In this webinar, hear the results from Strategy Catalyst's year 2 "secret shop" of patient access at health systems. Strategy Catalyst secret shopped member health systems to evaluate patient access via access centers and digital self-scheduling for primary and specialty care. We assessed the experience of scheduling appointments at 52 health systems across scheduling channels, modalities of care, and settings. Learn success factors, operational barriers, and see how health system and primary care disruptors stack up to each other.
Not yet a member of Strategy Catalyst and want access?
Let's ConnectKey Takeaways:
Digital self-scheduling offered access twice as fast as calling. Compared to calling systems, digital self-scheduling consistently gets patients to care in half the time as access center scheduling. Online self-scheduling pathways amplify access while access centers often present artificial barriers to near-term appointment availability.
Health systems that don’t enable digital specialty self-scheduling restrict patient access to preventive screenings. Systems are likely losing downstream revenue from fragmented specialty scheduling.
Consumers want telephonic scheduling. Do it right. Patients want to call health systems, but call centers frequently disappoint with difficulty identifying phone numbers, fragmented, de-centralized calling workflows, and long hold times.
The first-available appointments at primary care disruptors are ~12x sooner on average than at health systems. Disruptors frequently have 1st- and 3rd-next-available appointments on the same or next day, whereas the wait at some health systems can be weeks.
While most systems are worried about access, there's significant variability in wait times across them. While some systems boast same- and next-day appointment availability; others have wait times upwards of 4+ months.