MEMPHIS, Tenn. - In Health Matters, hurry up, and wait. That's what usually happens when you arrive at the emergency room, at any hospital in America. The waiting game for emergency care is in critical condition. But we're learning, not all are true emergencies, and its clogging up the system, and costing millions of dollars.
Baptist Memorial Healthcare is one of the few hospital systems not using technology to keep patients connected to the ER. Their tactics to speed up the process are all internal. But, other hospitals in the Mid-South have tapped into the World Wide Web to keep consumers close, making sure not to lose money.
Two words. Emergency room. They can save your life. And they can also make you mad.
"It’s pretty ridiculous," said one Memphian.
Across the country, in 2009, patients spent 110-million hours, waiting.
"We're an emergency department. We're not a doctor's office. You don't call, you don't make appointments," said Dr. Stanley Thompson, medical director at Baptist Desoto.
Or do you? You can skip to the front of the line, for a price.
"The patients really like the system because they are able to register online and they are actually assigned an appointment time to come in," said Trish Higgins, Medical Director of the Emergency Room at St. Francis Hospital.
An appointment in the emergency department sounds like an oxymoron, but at this hospital, you can now log on, pay a fee of $15, and be seen within 15 minutes of your arrival -- or get your money back. Hospital administrators say they don't see a dime of the money. It goes to the reservation system that oversees the scheduling, "INQUICKER." This is not only a huge time saver for patients, but also helps the hospital.
"To be able to anticipate what patients are going to come into the er, makes it much easier for us to look at our staffing patterns to make sure we have enough staff to handle the patient load," Higgins said.
Patients can shave off time, helping to reduce the 4 hour average wait time at area hospitals.
"If you're not feeling well at all, its much easier to wait at home so when you know you have your appointment time, you just come home," Higgins said.
On average, at St. Francis, one in every four people who visit the emergency department didn't require emergency care. The new system helps doctors better assess who needs what, and how quickly, through the internet.
"We've seen someone who may have fallen and hurt their wrist. We've also seen people who come in with sore throats, people who had toothaches, it’s really those non-emergent cases," Higgins told FOX13.
Methodist University Hospital has tuned in to technology too.
"Many surveys around the country say one of the things patients really want to know is if there is a wait, they just want to be kept informed," said David Cummings, Corporate Administrator of Patient Care Operations.
Cummings said the wait times went on the web back in August. Updated every two minutes, the estimates are from the moment a patient walks into the door, until they are seen by a medical staff members.
"Our goal is to see every patient in 30 minutes, we certainly strive to do that every time, matter of fact, we have guarantees at several of our hospitals to see patients within 30 minutes," Cummings said.
The patients with life-threatening illness will continue to receive priority in the emergency rooms, but logging on will help people decide which hospital will best meet their needs, at that time.
"The hospital recognizes they are coming anyway so we might as well do what we can do to expedite those people through the system," said Joe Holley, Medical Director of the City of Memphis' Emergency Medical Services. Holley thinks all the systems should go beyond spreading the load.
"I think there would be great advantage in expanding that system to say, well based on your complaint, your problem, we can schedule an appointment for you in the doctor's office, you don't need to come to the ER for that," said Holley.
In fact, research done at the University of Memphis shows $121M is spent annually in Shelby County hospitals for non-urgent emergency room care. Care that would not have happened if primary care had been properly delivered in a doctor's office.
"It’s just not a great place to provide quality, continuous, ongoing care and management of chronic, ongoing medical problems," said Holley.
Hospital administrators say one way to lighten the load in emergency departments is for non-emergency patients to visit urgent care facilities or clinics.
Jennifer Podesta works at the Kroger Pharmacy, and her trip for care was a few footsteps away. She walked over to The Little Clinic to help with her ear infection.
"How long was our visit to the doctor?" "Just a few minutes, it was really easy," Podesta answered.
This retail health clinic provides care without an appointment, and wait times are usually drastically shorter than emergency departments. They first opened 10 years ago as an alternative to urgent care
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