8 ms·

Yelp now lets you see how long the wait will be at the hospital's ER

32 points by rgovind 11y ago

fredleblanc 11y ago
Do people really check Yelp for hospital reviews? I live in a reasonably rural area, but even we have a couple of hospitals within reach. It never really occurred to me to not go to the nearest one for emergencies. I couldn't imagine a deep gash in my leg or my child screaming and me on my phone looking up hospitals. Although then again, I suppose the argument will then become that I can ask Siri for the closest hospital (travel time) with the shortest wait time total.
- icebraining 11y ago
  You could also regularly check Yelp and put a post-it on the fridge (or even a marker on your GPS app/device) with the current best. If the difference in distance wasn't particularly great, I'd consider doing so.
  - tertius 11y ago
    And make sure the ones on your list are in-network... I doubt most people prepare to this degree though. And having the convenience of finding the best ER that services your health insurance close by is probably of high value.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      I doubt most people prepare to this degree though. Well, Yelp could send that suggestion to its users. It'd be a good excuse to get them to login again.
- true_religion 11y ago
  People go to hospitals for non-emergencies as well: like for instance breaking your collarbone or getting bit an animal.
- jshelly 11y ago
  Maybe not relevant to check in an actual emergency, but I would certainly check just for the sake of checking to get an idea of the best ER's to go to should there in fact be an emergency. While I don't use Yelp a lot at home, I find it indispensable when traveling.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Well, I have currently 4 large hospital centers within of a few km of me and a few doctors that also provide emergency care, but while one of the hospitals has amazing healthcare in all areas, they have long wait times. Another has better care for broken bones, but they have far worse methods for treating neurological issues, etc. So, depending on what happens, I’ll go to different places, no matter the distance.
DanBC 11y ago
If you're in the UK: Your local health community probably has some useful information that will help you avoid going to A&E units if you don't need to. Here's the page for Gloucestershire: http://www.asapglos.nhs.uk/ http://www.asapglos.nhs.uk/
- jon-wood 11y ago
  My experience with anything like that has been dreadful. If it seems like an emergency, run a mile from things like NHS Direct - the worst case was calling about our then 8 month old having trouble breathing, and being told a doctor would contact us within an hour. 18 hours, and an ambulance trip to A&E later, we had a call from the doctor's receptionist asking if we'd been seen.
  - kennydude 11y ago
    NHS isn't perfect, but it did used to be a lot better Care is so varied between areas it's crazy. Hopefully it can be sorted out and kept in government hands :(
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Yes, in an emergency go direct to A&E or call an ambulance. The asapglos website and app give some advice about when to got to A&E or call an ambulance. I'm sorry you had such a terrible experience for something so serious.
athenot 11y ago
Emergency Departments don't run on a "first come, first served" basis. Triage will assess how critical your condition is and use that to determine how fast you can be seen, in relation to how many other critical patients are already in the unit. If you show up with complaints of chest pain, you get an EKG right away. If that doesn't reveal any impending doom, you may sit in the waiting room for a while. If your situation is deemed life threatening and the unit is full, they WILL MAKE room for you. Conversely, if you're only in low or mild pain and you're at the ED simply because it's 2am and Urgent Care is closed, your waiting time will be high. I've seen a few hospitals advertise ED waiting times but they tend to cater to populations who use the ED like an after-hours Urgent Care department.
crymer11 11y ago
This is mildly infuriating. Maybe it's different outside the small towns and rural areas I grew up in, but there I would be comfortable wagering the majority of the people visiting the ER are there to get pills. I broke my leg from a rock climbing fall and was taken to a hospital in Tullahoma, TN. The fracture was difficult to see on the x-ray and the ER doc thought I just had a aprain. While filling out my paperwork, he asked me what kind of pain medication I wanted. When I told him I didn't want anything, he jerked to a stop and looked up at me when an incredulous look. While in college at Johnson City, TN, I ran into a wall head-first diving for a basketball in a pickup game. My buddy took me to the ER to have them check on the concussion I had, and while we waited, someone walked in, asked what the wait time was, said, "that's too long and we'll be back later," and left. They got us into triage quickly, but we ended up waiting several hours (with a lot of folks in the ER clearly there to get pills) before my friend told the receptionists that we weren't there to get drugs, we just wanted to have them check to make sure my brain was okay. Within a matter of minutes they had me back to radiology and out the door shortly thereafter.
- dignan 11y ago
  How are you establishing that people are "just there to get pills"?
pinaceae 11y ago
Online reviews of doctors are already useless. People rate their "experience", rather than actual effectiveness. Tons of reviews about bad docs that turn out to be hurt feelings of the morbidly obese when told to diet. Especially women at OBGYNs, which is telling as the US has a fast growing rate of deaths of mothers during child birth - completely driven by obesity (heart failure, etc.). doc didn't give the me wonder drug advertised on tv, therefore one star.
- danielweber 11y ago
  > People rate their "experience", rather than actual effectiveness. Most people have absolutely no idea what effectiveness is. I read the post-mortem written by a founder of a effectiveness-comparison company, and their market research eventually found out (too late, because otherwise they would never have started the company) that people didn't really want it. They wanted to feel like they were being treated well and were high-status and could have someone to blame if things didn't work out. Taking the path of best expected results wasn't really on customer radar.
- bigchewy 11y ago
  We ran surveys on our patients for 3-4 years. Turns out that, by far, the biggest variable in assessing EVERYTHING about us was the wait time. Short wait time, they loved us (99% in national rankings). Long wait times, patients said we were rude, had ugly facilities, they had bad outcomes, etc.
omouse 11y ago
Yelp is fucked; they don't seem to have innovated in years and they've been riding on the whole reviews for restaurants for a while. Expanding into healthcare doesn't make sense unless they split it out as a separate web site or app; Yelp is for restaurant reviews, this only dilutes their brand.
jlg23 11y ago
The whole idea of having patients rate ERs is, to put it nicely, laughable. And, to put it bluntly, it is a slap in the face of healthcare professionals who work in one of the most stressful hospital environments. * How friendly the staff is is absolutely irrelevant when you have a medical emergency. In normal hospital settings, in most countries, what buys you "friendly staff" is paying a premium that allows the staff to actually have enough time to pity you. A nurse who only tends 3 patients can do that, a nurse who has to tend 30 cannot. * Wait times in ERs depend on the severity of your condition in relation to what other patients have to deal with. Most urgent comes first. A broken leg hurts but it won't kill you no matter how much you moan. The unconscious guy with rapid blood loss would be dead if they prioritized patients according to some fifo or loudest moaner first scheme. * I'd always chose the bigger ER over a smaller one: The more people they treat, the more experienced they are. Same is true for non-emergency hospitalizations. The Spudd recently had a great comment on "educated" patients: http://thespudd.com/hospital-to-replace-doctors-with-parents-who-have-done-their-research/ http://thespudd.com/hospital-to-replace-doctors-with-parents...
- tertius 11y ago
  To be fair, ERs are being rated, not doctors. They are generally independent of each other. " How friendly the staff is is absolutely irrelevant when you have a medical emergency. " I disagree, delving into the negative spectrum of interpersonal communication could cause unwarranted stress which could exacerbate many conditions. I agree that staff shouldn't be expected to bend over backwards, but there's no need for negative treatment. And I don't consider saying "no" to a low priority case as negative treatment. And if as an ER employee you can't handle the stress of the ER you may need to change departments or get some training. " I'd always chose the bigger ER over a smaller one " Which requires research, which most people don't have time for in an emergency. But I agree completely with this. I live in one of the largest medical centers in the world and I know where to go.
  - kom107 11y ago
    Many empirical studies point out that in fact, the 'friendlier' the staff is (meaning higher 'patient satisfaction scores') the poorer the actual clinical outcomes are at that facility. See: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2012/02/15/patient-satisfaction https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2012/02/15/patient-s... Longread but excellent: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/the-problem-with-satisfied-patients/390684/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/the-proble... As someone who works in healthcare (formerly at the bedside), and who's partner is a current ED nurse, this infuriates me. Department budgets are related to patient satisfaction scores, the EDs generally tend to have low scores because, yes, sorry you've been here for 3 hours, but we had 4 other patients come in (and HIPPA prevents me from telling you that they were level 1 gunshot wounds) and we can't tend to your constipation right at this second. If someone actually were to check Yelp for wait times and then have to wait longer...scores go even lower, reimbursements decrease, staff have higher patient ratios, lather, rinse, repeat. I assure you, I have seen many, MANY patients complain and file greivances with the Department of Health, Joint Commission, etc, that their toothache, or even general wellness physical, should take prescedence over cardiac arrests. This is in a top 10 hospital in the United States, and we generally score above average with patient satsifaction. The public has no clue and this is not helping.
bpodgursky 11y ago
How will they avoid sampling bias by getting reviews from the ones who died?
- animefan 11y ago
  They could encourage people to leave 0 star reviews and update them if they survive.
spamlord 11y ago
I strongly recommend people avoid hospital ERs for anything but a true life threatening emergency. If you break your foot/arm or something go to an urgent care place that is 24x7, it will be way cheaper and basically the same care. Hospitals are a scam.
ghufran_syed 11y ago
The real problem is data quality: 1) hospitals get rated on 'door to doc' time, so they tie part of compensation to this metric. It is measured based on the time when the doc clicks on your name in the computer, which is of course, not the same as when they actually see you, they might physically see you an hour later. 2) Some hospitals have a doc see you in triage. This is great for the hospital's wait time numbers, but they are not going to be responsible for the whole of your care. They usually just order some medications or tests, then you wait for the 'real' doctor to see you, which might take another hour or two. If there is going to be a wait, doing things this way is not necessarily a bad thing, and probably does shorten your overall 'door-to-discharge' time by doing some of the steps in the process in parallel, but the point is that the 'wait time' alone is almost meaningless. 3) the times listed are average times over one year, whereas what you need to make decisions on are realtime wait times
chrisbennet 11y ago
It sucks to get judged based on things that you have little or no control over. An ER nurse or doctor cannot control staffing levels for instance. I get that. But, if one emergency room has shorter wait times (because the staff aren't spread as thin) than another, why shouldn't I take that into account when choosing where to go?

32 points by rgovind 11y ago

Do people really check Yelp for hospital reviews? I live in a reasonably rural area, but even we have a couple of hospitals within reach. It never really occurred to me to not go to the nearest one for emergencies. I couldn't imagine a deep gash in my leg or my child screaming and me on my phone looking up hospitals. Although then again, I suppose the argument will then become that I can ask Siri for the closest hospital (travel time) with the shortest wait time total.

icebraining 11y ago
You could also regularly check Yelp and put a post-it on the fridge (or even a marker on your GPS app/device) with the current best. If the difference in distance wasn't particularly great, I'd consider doing so.
- tertius 11y ago
  And make sure the ones on your list are in-network... I doubt most people prepare to this degree though. And having the convenience of finding the best ER that services your health insurance close by is probably of high value.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I doubt most people prepare to this degree though. Well, Yelp could send that suggestion to its users. It'd be a good excuse to get them to login again.
true_religion 11y ago
People go to hospitals for non-emergencies as well: like for instance breaking your collarbone or getting bit an animal.
jshelly 11y ago
Maybe not relevant to check in an actual emergency, but I would certainly check just for the sake of checking to get an idea of the best ER's to go to should there in fact be an emergency. While I don't use Yelp a lot at home, I find it indispensable when traveling.
kuschku 11y ago
Well, I have currently 4 large hospital centers within of a few km of me and a few doctors that also provide emergency care, but while one of the hospitals has amazing healthcare in all areas, they have long wait times. Another has better care for broken bones, but they have far worse methods for treating neurological issues, etc. So, depending on what happens, I’ll go to different places, no matter the distance.

DanBC 11y ago

If you're in the UK: Your local health community probably has some useful information that will help you avoid going to A&E units if you don't need to. Here's the page for Gloucestershire: http://www.asapglos.nhs.uk/ http://www.asapglos.nhs.uk/

jon-wood 11y ago
My experience with anything like that has been dreadful. If it seems like an emergency, run a mile from things like NHS Direct - the worst case was calling about our then 8 month old having trouble breathing, and being told a doctor would contact us within an hour. 18 hours, and an ambulance trip to A&E later, we had a call from the doctor's receptionist asking if we'd been seen.
- kennydude 11y ago
  NHS isn't perfect, but it did used to be a lot better Care is so varied between areas it's crazy. Hopefully it can be sorted out and kept in government hands :(
- DanBC 11y ago
  Yes, in an emergency go direct to A&E or call an ambulance. The asapglos website and app give some advice about when to got to A&E or call an ambulance. I'm sorry you had such a terrible experience for something so serious.

athenot 11y ago

Emergency Departments don't run on a "first come, first served" basis. Triage will assess how critical your condition is and use that to determine how fast you can be seen, in relation to how many other critical patients are already in the unit. If you show up with complaints of chest pain, you get an EKG right away. If that doesn't reveal any impending doom, you may sit in the waiting room for a while. If your situation is deemed life threatening and the unit is full, they WILL MAKE room for you. Conversely, if you're only in low or mild pain and you're at the ED simply because it's 2am and Urgent Care is closed, your waiting time will be high. I've seen a few hospitals advertise ED waiting times but they tend to cater to populations who use the ED like an after-hours Urgent Care department.

crymer11 11y ago

This is mildly infuriating. Maybe it's different outside the small towns and rural areas I grew up in, but there I would be comfortable wagering the majority of the people visiting the ER are there to get pills. I broke my leg from a rock climbing fall and was taken to a hospital in Tullahoma, TN. The fracture was difficult to see on the x-ray and the ER doc thought I just had a aprain. While filling out my paperwork, he asked me what kind of pain medication I wanted. When I told him I didn't want anything, he jerked to a stop and looked up at me when an incredulous look. While in college at Johnson City, TN, I ran into a wall head-first diving for a basketball in a pickup game. My buddy took me to the ER to have them check on the concussion I had, and while we waited, someone walked in, asked what the wait time was, said, "that's too long and we'll be back later," and left. They got us into triage quickly, but we ended up waiting several hours (with a lot of folks in the ER clearly there to get pills) before my friend told the receptionists that we weren't there to get drugs, we just wanted to have them check to make sure my brain was okay. Within a matter of minutes they had me back to radiology and out the door shortly thereafter.

dignan 11y ago
How are you establishing that people are "just there to get pills"?

pinaceae 11y ago

Online reviews of doctors are already useless. People rate their "experience", rather than actual effectiveness. Tons of reviews about bad docs that turn out to be hurt feelings of the morbidly obese when told to diet. Especially women at OBGYNs, which is telling as the US has a fast growing rate of deaths of mothers during child birth - completely driven by obesity (heart failure, etc.). doc didn't give the me wonder drug advertised on tv, therefore one star.

danielweber 11y ago
> People rate their "experience", rather than actual effectiveness. Most people have absolutely no idea what effectiveness is. I read the post-mortem written by a founder of a effectiveness-comparison company, and their market research eventually found out (too late, because otherwise they would never have started the company) that people didn't really want it. They wanted to feel like they were being treated well and were high-status and could have someone to blame if things didn't work out. Taking the path of best expected results wasn't really on customer radar.
bigchewy 11y ago
We ran surveys on our patients for 3-4 years. Turns out that, by far, the biggest variable in assessing EVERYTHING about us was the wait time. Short wait time, they loved us (99% in national rankings). Long wait times, patients said we were rude, had ugly facilities, they had bad outcomes, etc.

omouse 11y ago

Yelp is fucked; they don't seem to have innovated in years and they've been riding on the whole reviews for restaurants for a while. Expanding into healthcare doesn't make sense unless they split it out as a separate web site or app; Yelp is for restaurant reviews, this only dilutes their brand.

jlg23 11y ago

The whole idea of having patients rate ERs is, to put it nicely, laughable. And, to put it bluntly, it is a slap in the face of healthcare professionals who work in one of the most stressful hospital environments. * How friendly the staff is is absolutely irrelevant when you have a medical emergency. In normal hospital settings, in most countries, what buys you "friendly staff" is paying a premium that allows the staff to actually have enough time to pity you. A nurse who only tends 3 patients can do that, a nurse who has to tend 30 cannot. * Wait times in ERs depend on the severity of your condition in relation to what other patients have to deal with. Most urgent comes first. A broken leg hurts but it won't kill you no matter how much you moan. The unconscious guy with rapid blood loss would be dead if they prioritized patients according to some fifo or loudest moaner first scheme. * I'd always chose the bigger ER over a smaller one: The more people they treat, the more experienced they are. Same is true for non-emergency hospitalizations. The Spudd recently had a great comment on "educated" patients: http://thespudd.com/hospital-to-replace-doctors-with-parents-who-have-done-their-research/ http://thespudd.com/hospital-to-replace-doctors-with-parents...

tertius 11y ago
To be fair, ERs are being rated, not doctors. They are generally independent of each other. " How friendly the staff is is absolutely irrelevant when you have a medical emergency. " I disagree, delving into the negative spectrum of interpersonal communication could cause unwarranted stress which could exacerbate many conditions. I agree that staff shouldn't be expected to bend over backwards, but there's no need for negative treatment. And I don't consider saying "no" to a low priority case as negative treatment. And if as an ER employee you can't handle the stress of the ER you may need to change departments or get some training. " I'd always chose the bigger ER over a smaller one " Which requires research, which most people don't have time for in an emergency. But I agree completely with this. I live in one of the largest medical centers in the world and I know where to go.
- kom107 11y ago
  Many empirical studies point out that in fact, the 'friendlier' the staff is (meaning higher 'patient satisfaction scores') the poorer the actual clinical outcomes are at that facility. See: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2012/02/15/patient-satisfaction https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2012/02/15/patient-s... Longread but excellent: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/the-problem-with-satisfied-patients/390684/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/the-proble... As someone who works in healthcare (formerly at the bedside), and who's partner is a current ED nurse, this infuriates me. Department budgets are related to patient satisfaction scores, the EDs generally tend to have low scores because, yes, sorry you've been here for 3 hours, but we had 4 other patients come in (and HIPPA prevents me from telling you that they were level 1 gunshot wounds) and we can't tend to your constipation right at this second. If someone actually were to check Yelp for wait times and then have to wait longer...scores go even lower, reimbursements decrease, staff have higher patient ratios, lather, rinse, repeat. I assure you, I have seen many, MANY patients complain and file greivances with the Department of Health, Joint Commission, etc, that their toothache, or even general wellness physical, should take prescedence over cardiac arrests. This is in a top 10 hospital in the United States, and we generally score above average with patient satsifaction. The public has no clue and this is not helping.

bpodgursky 11y ago

How will they avoid sampling bias by getting reviews from the ones who died?

animefan 11y ago
They could encourage people to leave 0 star reviews and update them if they survive.

spamlord 11y ago

I strongly recommend people avoid hospital ERs for anything but a true life threatening emergency. If you break your foot/arm or something go to an urgent care place that is 24x7, it will be way cheaper and basically the same care. Hospitals are a scam.

ghufran_syed 11y ago

The real problem is data quality: 1) hospitals get rated on 'door to doc' time, so they tie part of compensation to this metric. It is measured based on the time when the doc clicks on your name in the computer, which is of course, not the same as when they actually see you, they might physically see you an hour later. 2) Some hospitals have a doc see you in triage. This is great for the hospital's wait time numbers, but they are not going to be responsible for the whole of your care. They usually just order some medications or tests, then you wait for the 'real' doctor to see you, which might take another hour or two. If there is going to be a wait, doing things this way is not necessarily a bad thing, and probably does shorten your overall 'door-to-discharge' time by doing some of the steps in the process in parallel, but the point is that the 'wait time' alone is almost meaningless. 3) the times listed are average times over one year, whereas what you need to make decisions on are realtime wait times

chrisbennet 11y ago

It sucks to get judged based on things that you have little or no control over. An ER nurse or doctor cannot control staffing levels for instance. I get that. But, if one emergency room has shorter wait times (because the staff aren't spread as thin) than another, why shouldn't I take that into account when choosing where to go?