The Akron Beacon Journal reports:
Akron General Health System recently began advertising up-to-the-minute wait times for its emergency rooms on billboards throughout town. Six digital billboards in Akron are automatically updated every 20 minutes to show current average wait times to see a doctor at the main ER in downtown Akron and in satellite ERs in the Montrose area and Stow.
The same info is on the hospital system’s website:
The newspaper provides some background on this trend:
“Local hospitals increasingly are competing to grow their share of ER business, particularly since Akron General opened its satellite emergency departments in Bath Township and Stow in recent years.
Akron-based Summa Health System is working on a plan to share updated ER wait times and other information via mobile devices, spokesman Mike Bernstein said.
”We expect to begin offering this service in the next several weeks, beginning with Summa Akron City Hospital, and then we will begin to roll it out to the other hospitals throughout the year,” Bernstein said.
More hospitals nationwide are starting to advertise their ER wait times through billboards, Web sites, text messages or social media sites, such as Twitter.
Some emergency medicine doctors, however, see this as a dangerous trend.
By viewing wait times, patients with serious problems might mistakenly drive across town to see a doctor quicker when, in fact, ER personnel make sure those with the most critical problems are seen immediately, said Dr. David C. Seaberg, a member of the board of directors of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
”I just think there are some real problems with doing this,” said Seaberg, dean and professor at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga.
Although emergency departments routinely monitor their wait times to try to improve, sharing the data publicly ”is really just a marketing tool more than anything else,” he said. ”I worry about the potential harm that may be done by doing this.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like