Executive Summary
Access should no longer be thought of as a single “front door.” Rather, it should be viewed as an entire floor plan of entry points that must be designed around patient intent. Health systems that succeed simplify navigation, standardize processes before automation, and set clear expectations. When they do, they tend to experience three results: patients solve problems faster, capacity scales, and trust and convenience rise because the system behaves predictably. This article distills lessons from health systems that have successfully executed on those principles:
Kaiser Permanente’s AI-powered Intelligent Navigator routes patients to the right service based on their stated goal, boosting booking success from 34% to 54% and cutting abandonment to 3%.
Inova Health centralized workflows before deploying AI voice agents, unlocking 4,272 staff hours per month and reducing no-shows.
Baylor Scott & White’s digital tools guide patients to more appropriate care. 80% of patients planning to go to the ED who used BSW’s tools were redirected to lower acuity care settings.
Key Insights
A reframe—patients aren't trying to get in your front door; they're trying to quickly solve a problem.
Automate to unlock scale, but don’t digitize dysfunction.
Set clear expectations for patients and deliver on them.
Part II: Did we get the analogy wrong?
For years, health systems have framed access as getting patients in the front door. However, patients don’t simply enter through a single clinic, portal, or phone line. They navigate hallways of referrals, side doors of patient portals, and myriad other entry points. Access isn’t just a door; it’s an entire floorplan. The health systems that get it right orchestrate every touchpoint to simplify the experience of finding and entering care.
Insight 1: A reframe—patients aren't trying to get in your front door; they're trying to quickly solve a problem.
Patients expect the same seamless digital experiences in healthcare that they receive from other consumer industries. Yet healthcare’s complexity—multiple portals, varied appointment types, and differing acuity needs—often leaves patients confused about how to even get started. Access can feel like walking into an airport without gate numbers, a map, and unsure which terminal is international or domestic. Patients want clear wayfinding, convenience, and speed. A survey of over 1,000 U.S. adults found that the #1 access complaint is the inability to see a practitioner quickly. Similarly, the same survey found that 55% of providers believe patients are unsure how to navigate self-scheduling, and nearly 40% reported “getting patients to use digital tools” as one of their top three patient access challenges. It’s clear that the points of entry must be designed with the patient’s goal in mind.
“If you ask a consumer, ‘why did you come to our health system for health care? What were your expectations?’ No one ever answers, ‘I went there because I want to recommend them.”
— Director, Consumer Experience, Intermountain Health
Kaiser Permanente (KP) recognized this challenge and developed the Kaiser Permanente Intelligent Navigator (KPIN), an AI-powered patient portal, to capture the patient’s goal in plain language and route them to the most appropriate service (e.g., an appointment, urgent-care referral, video visit, pharmacy refill, or provider messaging).
What happened?
In October 2024, the Kaiser Permanente Southern California region rolled out the KPIN to ~4.9M members, with plans to expand to a growing share of KP’s 12M membership base.
Why did it work?
KPIN addresses three interrelated challenges:
Complexity of access: Patients often struggled to find the correct entry point within KP’s large system.
Resource allocation in value-based care: Efficiently matching patients to the right level of care became essential for outcomes, cost control, and financial performance.
Experience and perception gaps: Patient perceptions of access—how easy, fast, and intuitive it feels—are as important as clinical quality in driving satisfaction and loyalty.
Results
In the first five months, KPIN had ~3M encounters and 1M+ unique users.
Successful booking rate jumped from 34% to ~54%, abandonment rate fell to ~3%, and positive patient-sentiment rose from 59% to 67%.
Urgent cases were detected with 98% accuracy, and patients were routed to appropriate pathways with 89% accuracy.
Read the full KP case study here.
At Baylor Scott & White Health, CEO Pete McKenna set a vision for the organization to operate under a unifying strategy of being consumer-centric. Baylor’s north star is to solve problems for every patient who enters its system. Now, three years into this strategy, they have seen remarkable outcomes. A cornerstone of this work is Baylor's award-winning app, MyBSWHealth, which offers streamlined patient navigation.
The app’s Help Me Decide tool allows patients to enter their symptoms and receive guidance that routes them to the most appropriate site of care. It has successfully redirected 80% of patients who were planning to go to the ED to lower acuity, more suitable care options, such as urgent care or virtual visits. Its chatbot function also helps a patient schedule with the right provider in as few as 5-8 exchanges. Baylor’s commitment to consumer-centered innovation is effectively helping patients solve problems while transforming how they access and experience care.
Insight 2: Automate to unlock scale, but don’t digitize dysfunction.
Automating or adding technology to fix issues before clearing up dysfunction sets you up for further challenges down the road. Technology amplifies whatever processes and rules already exist — both good and bad. The key is to standardize rules and workflows before you automate; otherwise, you scale confusion for both patients and providers.
“You have to have an agreed-upon set of standards, otherwise it’s legitimately a software puzzle piece — the pieces won’t fit together.”
— VP of Operations in the Clinical Enterprise, Inova
Post-COVID, Inova recognized they couldn't scale staffing sufficiently to meet growing demand from patients calling the system to make or change appointments. They had ~300 remote contact center agents receiving 2.4M calls annually, but needed greater efficiency. Most calls centered on appointment management, but staffing constraints and lengthy hold times created service bottlenecks that prompted many patients to abandon their calls instead of confirming or adjusting their appointments. This resulted in higher no-show rates and unused appointment slots.
What happened?
Inova partnered with Hyro to deploy voice-enabled AI agents within its patient access and contact center operations. These AI agents manage multiple functions such as smart routing, scheduling and updating appointments, verifying or canceling visits, and processing prescription refill requests.
Why did it work?
Inova first spent five years shifting to a centralized systemwide contact center, then implemented AI. Centralizing call center infrastructure and workflows created the uniform environment with which Hyro’s AI could integrate.
Results
50% of calls related to appointment management successfully managed fully by AI, amounting to 4,272 hours of staff capacity gained per month
Reduction in no-shows and increased revenue
338K automated calls per month
79% smart-routing accuracy within 30 days
Read the full Inova case study here.
Insight 3: Set clear expectations for patients and deliver on them.
Relatively easy wins for expectation setting exist: offering a callback option, providing estimated wait times, and sending text confirmations and updates. Strategy Catalyst’s secret shopping of 50 health systems found that only 17% of health systems offered a callback option for primary care visits. For mammography visits, it was just 3%. How well has your system leveraged those easy wins? When a patient is ready to engage with your health system, how welcoming and responsive are you?
“It’s how patients feel about what they encounter that determines perceived value.”
— SVP, Ambulatory Care, Chief Administrative Officer, Kaiser Permanente
Educating patients about what to expect is as vital as delivering the service itself. If patients don’t know how long they’ll wait, what the next step is, or which care option is best for their need, they may hesitate or abandon the attempt to schedule an appointment even when the clinical care is excellent. The concept isn’t unique to healthcare. For example, think about how Uber reassures users simply by showing a car moving towards them on a map or integrates the ability to share ride details with a trusted person. Seeing where the driver is, watching the wait tick down, and knowing the ride can easily be supervised build confidence and reduce frustration. When health systems do the same—set clear expectations and deliver on them—perceived value and trust rise.
KP and Baylor simplified the confusion related to determining the appropriate site of care through their patient portals. Other systems publish expected wait times, share callback windows, and send live status updates. Tell people what will happen; then make it happen the same way, every time. That’s how you earn durable trust for your system and its entry points across the entire floor plan.
Conclusion
The real breakthrough in access has come from realizing that the goal isn’t simply to open more doors, but to make these doors and the hallways behind them intuitive to the consumer. Patients need an integrated floor plan that matches their intent, simplifies navigation, and delivers on their expectations. By standardizing before automating, defining clear pathways, and using technology to scale rather than complicate access, health systems are redefining what a “front door” means.
This article is the second in a series examining how health systems are redefining access to care. The previous article explored how culture forms the foundation for access transformation and how systems that align their people, processes, and expectations around a shared vision of access create the conditions for sustainable improvement. The next article will explore how organizations are rethinking throughput, capacity, and care pathways to ensure patients receive the right care at the right time.
Acknowledgement
Strategy Catalyst would like to thank the health system leaders from Kaiser Permanente, Inova Health, and Baylor Scott & White for their time, insight, and generosity in sharing the lessons and outcomes of their impactful work.