Nothing is more synonymous with hospital waiting areas than waiting room TVs. These give patients and their families a way to pass the time in a place that’s otherwise devoid of entertainment.
But waiting room TVs don’t always pack the punch that hospital administrators want them to. Maybe you’re not entirely happy with yours and want something more than basic waiting room subscription services. In that case, you’re probably wondering what else you could be getting out of the screens in your waiting room.
Hospital waiting room TVs are good for much more than passing the time. Display the right content on them and you could even see an increase in revenue. We’ll show you why in this article. Keep reading to learn:
- 5 things waiting room TVs are good for besides passing the time
- How digital signage can help you enhance your waiting room experience
- Why UPshow is the right software for your digital signage solution
Learn How FYZICAL Chicago Increased Patient Engagement and Education with UPshow’s Waiting Room Videos
Keep your patients informed with waiting room screens
Waiting room TV is a great way for your patients sitting in the waiting room to pass the time. But that doesn’t mean you should only display mindless, non-informative content on your screens. Instead, you can intersperse the content that your patients love with important bits of health and wellness information.
This is much easier to accomplish when you control the content that your screens display, which is what digital signage lets you do. For example, you could run short patient education videos in waiting rooms informing them about:
- Your administrative processes
- The treatment options for common conditions
- The side effects of common medications
- How diagnoses work in your facility
- How you’ll deliver test results to your patients
- Information about current health issues in your community
With it, you can choose the ads that run in between the medical waiting room videos that you display. So you can easily play informative ads that highlight the specific issues that matter most to your patients. It’s one of the main reasons why digital signage is a better solution for hospital waiting rooms than a traditional cable subscription.
Advertise in the hospital waiting area
If you’re able to decide which advertisements play on your waiting room TVs, then you also have the option of making them your own. This is a great way to remind your patients about all of the great things that you can do for them.
And if you’re going to choose between running your own ads or free ads for another company, you’re going to pick yours every time. This is another benefit that digital signage provides, which traditional waiting room TVs can’t match.
Provide waiting room distraction and reduce patient anxiety
Some patients get really anxious while waiting to see a doctor. There’s a lot that you can do to make your hospital waiting room more inviting. But many of the improvements that you make will have a limited impact on this population of patients.
Waiting room TVs can give patients who feel anxious in hospitals relief from these feelings by way of distraction. If you display engaging content on your TVs, you may help these patients get out of their heads some so that they can relax a bit and feel more comfortable in your waiting area.
The best medical office waiting rooms will reduce perceived waiting time
One of the biggest complaints that patients have about going to a hospital or clinic is the long wait times. That makes sense. Patients have their own busy lives and they’d prefer to spend as little time as possible in waiting rooms in hospitals. But at the same time, it can be quite difficult for hospitals to make progress in this area.
Waiting room TVs offer one way to make your hospital’s wait times feel shorter. They give your patients a welcome distraction from the mind-numbing boredom that can arise during a long wait.
But you need to display the right content on your screens to make this work. If your patients don’t care about what you’re showing, then your waiting time will feel just as long to them as it would if you didn’t have any screens.
Make key information available with the help of medical waiting room videos
Research shows that people retain just 10% of information conveyed to them through text. But that number rises to an impressive 95% when companies use videos to share important information.
That means, if you want your patients to remember something important about your hospital, your processes or their health, you need to share it through medical waiting room videos. Your waiting room TVs are the perfect vessel for this.
With the help of a digital signage solution, you can use the screens in your waiting area to share customized videos that contain valuable information you want your patients to remember.
Digital signage vs. traditional TVs in the hospital or clinic waiting room
There are two main options that you have when it comes to selecting how you share video content in your waiting room: traditional TVs or digital signage. For several reasons, a digital signage solution is almost always going to be the better call for a healthcare facility. Let’s take a look at why.
Get more control of the waiting room in hospitals with digital signage
One of the biggest reasons to use digital signage is the control that gives you over exactly what you show in your waiting area. With digital signage software from UPshow, you can choose from more than 500 channels of streaming OTT entertainment. We make it easy for you to display local news, regional sports, television shows and even viral videos.
This enables you to provide your patients with the exact type of content that they want without having to pay extra for a ton of premium cable channels to access that content. The net result could be a much better waiting room experience for your patients.
You can update your healthcare waiting room screen content whenever you want
People’s interests change over time. The content that they want to view while in your waiting area may not be the same now as it is a few months from now. Digital signage makes this a non-issue.
With a digital signage solution, you can update the content that you display in your medical waiting room as often as you want. It gives you complete control over everything that’s shown on your screens so that you can provide your patients with exactly what they want no matter how often that changes.
Digital signage lets you advertise your own company in doctor waiting rooms
This may be the best reason to pick a digital signage solution over traditional waiting room TVs. When you broadcast a program on a traditional cable network, you end up playing a ton of ads for companies that you aren’t affiliated with. You may even inadvertently show advertisements for competitors or for pharmaceuticals that could give your patients the wrong idea.
Digital signage fixes this problem as well. It lets you create and display your own advertisements so that your hospital always comes out on top and you stop giving away your ad space for free.
Picking the right digital signage solution for your waiting room in hospital
If you’re serious about getting as much out of the medical office waiting room TV as possible, then digital signage is the way to go. But there are a few things you’ll need to do before you can take full advantage of it.
Pick the right screens for your medical waiting room
To use digital signage in your waiting area, you need screens that connect to the internet. But not all smart screens are created equal. Some will be a better fit for your waiting area than others.
By picking the right waiting room TV, you ensure that your patients can see the content that you display, no matter where they’re located in your waiting area. If you need help deciding, check out this blog post covering the 10 best digital signage screens of 2021.
Choose the right digital signage management software for your healthcare waiting rooms
You also need a way to quickly and easily manage the content that you display on the screens in your waiting area. UPshow is perfect for this. We’ll tell you why in the next section.
Set up a device to manage your digital signage screens on
Lastly, you need an internet-enabled device that you can use to access your digital signage management software and make changes to the content that you display. But you don’t need anything fancy for this. A simple laptop, desktop or tablet will get the job done.
UPshow can power your hospital waiting room’s digital signage solution
Picking the right digital signage management software is one of the most important parts of harnessing the power of digital signage for your waiting room. After all, free waiting room TV software can only offer you so much. That’s why you should give some serious consideration to UPshow.
Our platform makes it incredibly easy to manage the content that you display on your digital signs from any device.
We’ll also give you more than 500 channels of OTT to show patients sitting in waiting rooms and offer helpful integrations so that you can use the other software that you love in combination with our solution.
With UPshow, you can start using your screens to give your patients a better experience in your waiting area. This, in turn, could help you drive increased revenue to your hospital by prompting an increase in patient loyalty.
But don’t take our word for it. Let us show you exactly how we can help you improve your patients’ waiting room experience with better video content. You can schedule a custom demo with us today to learn more about what we can do for you.
