Increasing Patient Satisfaction By Providing ER Wait Times
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
When emergencies strike, many patients visit the nearest hospital, seeking the treatment they urgently need. One of the many things that aid in increasing patient satisfaction is being transparent about the ED wait times available. Many hospitals know this and have resorted to using a variety of methods to provide patients with Emergency room wait times.
Posting ER wait times can be done by either posting them on a website, on billboards, using phone applications or a texting service. Hospitals understand this will allow patients to know just how long they will have to wait when seeking health care and result in higher patient satisfaction.
Transparency results in many benefits. Patients are demanding more and more information in making healthcare decisions and posting ER wait times falls into line with these demands. Increased communication equates to a better overall experience.
Why use a texting service such as ERtexting? According to the GSM Association currently an amazing 6.25 billion text messages are sent in the United States per day. Using a texting service will allow you to make your wait times accessible to a great number of individuals in a convenient, economical and instantaneous manner, thus increasing patient satisfaction.
Mistakes to Avoid When Using A Texting Service to Post Wait Times
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
Many hospitals are slowly incorporating an SMS service, such as ERtexting, to deliver Emergency room wait times to patients, thus increasing patient satisfaction. There are mistakes that should be avoided when using a texting service. Chief Marketing Officer of Hipcricket, Kirkland, Jeff Hasen states “Education and making smart decisions are key to prevent mistakes from happening”.
Firstly, hospitals should avoid not making their call of action prevalent. According to Mr. Hasen, hospitals should try “engaging consumers and turning passive activities into interactive ones, making traditional and non-traditional dollars work harder, and being able to measure effectiveness in real time.”
Shawn Schwegman, chief marketing officer at ChaCha, Indianapolis, IN, explains how “often, when marketers think about mobile ad dollars, SMS marketing is overlooked.” He went on to say “With SMS mobile marketing, brands gain extensive reach. It is key for brands to reach the right audience and maximize their reach,” he suggests how” by leveraging SMS marketing, marketers can achieve their goals.”
Finally to keep patient satisfaction at its highest, you should avoid bombarding them with messages once they have acquired the service. It is also important to be original. Cat Enagonio, vice president of marketing at ChaCha, Indianapolis, IN explains “Brands will do best when they view it within the context of the medium. A key best practice is for brand marketers and agencies to understand the different mobile products and map their advertising into that which will yield the highest conversion rates.”
Using a Texting or Short Message Service
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
We have previously discussed the importance of making emergency room wait-times available to patients, maintaining transparency, which results in patient satisfaction. The question is, why use a texting or Short message service (SMS) to do so?
In a recent session by the CTIA Wireless Organization: “Mobile Limbo – Brand Perspective: What Does the Brand Need to Make the Leap into Mobile?” the importance of a texting service was discussed. One of the benefits includes the ability to further the engagement of Hospitals with the patients.
Patients are able to know when the hospital’s emergency room will be available. This in turn results in patient satisfaction, since these patients are attended to in a more timely manner.
Josh Weinrobe, director of Turner Networks, Atlanta states “SMS is where all the action is today.” He goes on to explain how “there’s just a whole lot of opportunity still in the SMS component of mobile marketing.” It is important that hospitals become aware of the benefits this service provides in reaching out to the millions of patients who use a texting service.
Hospital of Central Connecticut Selects ERTexting for Communication of Emergency Room Wait Times
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Wait Times Health Services
The new service allows potential patients to receive
emergency room wait times via their cell phones
Miami, Florida (March, 2011) – ER Texting, a provider of turnkey text message services to the healthcare industry, today announced that the Hospital of Central Connecticut (HCC) selected the company as its provider for the communication of Emergency Room (ER) wait times.
Hartford-area residents can now access wait times at the hospital’s New Britain General and Bradley Memorial campuses by texting their zip code to 4ER411. Wait times for both campuses are delivered instantly. The hospital’s ER is one of the busiest in the state, with more than 100,000 visits annually. Despite this volume, HCC’s ER has some of the shortest wait times in the country, with 90 to 95 percent of patients seen by a physician or physician assistant within 60 minutes.
“Of course, in a life-threatening emergency, people should dial 911, but for less-urgent situations, people can often choose where they’ll go for care,” says Jeffrey Finkelstein, HCC’s chief of Emergency Medicine. “With this new texting service, they’ll instantly get wait times for both HCC campuses that can help them make that choice”
Posting ER wait times improves patient satisfaction scores; delivers greater hospital transparency; provides for better load balancing and increased efficiency across ERs; and ultimately increases ER visits. Today’s patients are demanding more and more healthcare related information. Posting ER wait times aligns with consumers’ expectations and is a determining factor when selecting a hospital for emergency care.
About ER Texting
ER Texting provides texting services to hospitals and urgent care facilities that want to post their emergency room wait time and allow consumers to access those times via text message. By virtue of its dedicated and highly recognizable SMS short code 4ER411, ER Texting offers a complete, secure and integrated texting and marketing platform. For more information on ER Texting and our capabilities, please visit www.ERtexting.com.
Health System Understands Importance of Posting ER Wait Times
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
Many hospitals and health systems are now realizing the importance of posting their Emergency Room wait times as it relates to patient satisfaction. One of these is Ochsner Health System. This health system is made up of five emergency departments who are located within 10 miles from each other.
An article written by Ochsner health system explained how the need to post ED wait times arose after experiencing “a significant load imbalance from one emergency department to the other in that one or two emergency departments at any given time were overloaded with high-volume and the others underutilized.”
The health system decided to make their ER wait times available to their patients by posting them on their website. The benefits of posting wait times, whether through a website or through a texting service such as ERTexting are many. The article describes how the hospitals were expected to experience “immediately greater load leveling and that the less busy EDs would get busier and busier EDs would be avoided, achieving better balance across the system.”
Another of the benefits of making wait times available deals with patient satisfaction. Patients will be attended to in a timely manner, after choosing the hospital with less wait times. The transparency of posting ER wait times will help meet patient’s expectations and give the best result for the hospital.
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