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!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=522990b3-897b-405e-9ff2-042298330744)
ER Wait Times: To Text or Not to Text?
That is the question and the answer is very simple.
If your hospital is focusing on ER admissions and generating
ER wait times under the staggering national average of 4 hours,
then yes, by all means, let people know about it. Texting ER
wait times is one of the strongest arrows in the healthcare
marketing quiver.
In 2009, over 1.6 trillion–with a “tr”–texts were sent and received
in the United States alone. People are texting more than they are
talking or e-mailing. Texting enables people to make a quick decision
about which hospital provides the shortest ER wait time and that in
turn enables people to begin their positive patient experience.
Studies show that many hospitals that market their ER wait times have
shown double digit increases in ER admissions. Although this has generally
meant a combination of tactics such as billboards, web site postings as
well as texting, the anecdotal evidence is there: people waking into the
ER, cell phone in hand, asking if the wait time is “really just 22 minutes?”
And speaking of people walking into the ER: some hospitals servicing larger
populations have worried over the idea of creating a further burden on their
already strained system. But think about this: marketing the text code
4ER411 to the marketplace is totally controlled by the hospital.
The hospital chooses who learns of the text code, how they learn about it,
when they learn about it. It can be geo-targeted, age targeted,
demographically targeted, so the hospital can maintain better control
of their overall ER targeting.
If your hospital is trying to open up that front door just a bit wider,
then promoting ER wait times is definitely the way to go.
written by Matthew Blakely
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
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5ee5deb9-8390-48e4-bf0e-f4949916fef4)
Get Your Local Hospital ER Wait Times Before getting There!
One of the newest breakthroughs in technology has hit the many hospitals in the South Florida area. A new texting platform dubbed ER texting was developed to make it easier for those experiencing a moderate to mild emergency to reach a local hospital. The emergency texting platform allows you to text your zipcode to 4ER411 and get participating local hospital ER wait times directly to your phone. Both hospitals and patients can benefit from this platform.
Hospitals will be able to:
-Drive traffic to their buildings
-Promote their practice
Patients can benefit by getting:
-Emergency medical assistance
-Immediate response of ER wait times, which will get you to the hospital faster
News has already surfaced in the south Florida area on how this platform has affected local hospitals.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e8f01f4b-225c-4696-8163-0bc972601481)
Hospitals Take ER Wait Times to Another Level
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Wait Times Health Services
ER Texting Phone Emergency
The U.S is the global texting leader with over 40 million subscribers. Its no surprise that more and more companies are using this method of communication to reach out to potential customers. One industry that has been hit with the texting frenzy is hospitals.
The idea of using your cell for an emergency is a concept that has been thought of before, just not in the ER room. ER Texting is a fairly new company that came up with the concept of texting wait times to those who are in need of emergency medial service. How it works is pretty simple: You text your zip code to 4ER411 and receive a text showing you ER wait times from local participating hospitals. Texting 4ER411 doesn’t cost you anything more than your regular texting fee, so it’s completely free to the users. Hospitals benefit from this by making it easier for patients to reach out to them and essentially help out those in need.
RSS Feed- Emergency Physicians Monthly Recognizes ER Texting as a “Top 10″ Mobile App for Emergency Room Patients
- 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
Follow Us!
Business
