Job Description
Position Summary
The Director of Patient Access & Scheduling provides strategic and operational leadership for the organization’s centralized patient-access and scheduling functions across a multi-site specialty healthcare platform. This role is accountable for creating a reliable, patient-centered, high-performing pathway from referral or physician order through authorization, patient readiness, scheduled procedure or visit, and completed care. The Director leads teams responsible for patient scheduling, procedure scheduling, prior authorization coordination, patient outreach and confirmation, pre-procedure readiness, cancellation recovery, and related access workflows. The role partners closely with physicians, practice administrators, site leaders, clinical teams, revenue cycle, ASC leadership, and other operational stakeholders to improve patient access, protect procedure capacity, reduce avoidable cancellations, and support physician productivity and patient experience.
This leader establishes standardized workflows, service-level expectations, staffing and productivity models, dashboards, escalation routines, and accountability systems across sites. Success requires a hands-on, data-driven operator who can lead a large team, improve cross-functional execution, and translate performance data into sustained operational improvement.
Key Responsibilities - Patient Access and Scheduling Leadership
- Lead centralized patient access and scheduling across multiple clinic and procedural locations.
- Standardize workflows for new and returning patients, procedure scheduling, cancellations, rescheduling, outreach, and confirmation.
- Establish service-level expectations for contact speed, scheduling turnaround, authorization readiness, escalation, and schedule recovery.
- Align staffing, productivity standards, and workforce coverage to patient demand and provider capacity.
- Lead, coach, and hold managers, supervisors, and staff accountable for performance, service, and execution.
- Procedure Access and Schedule Stability
- Own workflows that move patients from order through authorization, readiness, scheduling, and completed procedures.
- Partner with physicians, ASC leadership, practice administrators, and site teams to optimize templates, capacity, and utilization.
- Reduce avoidable cancellations, schedule gaps, no-shows, and late reschedules.
- Implement recovery processes to backfill openings, move appropriate patients forward, and manage waitlists or re-nurture lists.
- Identify root causes of schedule instability and drive corrective action across affected teams.
- Authorization, Clearance, and Cross-Functional Coordination
- Partner with authorization, revenue cycle, clinical, and operational teams to ensure payer and pre-procedure requirements are completed on time.
- Define clear handoffs, escalation paths, roles, and accountability across scheduling, authorization, clinical teams, physicians, and site operations.
- Monitor authorization delays and denials; implement actions that reduce late reschedules and lost procedure volume.
- Ensure teams communicate scheduling changes and requirements clearly and professionally to patients.
- Performance Management and Continuous Improvement
- Lead daily, weekly, and monthly operating reviews for patient access and scheduling performance.
- Maintain dashboards and scorecards with clear targets, trends, owners, and corrective actions.
- Use data to identify variation and improvement opportunities by site, provider, payer, service line, and team.
- Improve workflows, scheduling accuracy, productivity, patient conversion, and attendance.
- Establish training, quality assurance, audits, and standard work to support consistent execution.
- Partner with technology and vendor teams to improve systems, reporting, work queues, and automation.
- Leadership and Change Management
- Serve as the enterprise leader for patient access, scheduling operations, procedure readiness, and schedule recovery.
- Build productive relationships with physicians and operational leaders; address performance issues with clear action plans.
- Lead operational changes using defined owners, milestones, risks, communication plans, and measurable outcomes.
- Support new-site openings, acquisitions, integrations, and service-line growth as they relate to access and scheduling.
- Ensure workflows comply with organizational standards, payer requirements, privacy practices, and applicable regulations.
Qualifications Required: - Bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration, business, operations, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
- Seven or more years of progressively responsible healthcare operations, patient-access, scheduling, ambulatory operations, revenue-cycle front-end, or related experience.
- Three or more years of leadership experience managing managers, supervisors, or sizable frontline teams.
- Demonstrated success leading centralized or multi-site scheduling, patient access, pre-access, procedure scheduling, ambulatory operations, or comparable healthcare functions.
- Demonstrated working knowledge of prior authorization, insurance verification, pre-certification, patient financial clearance, clinical or procedural readiness, and their impact on scheduling outcomes.
- Experience using data, dashboards, KPIs, and structured operating rhythms to improve performance.
- Strong process-improvement, root-cause analysis, project-management, and change-management capabilities.
- Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Proficiency with EHR/practice-management systems, scheduling platforms, Microsoft Excel, and operational reporting tools.
Preferred: - Experience in a multi-site specialty physician practice, ambulatory surgery center, procedural specialty, medical group, or high-volume outpatient environment.
- Experience with centralized patient-access models, contact-center operations, workforce planning, call-quality programs, or patient-engagement technology.
- Lean, Six Sigma, Project Management Professional, or other process-improvement certification.
- Experience supporting growth, acquisition integration, new-site launches, or large-scale workflow transformation.
Key Attributes: - Hands-on, data-driven healthcare operator who improves patient access, scheduling, and procedure readiness.
- Works in operational detail while protecting patient care, procedure volume, physician productivity, and experience.
- Engages directly with scheduling teams, sites, physicians, and staff to remove barriers.
- Uses sound judgment to resolve issues independently and escalate material risks quickly.
- Clear communicator who aligns physicians, clinical teams, operations, authorization, and revenue cycle.
- Strong people leader who builds accountability, urgency, service, and consistent execution.
- Persistent owner who uses data, operating reviews, and action plans to deliver results.
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