Top 5 Tips For Improving Your Hospital Waiting Room

Looking to spruce up your hospital waiting room? If you manage a hospital you probably want everything to look as nice as possible; that goes double for anywhere visitors are sitting for any length of time. This article will share the top 5 tips and tricks towards making your waiting room welcoming.

Tip #1: The Waiting Room TV

What waiting room feels complete without a TV for people to watch? TVs in waiting rooms is a tale as old as time, however simply having a TV is only half the battle. What you decide to put on it makes all the difference.

The waiting room TV options available to hospitals vary in terms of quality, and practicality. There’s the default standard cable/satellite service, which is a bad idea for all of the reasons listed in this article. But in short, cable is a missed opportunity, it allows competing hospitals to show up uninvited on the screen, and you can’t control what programming plays beyond choosing the channel.

Alternatively, there are patient education videos for medical offices. Yet they’re just as risky for the fact that most visitors find them boring, or in some cases; upsetting. However educational or informative they might be, the truth is that your patients most likely won’t see it that way.

Finally, there are custom TV networks, which are arguably the safest, and most cost-effective type of waiting room TV solution. It’s hard to beat a service that’s specifically designed to improve patient experience through fun and interesting videos. Utilizing a service that has videos that are fun, and interesting, is the trick though. For a head-start on where to begin looking, check out It’s Relevant TV.

Tip #2: Comfortable Furniture

Now, no one’s expecting a waiting room full of heated massage-chair recliners with built-in speakers. But some nice, well-maintained and intact chairs can go a long way when it comes to patient comfort. The bar for visitors’ expectations isn’t set very high in regards to what kind of seating they’re going to find in a hospital waiting room. Still – these are going to be chairs where either patients or relatives of patients might be expected to sit for a very long time. So it helps to invest in some furniture that won’t cause them to visit a chiropractor. Generating repeat business is important, however that’s not way to go about doing it.

Tip #3: Cleanliness!

Cleanliness. Hospitals are full of germs, sicknesses, and plenty of people anxious about catching them; so making sure that your hospital’s waiting rooms are spick-and-span is instrumental to your visitor’s comfort, and the overall state of the waiting room itself. Cleanliness is more than just vaccuming the floor, or mopping the slick surfaces with cleanser. Dust has a habit of gathering on surfaces such as lampshades, picture frames, or plastic plants that are easy to miss; but the perceptive, and scrutinizing visitors will notice the dust in these places in a heartbeat.

Next time you’re in your waiting room, run a finger over these places and see what, if anything, is being missed. If you don’t find any dust, treat your cleaning staff to something nice. Because you’ve got some folks working for you who are doing a good job!

Tip #4: Plants & Art

Plants, artwork, and other decorative accents turn a bland, or daunting waiting room into one that is aesthetically pleasing. A hospital waiting room doesn’t have to be on par with the Musée d’Orsay, but a piece of art here and there can make all the difference. It’s just a simple way to make the place your visitors will be waiting in feel more natural.

Artwork can be bought at any local gallery, thrift store, or flea market for reasonable prices. Likewise, you can find a number of plastic plants at just about any home improvement, or department store. But as with Tip #3 – don’t forget to dust them from time to time!

Tip #5: Music & Ambiance

Hospitals are a haven of sick people coughing, doctors being paged, and a host of other administration noises. These, and other typical hospital sounds, can be anxiety-inducing for some patients and a constant reminder of where they are. That’s why it’s important, or at least considerate, to invest in some kind of music, ambiance, or white-noise soution for your visitors’ comfort.

Whether it’s a radio speaker, a calming white noise generator, or even somthing as simple as a TV that’s not muted; a little sound can go a long way. If you do end up going the route of television- make sure it’s not too loud. Yelp is full of medical office reviews of patients complaining about noise levels being too high. Patients are tons more likely to post a bad experience online before they’d ever approach you, the hospital, about it.

Bonus Advice!

Play it safe with your TVs. The best thing any medical office can do for its waiting room is put something on the TV that will give the visitors something enjoyable to watch. Fun and interesting is the key. Visitors in waiting are always looking to kill time, so programming that helps pass the time is what you should be on the lookout for.

Look online for waiting room TV software for medical offices. There’s plenty of options to pick from. See what you can find, schedule some demos, and talk to some experts about how implementing a custom TV network for your hospital is a forward-thinking strategy.

3 Tips on Choosing The Best Dental Videos For Your Patients

Choosing the best dental videos to have playing in your waiting room depends on what you’re looking for. Are you looking for educational videos? Dental-specific content? Or just something visitors will enjoy watching?

Whichever it is, the following 3 tips for picking out the best TV programming for your patients should help you in your decision-making process. If you’re hot-to-trot, and you’d like to jump right into exploring your options, start your search with It’s Relevant TV.

Tip #1: Remember Who the TV is For

The TV in your waiting room isn’t for you, or your staff – it’s for your visitors. You, as a dentist, might find dental-related content interesting; the same, however, cannot always be said for your patients. Wait-time in a dentist’s office doesn’t tend to be very long– It’s actually amongst the shortest wait-periods in the healthcare industry. Even with a short wait, a 2-minute video of rotting teeth, bleeding gums, or a plaque-ridden mouth can make patients anxious, or paranoid about the state of their own teeth.

Even if the videos are meant to be educational, your viewers might not see it that way. But does that mean dental videos for patients are a bad idea? Not necessarily. The key to a successful waiting room TV for dentists is having a mix of dental-related content and traditional programming.

Tip #2: Avoid Looping Content!

The length of time that your patients are waiting may be short, but they’re not always by themselves. Parents of multiple kids might have 2-3 back-to-back appointments during the same visit to sit through. The last thing you want on the TV are the same 10 videos playing over-and-over. That can leave a bad impression on your messages, and your practice as a whole.

The best dental videos for your patients aren’t looping playlists, or medical displays anyway. Variety of content, and a large library of videos, are the two pillars of an effective dental TV solution.

Tip #3: Have Control Over Your TV

“Control. You must have control.” -Master Yoda

Having control over what’s playing is paramount to the success of your waiting room TV. The freedom to edit, upload, or remove videos and messaging from your TV is the level of customization you should expect from your waiting room TV software. But why is this feature important? Because not every custom TV network out there allows you to manage your TV’s content on your own or in a timely manner.

Some services leave you stuck with a short list of paid, preselected videos. Others, are chalk-full of ads that you can do nothing about, or contain messaging that you don’t want visitors to associate with your practice. And some make you wait weeks to implement any changes you need done.

Tips On The Best Patient Education Videos For Your Waiting Room TV

Patient education videos are a great way to inform any visitors in your waiting room about health-related topics. However, many hospitals, urgent care centers, and dentists, aren’t aware that these videos often make their patients feel uncomfortable. Are you currently playing patient education videos on your waiting room TV, or considering it? In this article we’ll explore why so many doctors, dentists, and medical specialists are so keen on showing patients educational or medical-related content; but most importantly, examine why that isn’t necessarily the best idea.

Patient Education Videos on the TV: Good or Bad?

Generally speaking, people aren’t really interested in watching medical-related content in waiting rooms. They’re not (usually) doctors, dentists, or a part of the medical industry themselves, therefore the chances of them having your level of appreciation for health-related videos is low. Regardless of how educational the videos are, patients tend to perceive them as boring, gross, or even depressing. Which is not how you want your visitors to feel.

“The TV in the waiting room was playing some gross health news infomercial.” -Yelp Review

As doctors and professionals concerned for the well-being of others, it’s only natural to want to educate patients wherever possible. However, you don’t want your good intentions accidentally making things worse. Additionally, you don’t want a video being the reason a patient had a bad experience, or left a bad review. Therefore, you should think carefully about what’s playing on your TV.

gross_tooth — Sitting in a waiting room shouldn’t feel like pulling teeth.
FREE DENTAL PICTURE BY AUTHORITY DENTAL UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS 2.0

Waiting rooms across the country are playing videos that make patients feel uneasy. Many of these medical offices are paying, or have paid, a lot of money to put this kind of content on their TVs. Whether it’s cross-sections of clogged arteries, rotten teeth being pulled, or eyes getting scraped with scalpels (I wish that was only a joke, but it’s happened), it simply isn’t the sort of thing people in waiting rooms want to see. That goes double if those videos are on a 10-minute looping medical display. Medical offices – you can do better. Fortunately, there are ways of getting around the gross, or graphic content.

Waiting Room TV: The Best of Both Worlds

Should you do away with all of your patient education videos? Not at all. There’s a happy medium between showing videos with educational, or important health messages, and fun, interesting content that your visitors will enjoy watching. Finding a good balance between the two is the key to crafting the best waiting experience for your patients. Patient comfort comes first.

The Best Waiting Room TV: Where To Begin Looking

It doesn’t matter if you’re a hospital, urgent care, dentist, or specialist of some kind; finding the best waiting room TV software for a medical office is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, except the hay are countless custom TV providers telling you that they have the best technology, cheapest devices or easiest to use system. So how does one narrow the list down? Follow these 3 simple steps, and you’ll find the custom TV software that’s perfect for your waiting room:

1.) Avoid Medical-Only Content: For every reason that’s been detailed above. Medical videos are best shown when played alongside traditional TV content that people enjoy watching– like food/cooking, entertainment, home/garden, sports or fashion. Medical content can be good when it’s educational, and not gross. However, who doesn’t like watching something fun over something medical?

2.) Don’t Fall for “Free” TV Services: Nothing is free. That “free” TV for your medical office is likely paid-for by pharma ads that have no business in your waiting room. For more information about why “free tv” is a bad idea, check out this article: “Top 5 Reasons a Free TV Service is Bad for your Waiting Room.”

3.) Feature Your Own Content: Find waiting room TV software that allows you to upload, and mix-in your own personal videos. Medical videos aren’t bad, they’re just best in small doses. They are especially effective when the videos are personally-branded, and the people on the TV are your own staff. Most importantly, your messaging is better-received when it’s played in between content that puts visitors in a good mood. That’s really all it takes.

Best TV for Urgent Care Center Waiting Rooms

Looking for the best tv channel to put inside of your Urgent Care Center? It’s important to create an experience that is truly the best fit for you, your patients, and your urgent care. This article will outline the most important features you should be looking for in your urgent care TV.

What Makes the Best Waiting Room TV, the “Best?”

The most effective waiting room TV selection is one that is tailored to your own unique waiting room environment. How do you know if the TV software you’re currently looking at is the best for you? First, you have to identify what you’re hoping to get out of it. But generally speaking, you want something that is entertaining and engaging. You want your waiting room television to be aesthetically pleasing and brand-tailored – with the ability to upload your own personal videos and messaging. Equally as important is a TV solution that is cost-effective, and easy-to-manage. These are the top 5 things to keep in mind when looking for the best TV software for your urgent care.

However, knowing what to look for is only half the battle; finding all of these features in one single TV package is next. It’s Relevant TV, has all of the features listed above, and more.

Entertaining & Engaging Content

It’s Relevant TV features the world’s largest library of licensed content, giving users access to over half-a-million videos for visitors to enjoy. Each piece of content is screened by live human beings to ensure that everything is family-friendly, and nothing unsettling or inappropriate ever plays on your TV.

It’s Relevant is not a playlist.

Other digital TV software providers will try to pass off things like a 10-minute, 30-minute, 1-hour, 3-hour, or 5-hour loop of videos as “premium TV content” – It’s Relevant TV doesn’t loop. It streams new videos every hour from a list of 40+ categories you pick and choose from. Categories like Cooking, Sports, Automotive, News, and even Trivia. Additionally, the whole system is fully customizable, with the ability to upload your own personal messaging on the side, during, or in between content.

Easy-to-Watch

A number of waiting room TV software solutions try to cram too much onto the screen at once. As useful as the information you may be putting on the screen is, it doesn’t have to be visible 100% of the time. Having too much promotional or “educational” content in a row is actually a turn off to most visitors. It can also get out of hand fast and make the TV look like a gimmicky widget – almost as if you were showing a website instead of a TV channel. That might work for a menuboard at a restaurant that is only seen for a minute, but not an urgent care waiting room where visitors are spending 3+ minutes.

It’s Relevant TV is not website for your TV, nor is it a collection of widgets.

IRTV is structured in such a way that it’s modest, nice-looking, and easy on the eyes. Most importantly, it’s designed so that visitors notice what matters; the messaging. Whether it’s videos that you upload, image-ads on the side, or text scrolling throughout, It’s Relevant is all about making your messaging effective. It delivers things like news headlines and the weather – but in a way that doesn’t overstimulate your viewers or give them a headache. Never forget that a little goes a long way.

Tailored to your Brand

It’s Relevant is a custom TV network that works for your brand. Your logo, your videos, and your messaging can all be uploaded into the system and featured on the TV. Whether you want the TV to play exclusively your branded-content, or you want a mix of personal + IRTV content; you’re the boss.

In the case of urgent cares; when you mix medical content, personal videos, or educational segments with It’s Relevant’s fun and interesting content, visitors will stay tuned longer and be more receptive to your messaging.

Cost-Effective

FREE WAITING ROOM TV SOFTWARE!

There’s no red flag bigger than a waiting room TV service that’s advertised as “free.“ Nothing’s free – except food samples at Costco (actually those aren’t free either as you have to pay a membership to get in). If you’re interested in a good reason as to why a free TV service is a bad idea, the following article will give you 5; “Top 5 Reasons a Free TV Service is Bad for your Medical Practice.” In short, you get what you pay for.

While It’s Relevant TV is not “free,” it often times costs less than cable and is designed to generate additional revenue for your practice. It’s designed to fit your marketing budget, and make those marketing dollars count. Whether you’re a hospital, urgent care, dentist office, or a medical specialist; every little bit helps, and It’s Relevant’s ROI helps offset the cost.

Easy-to-Manage

It’s Relevant TV couldn’t be easier to control. Users are able to adjust settings, upload videos, and manage all of their content from anywhere with virtually any internet-connected computer, tablet or smartphone. The It’s Relevant iOS app for iPhone and iPad provides a straightforward way to make changes to individual, or multiple TVs at once; across multiple locations. The convenience of being able to make changes from anywhere, at any time, with such ease, is a breath of fresh air for users who aren’t so tech-savvy.

If you still own a flip phone and don’t like interacting with technology yourself, It’s Relevant TV includes a Client Success Manager at no additional charge with every subscription plan. This person is available to make changes for you, and even help with graphic design and strategies for getting the most out of your TV.

It’s Relevant TV is the Best Fit for Urgent Care Waiting Rooms

It’s Relevant is a fully-customizable TV network which combines the best aspects of television and digital signage. It provides urgent cares across the country with safe, family-friendly content that visitors actually enjoy watching, and mixes that content with your own branded videos and promotions.

Could It’s Relevant work for your waiting room?

Visit itsrelevant.com or schedule a demo if you have questions or would like to know more.

Man Cave Health: Creating The Best Waiting Room Experience for Men

Man Cave Health at the Department of Urology at Mount Sinai exemplifies how a great waiting room environment creates success in a practice. Innovative waiting room transformations are nothing new, however this “man cave” is really a first-of-its kind sports themed center that has gone all-in to attract middle-aged male patients. Their attention to the waiting room has really paid off.

Man Cave Health: The Essential Ingredients

The Man Cave Health waiting room is comprised of sports memorabilia, comfy brown leather chairs, dark wood walls, and a coffee bar – all of which feel like a “man cave” that your average man wouldn’t mind visiting, or coming back to. It’s just the sort of comfortable setting that a lot of men wish they could transform their basements into – maybe a handful will now.

As Dr. Ash Tewari, Chairman of Mt. Sinai, points out in the official video; men tend to take better of their cars than their own bodies. The design of the Man Cave Health waiting room is geared towards appealing to the things men traditionally like, which makes it easier for them to say “yes” to simple, yet important examinations that could save their lives.

It’s Relevant TV: Helps Practices Transform Their Waiting Rooms

It’s Relevant TV has been helping medical offices transform their waiting spaces– starting with their TVs. If you are a practice owner, or manager, and are looking for ways to draw more interest to your office while creating a more positive patient experience, please feel free to reach out to us. Whether you’re a medical specialist, urgent care, dentist, or hospital; we have been helping, and consulting with, all corners of the healthcare industry across the U.S.

It’s Relevant is the best in waiting room television. As amazing as the Man Cave looks, you don’t need to fully transform your waiting room to create a more positive patient experience. Start with putting something better on the TV. If you’re interested in learning more about the ways in which a custom TV network can generate more success for your medical office, visit It’s Relevant TV.