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Great idea, but why focus on the ER in your branding? The question that the end user has is "How can I get treatment for this health problem as soon as possibl

Great idea, but why focus on the ER in your branding? The question that the end user has is "How can I get treatment for this health problem as soon as possible, without having to wait around in a waiting room"? It seems like the way that you're answering this could easily be extended to clinics and urgent care centers, couldn't it? Also, I echo the calls for a map-based or local-search interface.

tptacek 17y ago
Because from a pure marketing perspective very few people have the problem of having horrendous waits at clinics, but tens of millions of people have had the experience of waiting 3-5 hours in an ER waiting room.
- calambrac 17y ago
  I've personally had horrendous waits in clinics, urgent care centers, and ERs. I've also had really quick experiences with an ER. I'm not saying I'm typical, I'm just saying that my personal experience is such that your point never would have occurred to me. But even granting your point, you can still market against that experience without implying that you only schedule people for ERs. Right now I imagine that this site gets most of its business from people who call the ER directly, and then the participating ER tells them about the site (I could be totally wrong about that, though). Going forward, though, I would think that way that this is going to be used is that a user will know they need treatment, go to the site (find it via a search engine, whatever), look for the treatment facility that satisfies some mix of 'near', 'soon', and 'perceived ability to treat my problem', and put their name down. If there's a marketing hump to get over, I would think it would be snagging people who are coming from a search engine or via some route other than having the ER send them there directly. It seems like the perception that this is just for ERs is more a problem in this sense - I'd personally be less likely to use it if I thought it wouldn't include nearby clinics in the list of places I could sign up for.

tptacek 17y ago

Because from a pure marketing perspective very few people have the problem of having horrendous waits at clinics, but tens of millions of people have had the experience of waiting 3-5 hours in an ER waiting room.

calambrac 17y ago
I've personally had horrendous waits in clinics, urgent care centers, and ERs. I've also had really quick experiences with an ER. I'm not saying I'm typical, I'm just saying that my personal experience is such that your point never would have occurred to me. But even granting your point, you can still market against that experience without implying that you only schedule people for ERs. Right now I imagine that this site gets most of its business from people who call the ER directly, and then the participating ER tells them about the site (I could be totally wrong about that, though). Going forward, though, I would think that way that this is going to be used is that a user will know they need treatment, go to the site (find it via a search engine, whatever), look for the treatment facility that satisfies some mix of 'near', 'soon', and 'perceived ability to treat my problem', and put their name down. If there's a marketing hump to get over, I would think it would be snagging people who are coming from a search engine or via some route other than having the ER send them there directly. It seems like the perception that this is just for ERs is more a problem in this sense - I'd personally be less likely to use it if I thought it wouldn't include nearby clinics in the list of places I could sign up for.