Hospitals Offer Wait Time Online

Hospitals Offer Wait Time Online
Patients Can See Emergency Room Wait Times From Home


A local hospital is offering a new program to let emergency room patients know how long the wait is before they get there.

Local HCA hospitals, like Central Florida Regional, Ocala, West Marion and Osceola, will offer their exact emergency room wait times on their Web sites.

"It’s all about time, especially in times of emergency and when you have to come to the emergency room, but now, thanks to new technology, you'll know what you're getting into before you ever wind up here," Florida Regional Hospital CEO Wendy Brandon said.

The service will help people with minor problems, like Julie Sumek, decide when to go to the emergency room.

"Years ago I was at a hospital where the wait was almost eight hours and that was something minor, and this has been great; I was in right away and I'm feeling much better than I had," Sumek said.

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Patients can also text 23000 with the word ER in the text body to find out the wait time from their cell phone. The service will prompt users for their zip code and respond with the wait time

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I worked for one of them a few years ago. Very pretty, lots of high tech but they were still using Baxter IV pumps and running blood products without a pump. The pharmacy staff was also not very knowledgeable, at least in regard to chemotherapy medications. Which was a big shame as employees were not able to access internet to look stuff up and most published material about anti-cancer medications and biotherapies are out of date. The nurses I worked with were very nice, most very professional but the night time coverage for marrow transplants did not measure up to my NY standards.

My Mom had a partial mastectomy back in February - they do this surgery now as an outpatient. She goes in at 6:00 AM, has some tests and pre-op done, waits like 5 hours before having the surgery, is only given about 3 hours of recovery before they needed her to go home. She's 75 years old, and didn't take well to the anesthetics - to get to the reason of this, they had a board up in the BIG waiting room that looked like an airline departure/arrival board. Each patient is given a code and as the board scrolls through the doctors on duty, you can ascertain where that patient is during the process. You are also given a pager - looks just like the ones you get when you are on a wait in a restaurant. When it buzzes, you go to the front desk to receive a message. I found the whole situation impersonal and cold. What they may be using to "streamline" the process is to cover up the fact that they would rather not have the personal there to handle basic questions and assist those waiting and in part, the patients themselves. My Mom's surgery for cancer would have in the past required a hospital stay for at least one night - given her age. Now, in order to save money, they push people in and out like cattle because the bottom line is King. Our health care system in this country sucks. Seriously sucks.