Waiting room screens and waiting room TV software for clinics and medical offices
Waiting room screens work when the practice controls what is on them: today's running time, the flu shot clinic, the new patient portal, the holiday hours. Displayer turns the waiting room TV you already own into a screen your front desk runs from one panel, from 19 USD per active screen per month or 9 USD on the yearly rate, with no player to buy and no advertiser deciding what your patients watch. On Professional it keeps timestamped screenshots of each screen, so a group of practices can show which notice ran in which waiting room on which day.
Build a waiting room screen right here, without an account
The screen builder below opens on a clinic waiting room. Type your practice name and three patient notices, pick a layout, and watch the screen run its loop with a live clock. It is the same player the waiting room TV opens once it is paired.
- Venue: restaurant, retail store, clinic, gym, office, school, plant floor, church, senior living or real estate office
- Orientation: landscape 16:9 or portrait 9:16
- Layout: full bleed, main plus sidebar, or a menu board in three columns
- Content: your business name and three short lines, prefilled for the venue you picked
The schedule strip underneath shows the same playlist placed on a weekly grid, which is exactly what the schedule view does inside the product.
What a waiting room screen carries
- Current waiting times and clinic running status, so reception is asked less often
- Health information relevant to the season and to the service people are waiting for, such as flu and COVID vaccine clinics in the fall
- Which services this site offers, and how to book them, with a QR code to the online booking page
- Check-in and paperwork guidance, including how to use the patient portal, in the languages your patients use
- Practice notices: opening hours, holiday cover, closures, new providers
- Payment information: accepted insurance plans, self-pay options, where to settle a copay
- Quiet, slow moving content that reads as calm rather than as advertising
- Separate screens for staff areas, on their own permissions
Waiting room TV software or a sponsored waiting room TV network
Most practices choose between two models, and they are very different things.
Sponsored waiting room TV networks install a screen or a player and supply a programming loop, usually at no charge to the practice. The loop is paid for by health advertisers, so a share of what plays is advertising the practice did not choose, and the practice edits little beyond a slot for its own notices. That suits an office that wants something on the wall and has no one to run it.
Waiting room TV software is the opposite arrangement. You pay per screen, you decide everything that plays, and nothing on the wall promotes a product you did not pick. That suits a practice or a group that wants the screen to answer patient questions, push its own services and match its brand, and it is where Displayer sits. A third route, a managed bundle of screens, content, overhead music and on-hold messaging on a multi-year contract, is what many dental offices are sold; our Spectrio pricing guide shows what that costs per screen and what its 36 month term commits you to.
| Sponsored waiting room TV network | Waiting room TV software such as Displayer | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to the practice | Usually none, funded by advertisers | 19 USD per screen monthly, 9 USD on the yearly rate |
| Who decides the content | The network, with a slot for practice notices | The practice, every item on the screen |
| Advertising on screen | Yes, sponsor messages in the loop | None |
| Your own services and booking QR | Limited to the practice slot | Anywhere on the screen, on any schedule |
| Several locations | Managed by the network | One panel, scheduled by site tag |
| Evidence of what played | Not usually available to the practice | Play record, plus screenshots on Professional |
Content that suits a clinic
Screens in a healthcare space are read by people who are worried or unwell. Slow transitions, large type, no sound by default, and fewer items on a longer rotation do more than a busy loop. Our templates keep a plain layout with a main area, a sidebar for service information and a quiet ticker for the practice notice.
A useful rule of thumb from practices that do this well: one message per screen at a time, eight to fifteen seconds each, and no more than eight items in a loop. A patient who sits for twenty minutes will see every item several times, so the loop should read as helpful the third time round, not as noise.
Waiting room screens and patient privacy
Waiting room screens do not need to show patient information to be useful, and most practices keep it that way. HHS guidance treats calling a name in a waiting room as a permitted incidental disclosure when reasonable safeguards are in place, but a screen that lists full names is a written record any visitor can photograph. The safer pattern is a ticket number or first name and last initial, and many practices avoid names altogether and show only the running time.
Displayer does not need access to your practice management or EHR system to run a waiting room screen. If you want a live queue on the wall, a web page item displays a status page your own system already publishes, and that page is fetched by the player in the waiting room rather than stored by us. How access, roles and storage work is set out on the security page.
Several sites, one panel
Tag screens by site, department or service and schedule against the tag. A group notice reaches every reception, while one site keeps its own opening hours on its own screen. Approval can sit with the practice manager, so nothing published reaches a patient area unchecked.
Proof of play matters here for a specific reason. When a health system, a vaccine program or a sponsor of a community campaign asks whether a notice actually ran, the play record and the screenshot answer it per site and per day. The same scheduling by tag powers our cloud digital signage for every other type of site, and a health system running a full campus uses the same panel for digital signage for hospitals, from the main lobby to the staff break rooms.
Practical in a clinic building
- Runs in the browser of the smart TV already in the waiting room, or on a mini PC or Android stick behind it
- No inbound connection to the device, which keeps network approval simple for the practice IT provider
- Players keep playing through a network outage from local storage
- Email alerts when a screen at a branch site stops reporting, sent to that site
- Access scoped by site and by role, with an audit log on the Network plan
- Portrait or landscape, so a narrow wall by the check-in desk works as well as the main TV
If your waiting room TV is a recent Samsung, LG or Sony set, its own browser usually runs the player without extra hardware; see digital signage for smart TV. For a PC behind the screen, see digital signage software for Windows.
What waiting room screens cost a practice
Billed per active screen, so two waiting rooms and a reception count as three, and three is the smallest Essential order. Essential at 19 USD per screen monthly, or 9 USD on the yearly rate, runs one site: 57 USD a month for three screens, or 324 USD for the year. Professional at 29 USD monthly or 14 USD yearly adds groups, roles, approvals and proof of play with screenshots, which is what a group of practices across several addresses needs. Team members are free on every plan. See the pricing page, and our digital signage cost guide prices the TV, mount and installation lines.
| Setup | Plan | Yearly rate | One year |
|---|---|---|---|
| One practice, three screens | Essential | 9 USD per screen a month | 324 USD |
| Five clinics, two screens each | Professional | 14 USD per screen a month | 1,680 USD |
| Twelve sites, 30 screens, SSO | Network | 24 USD per screen a month | 8,640 USD |
What should I put on my waiting room TV?
Put the things patients would otherwise ask the front desk: current running time, how to check in, the patient portal, accepted insurance, opening hours and the seasonal clinic you want booked, such as flu shots. Add a QR code to your booking page. Keep each item on screen for eight to fifteen seconds and the loop short.
How much does waiting room TV software cost?
Paid waiting room TV software usually costs 8 to 30 USD per screen per month. Displayer is 19 USD per screen monthly or 9 USD on the yearly rate, from three screens, with no player to buy. Sponsored networks cost the practice nothing but carry advertising the practice does not choose.
Can I use a regular TV in a waiting room?
Yes. Any recent smart TV with a web browser can run Displayer, and an older TV works with a low cost Android stick or mini PC behind it. A commercial display is worth it only when the screen runs more than twelve hours a day or sits in direct sun.
Can we show current waiting times?
Yes. A web page item shows your existing queue or clinic status page on the screen, refreshed in place, so the screen follows the system rather than a person typing updates at the desk.
Is it OK to show patient names on a waiting room screen?
It is best avoided. HHS allows incidental disclosures such as calling a name in a waiting room when safeguards are reasonable, but a screen listing full names is easy to photograph. Use ticket numbers, or first name and last initial, or show only the running time.
Can each site manage its own notices?
Yes, with roles scoped to the site and approval before anything reaches other sites. The group office can push a notice to every waiting room at once by tag while each site keeps its own hours.
Are free waiting room TV networks really free?
For the practice, usually yes, because advertisers pay for the network. The trade off is control: part of the loop is sponsor content, and the practice edits only its own slot. If you want every second of the screen to serve your patients and your services, paid software is the better fit.
Is patient information ever on your servers?
Only what you choose to display. If the screen shows a page from your own system, that page is fetched by the player and is not stored by us. Media you upload, such as images and videos of notices, is stored so the screens can play it.
Put one waiting room on it
Three screens at one practice, one calm loop, and a front desk answering fewer of the same questions. Add the other sites when it works.