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!