is fine. Anything on your escalation list routes regardless of what else the caller says.

Our three surgeons give different restrictions. Can it hold all three?

Yes. Instruction sets are held per surgeon and per procedure, and the call identifies which surgeon operated before answering a restriction question. Where the surgeon is not established on the call, the question is captured and routed rather than answered from an average.

What happens on a Saturday after a Friday operating day?

The same protocol runs. Post-operative callers are identified, expected-course questions are answered from your instructions, and anything on your escalation list follows your after-hours chain to whichever physician is covering, with fallbacks if the first number does not answer.

Can it handle a patient calling about the eye that was not operated on?

It asks which eye and records the answer rather than assuming the recent surgery is the subject. A patient describing new symptoms in the unoperated eye is routed on your symptom rules, not treated as a post-operative question.

The patient's spouse is calling. Can it speak with them?

Within the disclosure policy you set. The relationship is established and recorded, and what may be discussed with a proxy caller is your practice's determination. Post-operative callers are frequently elderly and calling with family in the room, so this is configured deliberately rather than left to chance.

Where does the call end up in our system?

In the destination you choose: an EMR task, a post-operative work queue, a shared inbox or a structured summary. Writeback is available through API or FHIR for supported systems, and custom integration is available where no direct interface exists.

Answer the Post-Cataract Call Wave Without Pulling a Tech