ER Texting, a provider of texting services to hospitals and urgent care facilities, announced that recently, more and more hospitals have been utilizing text messaging as a tool to convey emergency room wait times. Patient satisfaction and load balancing are cited as reasons that are driving this new trend.
ER Texting claimed that posting ER wait times has demonstrated improved patient satisfaction scores, greater hospital transparency and increased ER volume. Today’s patients are demanding more and more healthcare related information. Posting ER wait times aligns with what consumers are seeking while also significantly enhancing the strength of one’s ER services. And nowadays, with more than 90 percent of the consumers having access to cell phones, it will be only beneficial for hospitals to take advantage of the powerful SMS/text channel that exists to connect with patients.
A chief of emergency medicine at HCC acknowledged that they know information in the hands of patients helps drive satisfaction. This service helps them to be transparent to their patients, even before patients arrive at one of the center’s campuses.
ER Texting works with the hospital to create a live wait-time feed. The hospital then incorporates the 4ER411 message in its advertising campaigns. Patients who are in urgent need for access to care can simply send a text message to ‘4ER411’ and instantly receive a text message reply which lists the hospital’s wait time. Patients then can choose a hospital that has the shortest wait at that time and go there instead of rushing to any hospital that might not adhere to the patient’s urgent needs.
Apart from utilizing the service to advertise a hospital’s short emergency and/or urgent care facility wait time, ER Texting asserted that its system also gathers and populates a database for participating consumers, which can be used for outbound texting messages.
Nathesh is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Nathesh's articles, please visit his columnist page.
