Would you base your emergency room visit on a sign? 

September 2, 2012|By Nicole Brochu, Sun Sentinel

www.SunSentinel.com 

The highly visible billboards dotting major South Florida road sides are peddling an unusual product: short wait times at hospital ERs.

But would you base your emergency room visit on a sign? Not so fast, skeptics say.

Hospitals are banking up to $10,000 a month per billboard on the signs raising brand awareness in the battle to attract the educated consumer, but critics say some of the ads can be misleading.

In the divide is a clear message: Your time is a hot commodity, but buyer beware.

"Would you make the decision on going to an ER based on a sign that says, 'Wait time: 3 minutes, 42 seconds'?" said Dr. Nabil El Sanadi, chief of emergency medicine for Broward Health, which doesn't advertise its ER. "More often than not, no. You'll go wherever your doctor tells you to go."

South Florida hospitals are not alone, though, in appealing to the time-pressed consumer. Medical facilities across the country are jumping on the ER billboard bandwagon, and they're getting noticed.

"Emergencies don't wait for appointments," says one sign, on Interstate 95 at Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach. Advertising the ER at JFK Medical Center near Lake Worth, the digital readout on a recent weekday morning said, "Average Wait Time: 6 minutes."

"Faster emergency care saves more than time," says another for Northwest Medical Center in Margate.

Both billboards allow patients to text "ER" to 23000 for the latest wait times at JFK, Northwest and other area Hospital Corporation of America-owned facilities.

"I think they're an effective way to get people in the door, but I don't think they're accurate," said Dr. Evan Goldstein, an emergency physician at Boca Raton Regional Hospital. "Often, they don't equate to faster care, or better care."

Officials at HCA, the only hospital company in South Florida marketing digital wait times on billboards, did not return calls for comment on how their system works. But a 2009 Ad Age magazine story quoting company officials said it uses satellite feeds, drawing data from electronic records tracking patients' times in the ER, to regularly update the signs. A company spokesman told Ad Age that after putting up the billboards, all 12 of its South Florida hospital ERs saw "significant increases in the number of patients."

Of course, there's another issue: Times estimated on billboards are typically based on how quickly an ER patient sees someone of consequence, like a doctor or charge nurse — not how soon treatment is administered. They are averages, which factor in all ER traffic, including patients brought in by ambulance who don't wait at all. They are subject to change quickly, too, and often have little to do with the amount of time you actually spend in the department, Goldstein said.

And there's no regulatory body verifying the time clocks' accuracy.

"Everyone who's in emergency medicine knows it's a gimmick," said Dr. David Soria, chief of emergency medicine at Wellington Regional Medical Center, calling the estimates "something that is very hard to put your arms around, very hard to police and very hard to validate."

That's why, in choosing Wellington Regional's ER billboard campaign, Soria specifically stayed away from the digital wait times. Instead, his billboards — like the one depicting him and his ER physicians bedecked in tuxedos next to the message, "Wellington Regional Medical Center ER, Where Everyone Receives First Class Care" — focus on quality of care and efficiency of service.

Fast-paced, drive-through world

Since they began popping up on South Florida's roadsides a couple years ago, the ER billboards — those with time clocks and without — have stood out as an unusual marketing strategy. After all, in true emergencies, most patients head to the nearest hospital, so why treat ERs as if patients have a choice?

Because in many cases they do, experts say.

As the demand for health services has grown, the ER has become an important gateway in introducing a patient to the hospital setting. One in 10 ER visits are for nonemergencies, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one out of eight visits results in an admission.

"A lot of admissions come through the emergency room, and putting heads in beds is part of what sustains an institution," said Linda Quick, president of the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association. "So getting people to choose your emergency room is a good thing."

Especially in South Florida — and Palm Beach County in particular, where some patients have two or three hospitals of equal distance from their homes.

"So people do have choices," said Soria, from Wellington Regional. "And that competition, I think, is helpful to the patient population. Because the hospital is not the only shop in town, they have to have competitive services and market them."

Even if they don't use the digital clocks, many hospitals find that appealing to the time-pressed consumer resonates in today's fast-paced, drive-through world.

"I think our society today, no one wants to wait for anything," said Margaret Neddo, ER director at West Boca Medical Center. "Everything's instantaneous."

Even, in some cases, restaurant-like reservation systems for the ER.

West Boca Medical Center, like other Tenet-owned hospitals in Palm Beach County, uses the InQuickER service, an online tool that allows patients to make a reservation for an ER visit, as long as their injury or condition is not potentially life-threatening.

For the construction worker who needs stitches for a laceration, or the mom picking up a sick child from day care after hours, the program allows people to hold their place in line at the ER while waiting in the comfort of their homes.

In the year since the service has been in place, Neddo said, the number of patients using it has grown from 25 to more than 100 a month, helped in large part by the billboards that once advertised the convenience from the sides of I95.

The billboard campaigns are all about branding in a competitive climate, said Quick, of South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association.

"More and more people are trying to make informed decisions about their health care, so brand is important," she said. "People tend to make their decisions that way."

But she cautions that ER billboards, which can attract both paying and nonpaying customers, can be a "doubled-edged sword."

"My member hospitals have mixed emotions about marketing emergency rooms," Quick said. "The good news is you can advertise and get more people in the door, and the bad news is you can get people you wish didn't come."

nbrochu@tribune.com

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