I wish our local emergency rooms would do this

Recommended piece from Newsweek. While the average emergency room wait may be 37 minutes before seeing a doctor nationally, I've never had a situation where we have gotten in that fast here in Ohio. When my husband went in for what turned out to be appendicitis, he waited for over an hour in severe pain before he was seen by a doctor...

Thankfully they did the surgery before it ruptured.

The fixes are relatively simple—bedside check-in, online reservations, a fast track for common procedures like stitches. It’s the marketing that’s getting elaborate. Health centers in Virginia, Georgia, and Indiana are offering text-message updates and door-to-door trip planners (92 minutes for a broken arm, for instance), while counterparts in Maryland are utilizing mass mailings and highway billboards to boast about quick service.
Perhaps the efforts seem crass. But the early results—waits of just 14 minutes at one Maryland hospital—are hard to fault. Emergency fixes have rarely been performed so urgently.