Reducing the Number of Emergency Room Patients Who Leave Without Being Seen—It’s About Flow and What They Know
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
A recent Wall Street Journal health article focused on the rising percentage of emergency room (ER) patients that leave without being seen (LWBS). According to the most recent government statistics, LWBS patients jumped from 1.7 % between 1998 and 2006 to 2.7 % between 2007 and 2008.
The opportunity cost of these lost patients is significant. Emergency Department Chairman, Joe Guarisco MD of Ochsner Health Systems in New Orleans, commented, “Revenue of about $450,000 is lost even if 1% of patients walk out of an emergency room in a facility that has an annual patient volume of 50,000.”
Fewer ER’s, more patients and physician shortages have all contributed to the current environment. Accordingly, hospitals are addressing the issue in two ways: 1) Reducing ER wait times and 2) Posting live, actual ER wait times in order to better set patients’ expectations.
Streamlining flow and processes are critical to a more effective and efficient ER and thus to reducing patient wait times. In addition, staffing with less costly nurse practitioners and physician assistants allows physicians to stay focused on patient care and manage their time more efficiently.
Providing current ER wait times properly sets patient expectations, thereby reducing those that could fall into the LWBS category. Effective communication of ER wait times can be accomplished by posting the wait time on the hospital website, highway billboards, smart phone apps, and even more conveniently via simple text message. In this manner, patients are quickly, economically and conveniently made aware of wait times at an ER of their choice.
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.
New Outbound Text Program to Provide Delivery of Healthcare information
Filed under: Emergency Services, ER Facts, ER Reviews, Other, Wait Times Health Services
Through a $100,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation, Temple University will deliver cardiovascular health information to neighboring communities through text messaging. Using a novel approach, cardiovascular health information will be channeled through community leaders and organizations, thereby giving it added weight.
Verizon’s grant will be used by Temple University to expand its Telemedicine Light program, by which doctors develop targeted, customized messages with community leaders that address the unique concerns—cultural, economic or linguistic—of a specific community. Once those messages are relayed by community leaders to the targeted population, community members are urged to sign up for weekly messages.
Tremayne Askew, a member of Triumph Health and Social Services Ministry as well as Temple’s Community Ambassador Program, told the university newspaper that the cell phone is the ideal method for getting the message out. Not everyone will see a news report, she said, but they all have cell phones, and they will get a text message.
As consumers rely more and more on mobile channels for their information—including that which is healthcare related—many hospitals are implementing a text strategy in order to deliver valued medical information to consumers’ cellular phones.
ER Texting provides a messaging platform that allows targeted outbound communication to past and future patients, as a way of “deepening” the hospital / patient relationship and without intrusion of privacy.
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.
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.
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.
RSS Feed- Emergency Room Challenges: Options to Ease Overcrowding
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