Overview

Patients seeking urgent care often face uncertainty about wait times and availability. That uncertainty leads to frustration, overcrowded waiting rooms, and a worse overall experience, especially at high-demand locations or during peak hours. Without visibility into how long they might wait, patients have no way to make an informed choice about where to seek care before they arrive.

Estimated Wait Times gives patients that visibility. When enabled, patients viewing a provider's profile can see an estimated wait time, helping them decide whether to head to that location now or look elsewhere.

This feature is especially valuable for urgent care settings, where patients can compare estimated wait times across providers or locations and choose the one that works best for their schedule.

How It Works

Estimated Wait Times displays on the provider profile page. The display shows a friendly, easy-to-read estimate (for example, "Approx. 45 mins"), along with a fallback message if wait time data isn't available for a given provider at that moment.

How the Estimate Is Calculated for Cerner

For Cerner-based systems, Kyruus calculates the estimated wait time by querying the next available appointment slot at a provider's location. The returned slot's start time is compared against the current time to produce the estimate. Where relevant, multiple appointment types can be factored in to produce a department-level estimate rather than a single-provider estimate.

Because this is a calculated estimate based on next-available-slot data, rather than a live wait time reported directly from the EHR, wait times for Cerner providers should be understood by patients as an estimate, not as an exact, real-time figure.

Prerequisites for Cerner Customers

To enable Estimated Wait Times, your organization must:

• Be on Cerner Millennium Rev Cycle or Scheduling Appointment Book (Win32)
• Have FHIR Slot access enabled, with service-type populated correctly for each appointment type

Getting Started

Estimated Wait Times is not automatically turned on. If you're interested in enabling this for your Cerner-based system, reach out to your Customer Success Partner (CSP) to get started.