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SALT LAKE CITY -- You can now know how long you'll be sitting in the emergency room waiting area of a MountainStar hospital before you arrive at the doors.
The hospital group has put up billboards along Interstate 15, giving the average wait times at each hospital. Administrators say it's a way to help people with non-life threatening emergencies manage their time.
St. Mark's Hospital chief clinical and nursing officer MaryJoe Jones says the goal is to help encourage people to come in when they need help, instead of putting it off.
"It's 9:00 at night, and you have had something for a couple of days, and you think ‘I don't want to go. I don't want to wait five hours to figure this out,'" Jones said.
The times on the billboards are updated every 30 minutes, and are an average of how long it's taking patients to see an actual doctor after they've walked in the door.
At St. Mark's, Jones says the goal is to keep the waiting time for non-life threatening emergency room visits to 30 minutes or less, although she says there are peaks and valleys that are out of their control.
Those patients arriving with life-threatening emergencies, of course, are prioritized, and the waiting times don't apply for them.
Patients can also check the wait times by looking at each hospitals website or through text messaging.
A person can text a Salt Lake County zip code such as 84124 to 23000 from a smartphone, and it will reply with a text with the wait time of the nearest MountainStar hospital. Non-smartphone users can text "ER" to 23000, and then reply with their ZIP code.
But will providing wait times on billboards drive patients to other hospitals if they feel the wait is too long? Jones says perhaps, but adds it's better for the person to go get care rather than put it off.
E-mail: rjeppesen@ksl.com
