You never know when healthcare will hit – the need for it, the experience of it, and the costs related to it. Mother Nature’s havoc in recent weeks has emphasized the fact that no matter how healthy we are, no matter how accountable our care becomes, there will always be a need for emergency services.

Providers are becoming increasingly transparent in their ER communications – whether it be displaying up-to-the-minute wait times on their websites or billboards, or navigating a critical-care patient to its services in real-time via Twitter (See “Can Twitter Help Save Lives? A Health Care Social Media Case Study, Part 1,” from Emory Healthcare’s Advancing Your Health Blog.)

How does this increased transparency outside the four walls of the ER translate to better care once the patient is within? In the case of Emory’s patient, it alerted Emory’s staff to the severity of her condition, where she was coming from, and when to expect her – key factors in care coordination and preparation. Even knowing what to expect in terms of ER wait times can help a patient feel that they have some modicum of control in an oftentimes scary situation.

Vendors have also recognized that increased communication between provider and patient - before the patient even walks into those sliding-glass ER doors – can increase the quality of care received.

MedTouch, a developer of interactive, mobile healthcare solutions, announced last month the release of its NWH Wait Time iPhone Application. Designed for Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts, the app features “near real-time reporting of emergency room wait times, integrated directions to the ER and pre-registration, and mobile optimized physician profiles with contact information,” according to the company’s press release.

Mobile solutions like this beg the question, what can a patient do if they experience a non-life-threatening medical emergency while out of town? What app can pinpoint a person’s exact location; give them a list of the three closest ERs with information like that above; and even send a tweet, Facebook message and/or text to the hospital of choice based on the user’s pre-determined preferences and the hospitals’ capabilities? Could location-based social networking sites like Foursquare or Gowalla somehow come into play? Now that would be an app worth its weight in megabytes.

Author’s Note: Inspiration for this blog came from my recent, very first trip to the ER at St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens, Ga., where my two-year-old was successfully treated for a case of “nursemaid elbow” incurred while being spun around at the out-of-town wedding of a friend.

Jennifer Dennard is Social Marketing Director for Atlanta-based Billian's HealthDATA and Porter Research.