Medical-only answering service since 1986
Medical Answering Service of Oregon has provided medical-only call handling for 40 years. We haven’t lost a client over service quality in 40 years. That record doesn’t happen by accident.
We support private practices, specialty clinics, health systems, and multi-location organizations across the Pacific Northwest with 24/7/365 live answering, secure message delivery, and call workflows built around how your organization actually operates — not how a call center script says it should.
Built for practice managers, administrators, and physician leaders who need a communication partner that grows with them — not another vendor to manage.
Medical-only for 40 years • 24/7/365 coverage • Employee-staffed • HIPAA-compliant operations • Locally owned • Never lost a client over service quality in 40 years
Why practices come to us
The majority of larger organizations that have come to MASO did so because something had already gone wrong — missed calls, hold times that left patients waiting, agents who refused to reach on-call providers, staff who couldn’t tell the difference between a billing question and a clinical concern. Smaller practices come to us differently: through word of mouth, often for the first time, looking for someone who can show them what good looks like.
Both groups tend to find what they were looking for.
Missed calls. Long hold times. Agents who push back on reaching on-call providers. Inexperienced staff handling clinical calls the same way they’d handle a pizza order. If any of that sounds familiar, you’re not alone — and switching is less disruptive than staying.
If you’ve never used an answering service before, you may not know what to ask for. We’ll tell you. Medical call handling has specific requirements — provider schedules, escalation rules, secure message delivery, HIPAA-compliant communication — and we’ve been building workflows around those requirements for four decades.
Multi-location groups, growing specialty practices, and health systems evaluating formal vendor relationships need more than an answering service. They need a communication partner with the operational depth, compliance posture, and integration roadmap to stay relevant as their needs evolve. That’s where we’re headed.
What working with us looks like
Switching answering services carries real operational risk — especially for practices with complex provider schedules, multiple locations, or specialty-specific call types. Our onboarding is designed to remove that risk. We don’t put you in a template. We document your workflow and build your account around it.
We start by understanding your current after-hours process, call types, provider expectations, escalation rules, and patient communication needs — before we configure anything.
Every provider submits their contact preferences directly. Messages reach the right person through the right channel, every time.
MASO supports multiple on-call schedules per client. Providers or office staff can update schedules by phone, fax, encrypted email, secure message, or through MASO Connect when configured.
Messages can be delivered by phone, secure messaging app, pager, encrypted email, fax, or secure portal. We do not send patient-related messages by SMS or unencrypted email. Ever.
When a large women’s health network with ten locations and more than ninety providers suddenly found themselves without after-hours coverage, they called us. We had them functional in less than a day. Fully onboarded within three days. Some accounts go live the same day we receive the required information.
As your organization changes, your account changes with it. Schedule updates, new providers, coverage changes — submitted through whatever channel works for your team.
Service options
MASO supports healthcare organizations that need live answering, after-hours coverage, secure message delivery, provider routing, and optional nurse triage coordination through a separate clinical pathway.
Live medical call handling for healthcare organizations that need employee-staffed answering, secure message delivery, and workflow-aware provider routing.
Explore medical answeringCoverage for nights, weekends, holidays, closures, and other times when your staff are unavailable but patients still need a dependable response.
Learn about after-hours serviceA separate option for organizations that need RN-supported after-hours patient guidance through our national triage partner, using Schmitt-Thompson clinical protocols.
View nurse triage coordinationSecurity & compliance
MASO signs BAAs with clients and applicable vendors, trains staff annually on HIPAA and PHI handling, retains message records for at least seven years, and uses only secure message delivery channels. We don’t send patient-related messages by SMS or unencrypted email. Message records are backed up through encrypted datacenter and cloud storage.
This isn’t a compliance checklist we assembled for the website. It’s how we’ve operated for four decades.
Signed with clients and applicable vendors as standard practice.
Staff trained annually by a certified compliance service.
Phone, secure app, pager, encrypted email, fax, or secure portal. Nothing unencrypted.
Backed up through encrypted datacenter and cloud storage.
Where we’re headed
Healthcare organizations are consolidating vendors, adding triage services, expecting API integrations, and demanding tools that reduce the administrative and after-hours burden on their providers. We’re building toward all of it.
Nurse triage coordination is available now through our national triage partner, using Schmitt-Thompson clinical guidelines, with triage notes delivered back to your practice through a defined process. Organizations that need RN-supported patient guidance can add it to their existing answering service without finding a second vendor.
Epic integration is in active development. A richer secure messaging platform is coming online. And our API integration work is opening the door to integrations that weren’t possible in this industry two years ago.
We’re not the largest answering service. We’re not trying to be. We’re trying to be the one your organization doesn’t want to leave — because we keep getting more capable, more integrated, and more useful over time. That’s a different value proposition than scale. For the right organizations, it’s a better one.
A secure, real-time communication platform for staff, providers, and administrators. Now available to new clients. Encrypted multi-directional messaging, real-time message delivery, on-call schedule management, and 2FA — accessible anywhere, around the clock.
In active development. Built to meet the integration expectations healthcare IT departments are raising across the industry.
Available now through our national triage partner. Schmitt-Thompson clinical protocols. Available across 49 states, with Hawaii licensure approval in progress.
Opening the door to workflow integrations that weren’t possible in this industry two years ago.
Who we serve
MASO supports organizations that need more than someone to take a message. If your operation involves provider schedules, urgent call types, specialty-specific escalation rules, or patients who need a real person after hours — we’re built for that.
Family medicine, internal medicine, and multi-provider primary care practices with high after-hours call volume and providers who need to sleep.
Support for practices with urgent patient concerns, multiple providers, rotating call schedules, and clinical call types that require real judgment about escalation.
Custom call handling for specialty groups that need accurate messages, clear escalation rules, and dependable after-hours communication.
After-hours support for pediatric practices managing parent calls, provider schedules, and escalation instructions where clinical context matters every time.
Live answering support for dental practices, oral surgery groups, and specialty dental providers that need reliable patient communication.
Answering service support for optometry practices and eye care organizations with after-hours patient needs.
24/7 communication support for care teams that need timely message routing, secure delivery, and dependable coverage outside normal office hours.
Call handling for organizations with multiple locations, different provider groups, and more complex routing requirements than a single-location practice.
Decades of experience supporting larger healthcare organizations with medical answering service, secure message delivery, reporting, and formal vendor review support.
For the people making this decision
Small practices often come to us through a referral, sometimes having never used an answering service before. Larger organizations typically arrive through a formal evaluation process, sometimes an RFP, and need documentation on service scope, compliance posture, reporting capabilities, and integration roadmap before they’re ready to talk.
We’re comfortable with both. We’re not going to pressure you into a decision before you’re ready, and we’re not going to make you justify why you want to understand what you’re buying before you buy it.
Fast onboarding, flexible workflows, and a service that adapts to how your practice operates instead of the other way around.
Provider schedule support, secure delivery options, reporting, and a team you can actually reach when something needs to change.
HIPAA-compliant operations, multi-location support, reporting options, and the compliance documentation to satisfy an internal review.
We can provide information on service scope, onboarding, compliance documentation, secure delivery, reporting, and workflow fit. Tell us what you need.
Service areas
MASO serves healthcare organizations across Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and selected additional markets, with established strength in the Portland metro area and growing presence across key Pacific Northwest healthcare markets.
Common questions
Choosing an answering service affects patient access, provider workload, secure communication, and daily operations. These are some of the questions practices and healthcare organizations often ask before switching.
Yes. MASO focuses exclusively on medical and healthcare answering service. We support practices, clinics, dental offices, optometry practices, hospice and home health organizations, specialty groups, hospitals, health systems, and related healthcare organizations. We do not handle mixed-industry call center work.
Medical-only for 40 years. No mixed-industry call handling. Our operators know what triage means, understand provider schedules, and don’t need to be told why a labor and delivery call requires a different escalation path than a billing question. That institutional knowledge doesn’t come from a training manual. It comes from doing this — only this — for four decades.
24/7/365, employee-staffed, no outsourced contractors. Every operator is a MASO employee. Most are local or have been with the company long enough that local is almost beside the point. When you call at 3am, a MASO employee answers.
MASO maintains HIPAA-compliant operations, signs BAAs with clients and applicable vendors, trains staff annually on HIPAA and PHI handling, and uses secure message delivery methods for patient communication. We do not send patient-related messages by SMS or unencrypted email.
Messages can be delivered by phone, secure messaging app, pager, encrypted email, fax, or secure portal — based on each provider’s preference. MASO does not send patient-related messages by SMS or unencrypted email. If your current service does, that’s worth a conversation.
Yes. MASO supports multiple on-call schedules per client, including complex provider routing, escalation rules, backup contacts, and client-managed schedule updates through MASO Connect when configured.
It depends on the size and complexity of the organization. Some accounts can go live the same day when required information is returned quickly. When a large women’s health network with ten locations and more than ninety providers suddenly found themselves without after-hours coverage, we had them functional in less than a day and fully onboarded within three days. If your situation is urgent, tell us. We know how to move.
No. Pricing depends on call volume, coverage hours, workflow complexity, message delivery requirements, reporting needs, and service scope. A number without that context isn’t meaningful. Request a consultation and we’ll have an honest conversation about what this actually costs for an organization like yours.
MASO coordinates nurse triage as a separate service through a national triage partner, using Schmitt-Thompson clinical protocols. Many organizations begin with after-hours answering and add nurse triage when call volume, provider burden, or patient needs support it. Available across 49 states, with Hawaii licensure approval in progress.
Yes. MASO can provide information about service scope, onboarding, reporting, secure delivery options, compliance documentation, workflow support, and operational fit during a formal vendor evaluation. We’ve been through that process. We’re comfortable with it.
We don’t publish pricing, and we’re not going to give you a number that means nothing without understanding your call volume, coverage hours, workflow complexity, and what you actually need from a communication partner. The consultation is how we figure out whether we’re a fit — for both of us.
We don’t take every client that calls. We’re looking for organizations that want a long-term partner, not the lowest number on a comparison spreadsheet.