Dr. Sanjay Gupta: ERs advertising for patients

(CNN) -- Thirty minutes or its free. It's not a guarantee from Domino's, it's a new mantra for some hospitals around the country. They are using print and TV advertising to bring more patients to their emergency rooms, but could this rush to provide care be harmful? CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joined "American Morning with Paula Zahn" to share his thoughts.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think this thing works?

GUPTA: It looks like it is working. They've actually studied it. People don't like to wait, especially Americans, they just don't like to wait. Combine that now with hospitals becoming bigger businesses, focusing more on businesses, and you get advertising directly to consumers, directly to potential patients. Some hospitals are offering guarantees of limited wait times of 30 minutes or less, and it's worked.

Since Oakwood Health Care Inc. rolled out an emergency room guarantee that promised movie tickets and a personal apology to patients not seen by a doctor in 30 minutes, have seen a 50 percent increase in patient volume.

And Northern Nevada Medical Center, it gives you a 15-minute guarantee, or your ER visit is free.

Located near the vacation town of Lake Tahoe, their ad campaign takes a more active approach in advertising. They've seen a 54 percent increase in patient volume since the ad campaign began. With such clever ad campaigns and offers, including free ER visits, movie and restaurant gift certificates, some may see the 30-minute guarantee as merely marketing ploys.

But the American Hospital Association says the ER guarantees force hospitals to be more efficient in registering patients, treating them and moving them along for additional care.

And while much of patient volume relies upon doctor referrals, the ER is one of the only places where hospitals can control admissions and revenue. Ads are important to these hospitals, which are often small in size or close to competing medical centers. Hospitals know they cannot create emergencies, but that patients have a choice. The increase in volume seen after ads are often patients who might have otherwise gone to competing hospitals.

While the American Hospital Association does not track these ads, it says that hospitals know their communities' needs best.

And the average wait time in an emergency time in the United States, about 60 minutes; 103 million people visit emergency rooms every year, and most of the people are between 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. That's the busiest time in the emergency room. And the total ER time visit time is usually about two hours and forty minutes -- Paula.

ZAHN: Do you have any idea what percentage of those patients are those who don't have insurance and are relying on the emergency room for their primary care?

GUPTA: That's interesting, because that's a pretty common sort of thinking that lot of the patients that come to ER, the overcrowding is due to people who don't have insurance. Only about 10.7 percent of folks are nonurgent visits, and the American College of Emergency Physicians finds that most patients don't use the emergency rooms as primary care. That's not the usual problem in terms of overcrowding. It has to do with the whole hospital structure, lack of in patient beds, lack of specialists that can see the patients in the emergency rooms, things like that.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO No, that's not a slogan for a pizza chain, its being used by emergency rooms around the country. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains. (August 9) Play video

ZAHN: So then who is the strongest voice against these guarantees of whether it's 15 minutes, like you mentioned, Lake Tahoe, or 30 minutes at some of these other hospitals, to be seen?

GUPTA: Well, there are a lot of physicians that have come out and said that a hospital should not be advertising that way at all. The American Hospital Association, we actually asked them, and they were sort of a little mixed, although not really against this. They said the ER is often the face of the hospital. Often times ERs don't make money, yet they recruit patients to the hospitals overall. If they can be more efficient by streamlining registration programs, things like that, that's probably a good thing.

ZAHN: Thank you, Sanjay. Appreciate it.