Emergency room online appointments ease wait times

Scott Paul knew he needed to head to the emergency room on a recent Sunday after his foot became so painful he couldn't walk. The one thing that gave him pause was the thought of having to wait several hours next to a bunch of sick people.

But his wife, Jeannette, remembered she'd seen Dignity Health television commercials featuring a woman sitting in a hospital waiting room and then cutting to the same woman sitting on her living room couch as words come up on the screen: "Wait for the ER from home."

"I've been in emergency rooms before, so I thought I'd see if this worked out," she said, and went online to book an appointment for her husband at Dignity's St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco.

Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle 

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