Patients Are Seen in 30 Minutes or Hospital Pays Tab
Two New Jersey hospitals are adopting a Domino's Pizza-like guarantee for emergency room service that is delivering an exciting point of differentiation in that market.
Bayshore Community Hospital (BCH) in Holmdel, N.J., and Raritan Bay Medical Center (RBMC) in Perth Amboy, N.J., are the latest hospitals in the Robert Wood Johnson Health Network (RWJHN) to launch the "15/30 Emergency Room Guarantee," which states that a patient will be evaluated by a nurse within 15 minutes and a doctor within 30 minutes of coming to the ER or the hospitals pay the tab.
RWJHN, a multi-hospital system, first implemented the program at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1995.
The campaign, launched by the two New Jersey hospitals earlier this month, involves print, cable, outdoor and radio advertising. The campaign uses a clock as its central theme and addresses a national patient complaint about hour-long waits.
"Many U.S. hospitals are trying to streamline their ER service but they tend to have more internal goals," says Alicia Mitchell, assistant director of media relations at the American Hospital Association. Robert Wood is the first major system that Mitchell is aware of to implements such a program and use it as a marketing hook.
Customizing the Program
BCH is looking to the 15/30 program to give the hospital a competitive edge, particularly in acute care. Its closest competitor is Riverview Medical Center, which is a larger acute care facility eight miles away that does not offer an ER guarantee.
Getting the program under way at BCH was especially challenging because the hospital is under construction to double the size of its ER department.
The six-month planning involved identifying staffing and operational bottlenecks, which included hiring more nurses and realigning physician and Lab technician support, says Michael Knecht, BCH's VP planning of marketing development.
The hospital evaluated how quickly patients were being seen by ER staff and found they were sent to the treatment area within two to three minutes and were hitting the 15-minute nurse timeline 90% of the time.
Since the program's launch, BCH has picked up the tab for one patient. And system-wide the health system has paid the hospital bills of 18 patients at the New Brunswick facility who were not seen within the time-guarantee.
Next month, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Hamilton, N.J., and CentraState Healthcare System in Freehold, N.J., will offerthe guarantee.
Positive Press
So far, the program is generating media respect. Local dailies, like The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., and the Asbury Park Press in Neptune, N.J., have described the program as a "welcome change" and "the right medicine for what ails hospital emergency rooms."
The broadcast coverage expanded into New York with the major networks there covering the ER policy in news segments ranging from 49 seconds to two-and-half minutes. The PR campaign is headed by Ralph Morano, account supervisor at Winning Strategies (WS), a PR agency in Mt. Laurel, N.J.
(Winning Strategies, Ralph Morano, 609/727-1200; BCH, Michael Knecht, 732/739-5977; AHA, Alicia Mitchell, 202/626-2339)