One one hand, long-term strategies such as pre-verification and a revamped check-in process can help cut wait times, implementing digital tools can have a more immediate impact, and at the very least sends the signal to patients that their hospital cares about the inconvenience of a lengthy stint in the waiting room.
"You have to show them that you care," said Lane. "You care about making that time smaller, and giving them some of their time back. The key is giving them some information. Imagine going to a restaurant, and you sign in, and you have no idea how much time you'll have to spend just standing there. That's a frustration. Even if wait times are longer than they should be, it's still important for them to know. It shows the patient that they care."
One thing CrossChx tech can do is communicate to the patient how long the wait is expected to last. That prevents many consumers from just throwing their hands in the air and leaving the facility altogether.
But Alex Backer, founder and CEO of QLess, would go one step farther by eliminating the waiting room entirely.
QLess is mobile app that alerts users about their expected wait time -- not just for hospitals, but for restaurants, theater tickets, anything that involves waiting. By sending scheduling information to people's phones, Backer expects that the old-fashioned method of manual pen and paper patient registration could one day become a thing of the past.
"Waiting rooms are one of the most wasteful uses of real estate in healthcare," said Backer. "They're almost completely unnecessary. That real estate could be repurposed more efficiently to be used for healthcare."