HEALTHCARE MARKETING EXECUTIVES BILLBOARDS ARE ONLY THE BEGINNING IN THE ER WAIT TIMES WARS
If you spend anytime on the road these days, you’ve probably seen hospitals touting their short ER wait times “LIVE” on any of the highways’ many billboards.
HCA hospitals started the strategy in Florida, developed by their advertising agency, AB&A out of Miami. And the outcomes were fantastic. Some showed increases in ER traffic of up to 25%! Of course, HCA’s wait times were stellar, almost always less than 30 minutes, many times less than that.
But then came the new marketing wrinkle that REALLY got the ER’s cranking: Live ER wait times delivered to potential patients via text message in the middle of their emergency. That’s right, just think about it. Your daughter cuts her finger and needs 3 stitches. Don’t you want to know if you need to go to Hospital A and wait 18 minutes or Hospital B and wait 312 minutes? Pretty simple decision.
So what’s this whole text thing about anyway? Well, its about a trillion of them. Over a trillion texts sent in the US in 2009 and climbing. More and more, people are using their smart phones as the device of choice for making decisions on the go.
Many hospitals are turning to the industry leader for live ER text services, ERTexting out of Miami, Florida. Currently the company manages the 4ER411 system of ER text messages. The patient texts 4ER411 with their zip code and instantly they receive a text of the participating hospitals’ live wait times. Hospitals can secure zip codes on an exclusive basis and use the system to really dominate their competitors. And now 4ER411 even features outbound services to maximize their clients’ database. Patients can routinely receive text messages from hospitals on the system for pennies.
So if you’re looking for the wow factor, get that big billboard and let the whole world know! But if getting ahead of the marketing curve is your thing, text away and reap the rewards.
Sarah McCallister
Why Publish Emergency Room wait times?
written by Jennifer Reynolds
Here are 4 facts on why hospitals are increasingly marketing their ER wait times via text and other advertising vehicles. If you have an ED to promote, the evidence is overwhelmingly positive.
Patient Satisfaction When patients know your emergency room wait time, their expectations are set and experience enhanced. Knowing what to expect translates into higher level of patient satisfaction.
Transparency Whether its quality scores, infection rates or provider comparisons consumers trust what they can see . Marketing your emergency room performance aligns with what consumers desire and are currently demanding.
Emergency Department Performance By being transparent, your ED team will be more motivated to drive performance, quality and patient satisfaction. Consumer awareness motivates ED team members to take deeper ownership of their services and instills a greater sense of pride. Published times can also support other benchmarks and metrics already in place.
Hospital Image Publishing emergency room wait times for consumers to instantly retrieve with a single text, reflects your being in touch with your communities. Reaching out to your markets and offering instantaneous information via a single text reinforces your position as a market leader. Your hospital will be seen as “informed and connected”.
There you have it. And we haven’t even covered the costs, which are minimal. You can usually promote your hospital’s live ER wait times for under the cost of that 1 newspaper ad that less and less people are reading every day. Catch the tech wave or get washed away. Some healthy advice!
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HOSPITAL MARKETING BUDGETS DOWN, CREATIVITY UP!
There’s a growing trend among hospital marketers, that is:
Budgets are going down and moving in the direction of online.
What else is new? That’s what most industries are doing.
However, technology is playing an even more unique role in some
hospitals’ marketing efforts. The ER or ED, long the front door and
bringer of patients both coveted and tolerated is now the focal point
for marketing in many hospitals nationwide.
So what makes for great ER/ED marketing? Simple. Speed. Oh of course
quality matters, but in many cases of minor emergencies, quality is assumed.
Therefore, it comes down to the quality patient experience and how quickly
the hospital can get it going.
Many hospitals have gone to publishing live ER wait times on the web on billboards
and the latest trend, via text message. The leader in this technology is ERTexting, Inc.
out of Florida, providing a nationwide vanity text code: 4ER411 that can be accessed
by all potential patients. Hospitals can buy the service for a fraction of what it would
cost them to implement the service on their own. And without all the IT hassles.
So put it on your “To-Do” list. If you’re in charge of marketing your hospital and your
ER/ED is important to you, put your live ER wait times on the map. In this crazy
“techy” world we live in, it’s what potential patients want to see.
ER Texting Emergency Services
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How to Increase ER Traffic in Your Hospital
Many hospitals around the country are struggling with the same issues: It’s fiercely competitive, we know people want better service, we know it feeds the rest of the hospital. But what can you do?
Here’s one suggestion: implement live ER wait times available to potential patients via text message. That’s right. The system is fairly new, but is gaining in strength and popularity due to its low cost and incredible returns. Some hospitals have seen increases of over 25% in their ER traffic.
HCA was the first to try it in South Florida in 2009 and the results were startling. So startling, in fact, that they went from trying it out in 6 hospitals to implementing it in over 200 hospitals in just a few months.
But now the best part is competition: ERTexting is offering a low-cost live ER wait time platform to hospitals nationwide. And the pricing is tiered to the size of the hospital’s market as well as multiple hospital groups. They even have marketing co-op programs for hospital groups that qualify.
The system, known as “4ER411” is available anywhere in the United States and boasts an ease of use for the patient end-user. The patient simply texts their zip code to “4ER411” on their cell phone and they instantly receive the ER wait times for participating hospitals in the area. Simple. Effective. And a lot less
expensive than advertising ER services on traditional media.
Find out more online at ERTexting.com
Hospitals Want to Compete With HCA Hospitals’ ER Texting…But How?
For many hospitals these days, it’s all too familiar scenario, you have an HCA
or several HCA hospitals in your marketplace and they have their “23000”
ER wait times patient text system in place. And it works great for their ER,
generating tons of ER traffic. How does your ER compete with that?
Well, now it’s easy. Enter “4ER411”, the latest in texting platforms,
brought to you by ERTexting Inc., the same Miami company whose
executives developed the “23000” system for HCA. Except this is
the better mousetrap. While the “23000” system works fine, it is a
shared text code, so it requires the extra step of sending “ER” to the
number first, waiting for a prompt and then entering the patient’s
zip code. “4ER411” works on a simplified platform, where the patient
simply texts their zip code to “4ER411” and they receive the live wait
times for participating hospitals in that zip code. No extra steps during
an actual emergency, so the positive patient experience begins even before
they get to your door.
So yes, now you can not only compete with the HCA hospitals in your area,
but beat them at their own ER text game, with ERTexting.
Just go to their site and find out all about it.
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