Emergency Room Challenges: Options to Ease Overcrowding
Filed under: Emergency Services, Wait Times Health Services
A recent article by James Ellis and Aaron Razavi outlined seven methods to help alleviate overcrowding in emergency rooms. They include:
- Incorporate a nurse hotline for patients to call can help them decide whether their symptoms are severe enough for an emergency department visit.
- By publishing an online wait time, patients may better weigh if they need to act now or if their symptoms can wait. Implementing simple technological advancements can reduce patient stress and increase physician efficiency.
- Implementing a fast track system allows advanced care providers, such as registered nurses and physicians assistants, the ability to provide treatment to non-urgent cases while physicians see urgent cases.
- Patients not requiring urgent care may be treated in specialized observation units which may ease traffic flow and over boarding in the emergency department.
- Institute a hospital staff member to serve as a patient transfer liaison, in charge of overseeing the flow of emergency department patients to inpatient areas. This can significantly free up space and emergency department beds, while efficiently transferring patients to a more permanent stay.
- Create a separate sitting area or discharge room for patients waiting on medication, travel arrangements and other instruction. This can help in freeing hospital beds and preventing backups.
- Providing patients with a post discharge follow-up, including instructions and procedures to adhere by the days following their discharge, can reduce readmissions saving hospitals time and money. This is especially important with elderly populations who may need to be reminded of their detailed, at-home-care responsibilities.
Tackling each of these potential areas for improvement requires individual focus and resources. According to the 2010 Press Ganey ED Pulse Report, communicating wait times and delays is the most critical to improving patient satisfaction:
“As in prior years, it appears that patients are willing to wait for care as long as they are kept informed about the wait time. Patients who reported that they received “good” or “very good” information about delays reported nearly the same overall satisfaction whether they had spent over four hours or less than one hour in the ED.”
As consumers rely more on mobile channels for their information, implementing a universally accessible text channel such as the turnkey services offered by ER Texting, is a fast, easy and economical way to allow access to live emergency room wait times via a mobile device.
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, compliant and integrated texting and marketing platform. For more information on ER Texting and our capabilities, please visit www.ERtexting.com.
Press Ganey Associates Reports the Top 10 Metro Areas for Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction
Filed under: ER Facts, ER Reviews, Wait Times Health Services
According to Press Ganey Associates’ annual ED patient satisfaction survey, hospital emergency room (ER) patient satisfaction is highest in Miami, FL; Hartford, CT; and Indianapolis, IN. According to the report, he communication of ER wait times and delays was critical to the high scores in these markets. The nationwide survey gauged the experiences of more than 1.6 million patients treated at 1,908 hospitals between January 1 to December 31, 2010.
“Satisfaction is a part of good patient communication and good patient flow in the hospital,” said Christy Dempsey, senior vice president for clinical and operational consulting services at Press Ganey.
Another key finding from the survey is that regardless of what metro area patients live in, they placed the highest priority on being kept informed about emergency department delays. This need was given a greater emphasis than on how well their pain was controlled or the overall ratings of care received.
| Rank |
Score |
| 1. Miami-Ft. Lauderdale |
87.0 |
| 2. Hartford, Conn. |
86.8 |
| 3. Indianapolis |
86.5 |
| 4. Columbus, Ohio |
86.4 |
| 5. Milwaukee |
86.2 |
| 6. New Orleans |
85.6 |
| 6. Boston |
85.6 |
| 6. Philadelphia |
85.6 |
| 9. Detroit |
85.3 |
| 10. Chicago |
85.2 |
One important lesson hospitals can draw from the report is that ER patient satisfaction has a direct correlation to a hospital’s bottom line. If you are considering enhancing your ER by communicated expected wait times, please contact ER Texting for a free demonstration and consultation.
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, compliant and integrated texting and marketing platform. For more information on ER Texting and our capabilities, please visit www.ERtexting.com.
Hospital offers texting for information
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
In a recent article we discussed how the hospital of Central Connecticut has acquired a texting service by ERtexting. Using this service, they are able to make ER wait times available to a greater number of patients.
My Record Journal interviewed Dr. Jeff Finkelstein, the hospital’s chief of emergency medicine, he stated “I have yet to see a person who doesn’t have a cell phone.” The number of Americans who are now using a texting service is on the rise. Patients can text their zip codes to 4ER411 (or 437411) and will be provided with a list of wait times for the hospitals at New Britain General and Bradley Memorial, in Southington.
This service helps increase patient satisfaction since it is widely accessible and very easy to use. Dr. David Buono, medical director of the New Britain General emergency department affirmed, “I think it’s a fairly simple system.”
If you would like to find out more about this texting service, contact ERtexting.
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.
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.
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