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Since better healthcare has been a topic recently, it's interesting to know everything that is going on to improve certain aspects of the medical world. As mentioned in another post, emergency room waiting times can last insanely long and there is now a new effort to cut the times down drastically.

The same will be happening with emergency services outside of the hospital. In addition to have ambulances on the road, there is now a new air ambulance service. AeroCare's airline medivac transport service offers 24 hour emergency and non-emergency ambulance services throughout the world. Flying of course will cut down on a lot of time if you or your loved ones live out in the country or far from a hospital. Many insurance plans cover air ambulance services now, if another form of transportation would be considered life threatening. If you don't think your insurance will cover something like this, AeroCare has teamed up with the Travel Assist Network to offer their own insurance via The Air Rescue Card.

Airline medivac transport services are useful to have and to know about on an international scope, because they can provide international evacuation services. I'm sure you can think of cases in which that would be necessary. When roads are flooded or storms hit and an ambulance on the road may not be the most effective way to help people than AeroCare steps in and takes over.

I think any steps that can be taken to provide more efficient services to people in need is a wonderful thing.

Disclosure:
This post has been sponsored.

Labels: emergency, healthcare

If you've ever had to take a trip to your local hospital's emergency room you might share a complaint with countless other Americans who have had to visit their local ERs, too. The wait time.

You know how it goes. You walk in to the ER with a broken something and you sit and wait. And wait. And wait some more. Finally you get called back to one of the rooms, the nurse pulls the curtain back and says someone will be in to see you shortly. And you wait some more... waiting...tick..tick..tick. You're getting frustrated with the longer you sit there and I wouldn't blame you. Consider, though, that hospital ERs around the country are the doctor's offices for those Americans who have no health insurance. Those without insurance will go to ERs to receive medical treatment that the hospital must provide even though the patient cannot pay for it.

Anyway, my point is hospitals around the country are starting to DO something to bring down the waiting time in their ER's or if they can't reduce the waiting time, you get a consolation prize. That might sound silly but consider you went in with a badly sprained ankle, you weren't seen for over 5 hours and so when you do leave you have a gift card for a free dinner at Olive Garden or two tickets to major league baseball game because you had to wait so long. Remember the old Dominos Pizza "30 Minutes or Your Pizza's Free" campaign?

Hospital administrators realize that the more negative experiences you have at their facility (e.g. waiting, lack of concern by staff, etc) the less likely you are to come back to their hospital and quite frankly, a hospital is a business and they cannot afford to lose their customers with the costs of health care continually rising. To combat the seemingly endless waiting time in busy ERs around the country, adaptations are being made to streamline the processes of registration, information flow (your medical records, charts and such), treatment and ultimately discharge.

The days of handwritten charts and doctors orders are quickly dwindling as more and more hospitals are moving to electronic records systems where physicians enter their orders directly into a database that is instantly retrievable to other hospital staff who may need to see the orders. For example, a patient seen by a doctor for a broken leg. The doctor pulls up the patient's records electronically at the bedside (no waiting for the patients chart to be pulled from the medical records department), then orders an x-ray electronically which the Radiology department has available instantly even before the patient arrives in the X-Ray room. The X-Ray is readable to the doctor from this same database where he/she can then order a casting of the bone, plus look up the patient's medical history, prescribe medication for pain/inflammation, and enter discharge orders all without ever touching a pen or having to wait for a chart to be given to him/her.

Some hospitals are moving to eliminate waits altogether. The Adventist GlenOaks Hospital in Illinois promises no waits at all. As of last week, patients could skip the waiting room and go directly to a private room where treatment starts as registration is done bedside.

You can read more about this "culture change" in U.S. hospitals try to pick up the ER pace from Reuters. This is a MUCH needed change for our country's ailing health care system. As hospitals streamline their services we will begin to see decreased waiting times for emergency treatment and hospital admissions in even the busiest ERs around the country.

Labels: emergency, hospitals, technology