Let's face it! The health care system in the US is FAR from perfect and while I'm not going to get into the healthcare debate (as passions on both sides are high), I will take a few moments to highlight an App for my local community. The Detroit Medical Centers must be pretty proud of their Emergency Room efficiency because they're willing to tell you what most hospitals won't. They released a FREE App for iPhone, iPod touch (and it works on iPad) to show you at a glance at any given time what the ER wait times are for DMC hospitals. The App can detect your current location and give you the distance to the nearest facilities and their current wait times. Let's face it, a few minutes can make all the difference in the world when you're in an emergency medical situation. So I while I hope I NEVER need this App, it's great to know that it's available and on my iPhone. The App not only gives you the wait times, but if you tap a facility you can get the phone numbers and see where it's located on the map.
You can get the DMC ER Wait Times App for FREE here from the App Store: 
The Bottom Line
It's a shame that an App like this needs to exist. However, I'm glad that it does. While the App works as advertised the only thing I would tweak is that the list of hospitals should be listed in either the order of wait times OR the closest to my current location. At this point I can't figure out what order they are actually listed in. Seems like a random order. Other than that, if you live in Southeastern Michigan you can't go wrong with this App on your iDevice.
DMC ER Wait Times
Detroit Medical Center ER Wait Times gives you the emergency room wait times of the Southeastern Michigan Emergency Rooms at any time at a glance.
- JCI Design
- Get on App Store
- Free
All info was collected on 8th June, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
Hi Terry – Thanks for your review. Full Disclosure: I work for the DMC’s marketing department, and coordinated the ER Wait Time app project. We are pretty proud of our ER wait times! To help address your concern over which ER is closest to you, the app asks permission to use your current location, and then calculates the distance from your current location to each ER, and provides that under the hospital name. But I will definitely take your suggestion to the team to see if we can keep improving the format. Thanks again -
“Let’s face it, a few minutes can make all the difference in the world when you’re in an emergency medical situation.” True emergencies get seen right away in ERs. It is all the rest of the people who don’t have true emergencies who need to wait.