About Us

The Patient Access Collaborative

Improving patient access to ambulatory care through collaboration, expertise and passion.

Since 2011, the Patient Access Collaborative has provided a forum for the nation’s largest and most prestigious health systems to discuss and advance initiatives that can vastly improve patient access to ambulatory care.

This invitation-only, membership-based community consists of leaders from academic health systems, children’s hospitals, and cancer centers across the nation. Together, our health system members operate multi-specialty ambulatory enterprises that manage anywhere from a half a million to more than six million patient encounters a year.

The Patient Access Collaborative is proud to be a collaborative learning healthcare system. As such, the leadership team documented the ontology in accordance with current research (Vinson et al, 2022). We invite inquiries about our work. 

The Patient Access Collaborative not only shares ideas and data, we share a passion for patients. Behind everything we do is the philosophy that nothing should impede a patient’s access to the services they need. And without a concerted effort to keep that path short and clear, the value we provide our patients will diminish. Our content is driven by attention to five main pillars:

We invite you to explore the articles authored by Executive Director Elizabeth Woodcock about patient access:

• Barriers to and Facilitators of Automated Patient Self-scheduling for Health Care Organizations: Scoping Review
• The Influence of the Scheduling Horizon on New Patient Arrivals
• A Commentary on “Third Next Available” Appointment
• Patient Access: Best Practices in the Ambulatory Enterprise
• Outside-the-Box Access: Transforming the Patient Ambulatory Experience
• No Easy Access: Is Failure Imbedded in our Current System?
• Patient Access Metrics in the Ambulatory Enterprise
• Barriers and Facilitators to Automated Self-Scheduling: Consensus from a Delphi Panel of Key Stakeholders
• Automated Patient Self-Scheduling: Case Study

Annual Symposium

Each year, access leaders from all across the country come together to share ideas on solving some of the most challenging aspects of patient access. Hosted by one of our member health systems, the Patient Access Collaborative Symposium features learning events on access-related issues like scheduling optimization, patient experience, and referral management, followed by the host institution’s showcase of access initiatives.  To learn more about our annual symposium click here.