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.
Need to Visit the Emergency Room? For a Small Fee You Can Make an Appointment
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
A recent article written by the LA Times discussed how eight Southern California hospitals are now part of a system called InQuickEr, in which patients pay a monthly fee of $14.99 up to $24.99 giving them the ability to set up an online appointment for emergency care. This gives the patients the guarantee that they will be seen within 15 minutes of their arrival at the emergency department or they will receive their money back.
One of the hospitals which is now offering this service is Lakewood Regional Medical Center. Life-threatening emergencies will still be given priority. According to the LA Times, critics of the service worry that “letting people pay to secure appointments may just encourage patients who do not need immediate care to use emergency rooms anyway.” Reducing the ER wait-times of people who can afford the monthly fees, will increase the patient-satisfaction of said patients, but what happens to the rest?
With ERtexting this wouldn’t be an issue. It is a texting service that allows you to post your hospitals’ emergency room wait times making it available to anyone in the community. Since 4.5 billion people own a mobile phone world-wide, it makes this a valuable and highly accessible service while boosting patient satisfaction. For more information visit the ERtexting website.
Why Use a Texting Service to Post Wait Times?
As the need to provide ER wait times increases, so do the many different methods you can use to do so. From the internet, to phone applications to texting, the options are various. But the question is, why should you choose a texting service? In this article we will go over some of the many reasons why this would benefit your hospital and increase patient satisfaction.
According to the GSM Association, as of 2009 there were approximately 4.5 billion people who own a mobile phone. This translates to more than half of the world’s population which now stands at 6.8 billion. If we concentrate on the United States, approximately 90% of Americans own a mobile phone. An outstanding 1.5 trillion text messages were sent two years ago, and the numbers keep rising. These mobile phones are with us at all times, which makes it convenient to check ED wait times when the need arises.
Although there are cellular phone applications out there which will also show wait times, not everyone owns a smart phone, but most people are able to receive a text message. ERtexting is an efficient way to move forward, and allow patients to know your hospital’s emergency room wait times any time, any place.
RSS Feed- Emergency Room Challenges: Options to Ease Overcrowding
- Baptist Health System, Birmingham Ala., Selects ERTexting for Communication of Emergency Room Wait Times
- Epic Snowstorm in Northeast Demonstrates Growing Role of Text Capability for Patients and Hospitals
- Press Ganey Associates Reports the Top 10 Metro Areas for Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction
Follow Us!
Business
