• 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.

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• Baptist Health System, Birmingham Ala., Selects ERTexting for Communication of Emergency Room Wait Times
• Press Ganey Associates Reports the Top 10 Metro Areas for Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction
• Why Publish Emergency Room wait times?

ER Texting is proud to announced that Baptist Health System, based in Birmingham, Ala., has selected the company as its provider for the SMS/text communication of Emergency Room (ER) wait times for Citizens, Princeton, Walker & Shelby Baptist Medical Centers.

Birmingham and North Central Alabama area residents can now access live wait times for all four hospital emergency rooms by simply texting their zip code to “4ER411” (437411). Wait times for all hospitals are delivered instantly. In addition to the ER wait times, BHS also provides information for its 40 Baptist Health Centers that accept walk-in patients, providing additional options for lower acuity patients.
With more than 5,000 text inquiries made in the initial launch month of November, the service has quickly established itself as a tool consumers can conveniently use from any cell phone to instantly retrieve live wait time emergency room information.

“The ability to provide valuable wait time information to our patients attracted us to this program,” said Ross Mitchell, Vice President of External and Governmental Affairs at Baptist Health System.  “By deploying a zip code-based strategy, we’re able to provide relevant information since we’ve geographically associated zip codes to the nearest hospital emergency room, as well as to our Baptist Health Centers.”

Providing ER wait times improves patient satisfaction scores; delivers greater hospital transparency; provides for better load balancing and increased efficiency 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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• Emergency Room Challenges: Options to Ease Overcrowding
• Epic Snowstorm in Northeast Demonstrates Growing Role of Text Capability for Patients and Hospitals
• Press Ganey Associates Reports the Top 10 Metro Areas for Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction

While the storm took down trees, knocked down power lines and claimed the lives of 27 people, many hospitals were still able to broadcast their emergency room status live, thanks to a mobile service provided by ERTexting, Inc. Even while dealing without power for days, consumers kept their cell phones charged and remained “connected” via their hand sets.

Metrowest Medical Center, Lawrence General, The Hospital of Central Connecticut and Windham Hospital are all examples of facilities that were directly impacted by the storm, and who throughout the event were able to provide patients the ability of accessing their emergency room status without interruption. By simply texting their zip code or hospital keyword to “4ER411” (437411), consumers immediately receive a text response with the current status of the hospital’s emergency rooms and/or urgent care centers. No smartphone is necessary as any cell phone is capable of utilizing the service.

Lawrence General responded immediately before and during the storm by modifying its “ERTexting” response. While wait times are usually provided in actual minutes, the hospital was able to personalize its ER status, informing patients that the facility was still up and running but that patient wait times were, “variable based on seriousness of emergency.”

The growing strategy of hospitals to be more transparent and provide live, specific ER wait times has generally led to better balancing of patient loads across multiple resources and higher patient satisfaction. Knowing wait times in advance sets expectations for patients and also drives lower acuity patients to other possible hospital resources, including urgent care clinics. As up to 60% of patients fall into this subset of patients, better management of them equates to greater efficiency for the hospital and lower costs for patients.

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 code4ER411, ER Texting offers a complete, secure and integrated texting and marketing platform. For more information on ER Texting and our capabilities, please visitwww.ERtexting.com.

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• Baptist Health System, Birmingham Ala., Selects ERTexting for Communication of Emergency Room Wait Times
• Reducing the Number of Emergency Room Patients Who Leave Without Being Seen—It’s About Flow and What They Know
• New Outbound Text Program to Provide Delivery of Healthcare information

“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.

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.

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• Baptist Health System, Birmingham Ala., Selects ERTexting for Communication of Emergency Room Wait Times

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.

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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.

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• Reducing the Number of Emergency Room Patients Who Leave Without Being Seen—It’s About Flow and What They Know
• Epic Snowstorm in Northeast Demonstrates Growing Role of Text Capability for Patients and Hospitals
• Hospital offers texting for information

Recent survey results validate just how engaged mothers are in terms of their cell phone use and accordingly their responsiveness to information and services delivered via this medium.

The data shows that mothers are ahead of the curve in terms of cell phone adoption in many respects:

• 9% more mobile than general population
• Over 50% have smart phones
• 53% purchased smart phones as a result of becoming a mother.

Their usage and the various features they utilize are also of interest. Mothers spend 6.1 hours a day looking at their cell phone and are 284% more likely to text rather than call friends. Their favorite uses of their cell phones are for taking photos and / or videos, applications, calendar, internet access, email and texting.

Specific to healthcare and mothers:

• 90% research health conditions via their phone
• 60% research health and wellness information, using their phones
• 50% more likely to be using smart phones for health and wellness than the average adult

Accordingly, many mothers admit that they are addicted to their phones and recognize that their mobile “environment” is of critical importance.

In line with this trend, many hospitals are starting to post their emergency room (ER) wait times online and also accessible via text. The convenience of accessing a hospital’s current ER wait time is not just what mothers need but it’s now what most demand.

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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