Edward Hospital patients can now find out Emergency Room wait times via their mobile device, making the ER's operations more efficient.

Users can text, click or call to find out how long they will need to wait to be treated in the hospital?s ER. There are two locations for the ER ? both located in separate towns.

?We actually opened a second emergency room department in September,? said Tom Scaletta, MD, medical director at Edward Hospital emergency department, Naperville, IL.

?We want people to know that we are going to be much more efficient for them,? he said.

Users can text ?ERWAIT? to short code 41411, go on the hospital?s Web site or call its number.

ER Access
Edward Hospital?s ER wait times are calculated by averaging the time from when a patient arrives and checks in to the time they are placed in a room where treatment begins. The wait times are updated every 15 minutes.

The hospital claims that on average its wait times are 30 minutes or less, but can vary due to many circumstances.

There are several factors that contribute to the hospital?s ability to provide timely care. They include near immediate triage of patients, all board certified emergency physicians, all board certified pediatric emergency physicians, assistance for people as they arrive to guide them to the proper location, all private patient treatment rooms, a pod layout which enables more efficient treatment of patients and electronic tracking of patient status, location and tests.

The text service is compatible with all major phone carriers.

According to Edward Hospital, text messaging is the most practical way to find out how long the ER wait happens to be.

Dr. Scaletta also said that as long as a person has a PDA, they can have immediate access to the hospital.

Why SMS?
Text messaging is the primary form of communication for people ages 13-34. In fact, 86 percent of the population 13 and up own a mobile phone, per comScore.

Ninety-five percent of existing mobile contracts have SMS built into the agreement and more than 90 percent of text messages are opened and read compared to less than 40 percent of all email solicitations (see story).

So it is not surprise that Edward Hospital is banking on SMS.

Mobile service
The hospital claims that it is the first to offer ER wait times via mobile.

Additionally, the hospital said that it had a few weeks to play with the service and test the wait times.

Although the hospital does not have a mobile-optimized site they are looking into it.

?We do not have a specific mobile site set-up as of yet,? said Cheryl Eck, director of eHealth at Edward Hospital and health services, Naperville, IL.

?We do have plans in the future to develop a mobile site and incorporate this information,? she said. ?However, people can access this information from any phone with Internet access by going to http://www.edward.org.

?The ER wait times are prominently displayed on the upper right of the homepage.?