The Virginian-Pilot
©
The idea is popular for pizza delivery, but can it work for emergency care?
Bon Secours Hampton Roads announced Monday it is offering a guarantee that patients will start getting treatment within 30 minutes of walking in the door at any of its emergency rooms.
Patients who don't get the speedy service won't be rewarded with free treatment, however. They'll get free movie tickets. And a letter of apology.
"When people come to the emergency room, it's with high anxiety," said Dan Duggan, executive vice president and administrator for Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center in Norfolk. "We feel starting their treatment within 30 minutes is the best quality we can guarantee."
The other Bon Secours emergency rooms participating are Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth, Mary Immaculate Hospital in
Newport News and Bon Secours Health Center at Harbour View in Suffolk.
The Harbour View emergency center has had the guarantee since it opened in March 2007, and the others began last week. Bon Secours implemented the policy in its four Richmond-area hospitals in 2006.
Sentara Healthcare offers similar promises at two of its emergency centers. Sentara BelleHarbour in Suffolk has treated patients within a half-hour since June or patients can receive a restaurant gift card. In April 2007, Sentara Port Warwick in Newport News pledged that a health provider will see a patient within 30 minutes.
Joan Stanus, spokeswoman for Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, said that facility doesn't have a guarantee. But triage begins within five minutes of patients' arrival, she said, and few wait as long as 30 minutes for treatment to begin.
If a guarantee sounds like a marketing ploy, it's one that's become more common across the country during an era of intense competition among hospitals.
Some hospitals in the Dearborn, Mich., area tried the idea as far back as 2000.
It was an idea that was perhaps bound to surface, considering that half of the country's hospital admissions in 2006 came through emergency departments, up from 36 percent in 1996,
according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The emergency room is becoming the front door of the hospital," said Dr. Peter Paganussi, president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
The same report found the average time that hospital emergency-room patients wait to see a doctor has grown from about 38 minutes to almost an hour over the past decade.
Overall, about 119 million visits were made to U.S. emergency rooms in 2006, up from 90 million in 1996, a 32 percent increase. The number of hospital emergency departments dropped to fewer than 4,600 from nearly 4,900, according to American Hospital Association statistics.
Paganussi said a 30-minute guarantee is laudable but hard to maintain, particularly in larger hospitals with a high volume of trauma cases.
Emma Inman, public spokeswoman for Sentara Healthcare, said such a guarantee would be difficult at its larger emergency rooms, such as at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, because of the severity of injury and volume of patients.
Duggan said the 30-minute policy followed months of examining procedures and protocols to find bottlenecks where patients get caught in the system.
For instance, patients can now be registered in the treatment room of an emergency department rather than being sent first to an administrative area. Diagnostic tests also have been streamlined to better coordinate the start of care.
"We've been ramping up over time," Duggan said. "It involves processes across the hospital, not just in the emergency room."
Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@pilot
online.com
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Most people would be VERY happy if they could afford it
Coming from someone who works full time, pays taxes, and drove HERSELF to an urgent care center, instead of calling an ambulance, only to find that they were closed, before going to the ER. I then received an $880 bill in the mail for a urinalysis... That is sick and evil and should make medical professionals ashamed of themselves. Medical care, even in emergencies, should not be out of reach for normal people. Perhaps $880 isn't a big deal to you, but it's a couple weeks pay for some people.
Some people wouldn't be happy
if the doctor paid them for their time as a patient. What we have is a health care system that is doing its best, but because Americans want everything, but refuse to pay for it, we have a dilemma. We have a capitalist system that is trying to provide socialist services. HALF of the people who go to the hospital, DO NOT PAY. They pay NADA. A bill gets sent, but the people ignore it, and we feel sorry for them and they don't have to pay. The hospital is a business, so in order to compensate, the cost to people who DO pay gets DOUBLED. Since there are unscrupulous people in all businesses, there will be dishonesty, as you could expect when this much money is involved. Since so many people don't think they should bear any responsibility for their own health care, the system gets abused by people using the ER as their primary care provider, and the FD as a cabulance. And somehow, this becomes the fault of greedy doctors and administrators. I for one, want hospitals profitable and doctors well paid. I want people to WANT to do these jobs.
When did advertising become news?
Has the Pilot hit such hard times that they've sunk to reporting on local advertising campaigns? Is what "many other ERs" already do actually newsworthy? - and on the front page no less!! Is tomorrow's headline that a local bank is offering toaster with new accounts? Come on! Have you heard, there's a big war going on in the Middle East. We have a new president starting in the week. And don't forget, we're actually still in a war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please try reporting on only newsworthy items.
To VBresident
"Great Idea!
Submitted by VBresident on Mon, 01/12/2009 at 9:11 pm.
I like it! If it doesn't work, they will stop the program and free tickets. Now if we could get the local ambulance service to provide the same 30 minute service."
They can't...if it's anything like up here in Philly, they're too busy picking up stubbed toes, hangnails, and fevers when they didn't take any OTC meds...
"Take an ambulance, get seen faster" is the motto......
ER
What a joke. Forget the movie tickets. How about someone that is in charge do what they are paid for? If you go to the ER the Dr.'s and Nurses are talking on their cell phones - about going to a party - doing whatever. A bunch of NO-ONE's doing their job. The ER is nasty, the cleaning people are too busy talking bull_whatever to do what they are supposed to do. This is a sad place and could be much better with proper management. Thank God for Dr. George Sarris who doesn't put up with this BS when his patients are in the ER. The whole hospital needs a good cleaning. Have the Dr.'s and Nurses and the cleaning crew DO THEIR JOBS.................... Quit bull talking.
free movie tickets? what a joke!
What about cheaper services? If I wait more than 30 minutes, take 1/3 off my bill...better yet, don't even SEND me a bill. How about not charging $20 for a bandage? How about not charging people $400 just to WALK IN THE DOOR? Free movie tickets are almost an insult.
Whos Paying for it?
Whos taxes or infalted bills are paying for the movie tickets and the person they hired to write all the letters?
what's changed?
If they can do it in 30 minutes or less now then why couldn't they have been doing it all along? This is what makes me think it's a marketing tool. But I'll give someone credit, they got The Pilot to give them front page print and web!! Can you say Employee of the Month??
Chesapeake Regional
It's true -- you are seen within 30 minutes by someone who is not very nice as they take your insurance information. I had to keep coming back to the desk to fill out paperwork and could barely walk from the pain I was in. The ER has hard metal chairs which were agonizing to sit in when I could barely sit upright in the first place. I only received care a few hours later after I passed out on their bathroom floor and was found by a janitor. Once I had a bed, the care was excellent.
Bon Secour needs to get real............
You can do anything you want by offering the 30 mins or less, but if the care is crappy what good is it? I would rather sit at another hospital and wait for hours, at least I know that I would come out alive. I have know several people that have not made it out of several Bon Secour hospitals alive!! Granted, other hopitals have made there mistakes as well, but Bon Secour has taken several people away from me, due to misdiagnosising patients, from chest pains (informed that it was gas) ended up being a massive heart attack which killed them. Another one, someone came in with low blood pressure, they were informed that they could not do anything to help them, and a Bon Secour hoptial sent them home and they died the next day because of a heart attack. And don't even get me started on them reading xrays!!! So this is what I was thinking, instead of offering movie tickets, they should use the money on training of the staff. I personally would not even take my animals there. Reality is they really need to work on alot of other things before working on 30 mins or less.
To make thing even better, people should use the ER for EMERGENCIES, NOT for colds(unless they are really re