Factors Affecting Waiting Time in the Urgent Care Clinic: A Narrative Review

Waiting time is a central indicator of access, timeliness, and patient-centeredness in urgent care clinics. Although urgent care models were created to provide prompt evaluation for unscheduled, non-emergent to moderately acute problems, many centers experience delays that erode patient experience, increase the probability of leaving before assessment, and shift demand toward emergency departments. This narrative review synthesizes evidence on determinants of waiting time in urgent care, drawing on urgent care–specific studies and closely related research from emergency department (ED) flow and ambulatory operations science. A pragmatic conceptual framework is used to organize factors into demand (“input”), internal processes (“throughput”), and disposition constraints (“output”). Evidence indicates that waiting time is shaped by the interaction of arrival variability and case mix, front-end intake and triage design, staffing levels and skill mix, space and rooming capacity, diagnostic turnaround and consultation latency, and downstream pathways for transfer or escalation. Interventions with consistent signal for reducing delays include front-end streaming or split-flow approaches, team-based triage models that accelerate early decision-making, Lean-informed process redesign, and targeted digital tools that reduce non–value-added administrative steps or shorten history-taking time. Patient perception of waiting is additionally influenced by communication, expectation management, and transparency tools, such as displaying estimated waits, although effects on satisfaction appear heterogeneous. The review concludes that waiting time is rarely improved sustainably by single-component changes; instead, durable gains typically require coordinated redesign spanning staffing, intake, diagnostics, and escalation pathways, supported by measurement systems and forecasting to match capacity with predictable surges.