A secure call transfer, in a medical practice, is a redirection that keeps patient information confidential at every step: the call reaches an authorized recipient, the caller is identified before anything sensitive is said, and the whole chain is covered by a data-processing contract. Basic mobile forwarding does none of this by itself. For a general practitioner, a specialist, a paramedical professional or a health center team, the question is therefore less about the telephone feature and more about who answers, under which contract, and with which safeguards.
Key takeaways
- Call forwarding sends a call elsewhere; a secure transfer also controls who receives it, what is recorded and which party is responsible for the data.
- When call reception is outsourced, CNIL guidance for medical and paramedical practices expects the provider’s access to data to respect medical confidentiality and to be limited by contract.
- Service codes such as *#62# only display forwarding settings. They protect nothing.
- Recording must be controllable: sensitive disclosures such as health status should never be captured by default.
- A short, documented pilot is the safest way to validate a transfer setup before it handles the full call volume.
Table of Contents
- Call forwarding, call transfer and secure transfer: three different things
- What the rules require in France
- Where unsecured transfers go wrong
- What the codes *#62# and ##002# actually do
- A checklist for a secure transfer setup
- Transfer and triage: the clinical side
- A worked example: a closed-door lunch hour
- Our perspective
- Moving to a managed setup without disruption
- How ClicFone handles secure transfers
- FAQ
- Sources
Call forwarding, call transfer and secure transfer: three different things
The three terms are often used as synonyms, which is the source of many compliance gaps in small practices.
Call forwarding is a network setting. Incoming calls are redirected automatically to another number, either always, when the line is busy, or when nobody answers. The caller is not questioned, and nobody checks who picks up at the other end.
Call transfer is an action taken during a live call. A person answers, speaks with the caller, then sends the call to a colleague, a department or another practitioner, sometimes after briefing the recipient first.
Secure call transfer is a transfer, automatic or manual, carried out under rules that protect the patient: the recipient is authorized, the caller’s identity is verified when health information is involved, the exchange is traceable, and the organization receiving the call acts under a written processing agreement.
The difference matters because the telephone is, in practice, the first filter of a medical practice. What is said in the first thirty seconds of a call (a symptom, a prescription, a worrying result) is already health data.
What the rules require in France
Medical confidentiality and GDPR
A practice remains responsible for the data of its patients even when someone else answers the telephone. The regulator’s position, set out in the CNIL reference framework for medical and paramedical practices, is that a service provider who accesses personal data must do so in compliance with medical confidentiality. In the case of outsourced call reception, this translates into a contract that limits what the processor may do: administrative tasks only, with no unauthorized access to patient records.
That contract is the processing agreement required by Article 28 of the GDPR. A practical walk-through is available in our guide to a medical answering service data processing agreement, and the broader obligations are summarized in 3 GDPR steps French clinics must take for medical calls.
Why generic channels are a poor fit
The CNIL has long cautioned that ordinary electronic messaging and fax are not, a priori, a safe way to transmit identifiable medical data, because a single handling error, such as a wrong address or number, can disclose information to the wrong person. The same logic applies to a telephone redirect to a personal mobile or to a voicemail box that nobody has verified: the destination is not controlled, so the disclosure risk is not controlled either.
Numbering and traceability
Professionals also need to look at the numbers they use. The telecoms regulator Arcep publishes a practical sheet on the numbering plan for professionals that explains which number ranges may be used for business purposes. A practice that redirects its public number should check that the number and the redirect destination fit those rules, and should prefer a clearly identified, traceable channel to an improvised mobile redirect.
Recording and consent
Many answering systems record calls for quality purposes. In health, this is a point of vigilance. The European Data Protection Board has published a summary of a final decision on GDPR breaches and, separately, reported that the CNIL fined two remote-consultation companies, EUR 250,000 and EUR 150,000, after inspections carried out in 2021. Those cases did not involve medical practices, but they show that the French authority examines how telephone services collect and keep personal data.
For a practice, the lesson is concrete: recording should be announced, limited in duration, and technically suspendable when a caller gives sensitive details. Our guides to call recording and GDPR in healthcare and call analytics under GDPR detail the steps, including hosting questions.
Where unsecured transfers go wrong
The same failures appear in most practices that have grown their call handling informally.
- Redirect to a personal mobile. The call lands on a device that may be in a public place, shared with family, or switched off. If the phone is unreachable, the call falls back to an operator voicemail the practice never configured.
- Unverified voicemail. A message box that announces nothing about confidentiality, or that cannot be checked quickly, leaves urgent messages unread. See our note on why voicemail fails compliance for on-call coverage.
- No identity check. A caller claims to be a patient, a relative or a colleague and obtains information. Identity verification by telephone needs a defined routine, described in our article on identity verification by phone.
- Forgotten forwarding rules. A redirect set months ago keeps sending calls to a number nobody monitors. This is where service codes come in.
- Transfer without context. The recipient takes the call cold, and the patient has to repeat symptoms. Repeating health details increases exposure and irritates the patient.
What the codes *#62# and ##002# actually do
Searches for a secure transfer often end on these codes, so a precise answer helps.
*#62# is a GSM service code that displays where calls go when the line is unreachable. It reveals the destination, often a voicemail server, but it does not add any protection. The code ##002# is commonly used to cancel conditional forwarding, although settings applied at carrier or network level on specialized business lines may remain in place. Orange’s help pages on service continuity describe the solutions available to mobile customers, and users’ experience on the Orange community forum shows that some non-answer forwarding to the voicemail cannot always be removed with these codes alone.
The practical conclusion: use the codes to audit what is currently configured, then move the real logic (who answers, when, and under which rules) to a managed system rather than to the handset.
A checklist for a secure transfer setup
| Criterion | What to verify |
|---|---|
| Recipient | Named, trained, bound by medical confidentiality and by contract |
| Contract | Article 28 processing agreement, defined purposes, no access to patient records beyond the task |
| Identity | Script for verifying a caller before any health information is exchanged |
| Recording | Announced, limited, and possible to pause during sensitive disclosures |
| Hosting | Health data hosted by a certified provider where the setup stores any |
| Fallback | Defined behavior when the practice line is busy or closed, with no unverified voicemail |
| Escalation | Written procedure for urgent calls, with a person to reach and a time limit |
| Calendar | Appointments written directly to the practice’s agenda software |
| Documentation | Records of processing and, where relevant, an impact assessment |
For the last point, the guide to privacy impact assessments for calls explains when a practice should document its call processing before the CNIL or a patient asks questions.
Transfer and triage: the clinical side
Security is not only legal. A transfer that arrives late can be a clinical problem. Telephone triage separates calls that need a doctor immediately, those that need an appointment within days, and those that are purely administrative. The telephone acts as an intelligent filter, and the quality of the transfer depends on the quality of the questions asked before it.
The World Health Organization’s guidance on telemedicine notes that perceived malpractice risk stays high even when real medicolegal incidents are rare, and it favors transparent, secure and authenticated channels to build patient trust. A documented transfer routine contributes to this: it shows what was asked, who received the call and when.
Two of our pages cover the operational side: medical phone triage and the benefits of phone triage for specialty practices.
A worked example: a closed-door lunch hour
Consider a group practice where the doctors see patients between 8:30 and 12:30 and the reception desk closes at lunch. Under an informal setup, calls are forwarded to the mobile of the doctor on duty. During a consultation the mobile is silent, the call rolls to the operator voicemail, and a patient who described chest discomfort leaves a message that is heard at 2 p.m.
Under a managed setup, the call is answered by a trained operator who introduces the practice by name, asks structured questions, identifies the caller, checks whether the situation is urgent and, if so, transfers the call to the designated practitioner or directs the patient to emergency services. If it is not urgent, the operator books a slot directly in the agenda. Nothing depends on a handset being switched on, and the practice has a record of what happened.
The example is illustrative, not a statistic, but it reflects the situations our operators handle every day.
Our perspective
We have handled calls for healthcare professionals for more than 15 years, and hundreds of thousands of calls have passed through our operators. What we see most often is not a dramatic breach but a slow accumulation of small improvisations: a forwarded number here, an unchecked voicemail there, a recording setting nobody remembers enabling.
Our view is that a secure transfer starts with people. Qualified operators, trained for the medical sector, know what to ask, when to stop asking, and when a call must reach a practitioner immediately. Technology then reinforces that work: calendar synchronization with platforms such as Doctolib, LibreRDV, Maiia and CalenDoc, round-the-clock AI support for the hours when no human is scheduled, and a record of each interaction.
We also believe the practitioner should keep control. The operator never opens the patient record, never gives medical advice, and works inside a procedure the practice has approved. A practice that cannot explain its call flow in a few sentences to a patient or to the CNIL probably does not yet have a secure transfer.
— Rudolph Thierry
Moving to a managed setup without disruption
Changing how calls are handled worries many practitioners, because the telephone is the one service patients notice immediately when it fails. A staged approach limits the risk:
- Map the current flow. List every number, redirect and voicemail, and check what each does with the *#62# type of query.
- Define the rules. Decide which calls are urgent, which are appointments, which are administrative, and who receives each category.
- Sign the contract first. The processing agreement and the confidentiality commitments precede any live call.
- Run a pilot. A short trial on part of the call volume reveals script gaps before they matter. Our article on a 2 to 4 week compliant pilot to outsource medical calls in France describes the stages.
- Review the records. Check a sample of calls, transfer times and appointments written in the agenda, then adjust the scripts.
Seasonal peaks deserve their own planning, notably during winter epidemics, which is the subject of our page on call and appointment management.
How ClicFone handles secure transfers
ClicFone provides remote medical and paramedical telephone answering for general practitioners, specialists, paramedical professionals and health center teams. Human tele-secretaries trained for healthcare answer in the name of the practice, qualify the call, transfer urgent situations and book appointments directly in the agenda platform in use. The offers are flexible, with no commitment required, and pricing is discussed with each practice.
Practices can start with remote telephone secretarial services, or look first at urgent appointment triage if their main concern is calls that cannot wait. The ClicFone home page gives an overview of all services.
FAQ
What is the difference between call forwarding and a secure call transfer?
Forwarding redirects calls automatically to another number without any check on who answers. A secure transfer adds an authorized recipient, identity verification of the caller when health data is involved, traceability and a data-processing contract. In a medical practice, only the second approach fits the confidentiality obligations described by the CNIL.
Does the code *#62# make a call transfer secure?
No. It only shows where calls are redirected when the line is unreachable, typically a voicemail server. It is useful as an audit step, but it adds no encryption, authentication or contractual protection.
Can a practice forward patient calls to a personal mobile?
It is technically possible, but it is a weak option for patient calls. The destination device is not controlled, calls can fall back to an unverified voicemail, and there is no record of what was said. The CNIL’s caution about uncontrolled channels for medical data points towards a managed, traceable solution instead.
Is a contract required when call reception is outsourced?
Yes. The practice remains responsible for its patients’ data and needs a processing agreement under Article 28 of the GDPR with the provider. It should limit the provider to administrative tasks and exclude access to patient records.
Should calls to a medical practice be recorded?
Only with a clear purpose, information for the caller and a limited retention period. The system should also be able to pause recording when sensitive information is given. Practices that are unsure should document their choice in their records of processing.
Sources
- CNIL, reference framework for medical and paramedical practices
- CNIL, health data, email and fax
- Arcep, numbering plan for professionals
- EDPB, summary of a final decision under Article 60
- EDPB, French SA fines COSMOSPACE and TELEMAQUE
- Orange, service continuity solutions
- Orange community, non-answer forwarding to voicemail
- WHO, telemedicine guidance
Recommended
- Secure French Clinic Call Recording: 5 Steps to GDPR and Article 28
- 3 GDPR Steps French Clinics Must Take for Medical Calls
