Why Healthcare Access Became an IT Priority
Healthcare systems across the United States are experiencing unprecedented pressure from mounting patient demand, persistent workforce shortages, and increasingly tight operational margins. These converging challenges have fundamentally transformed how healthcare leaders approach patient access, shifting it from a traditional administrative concern to a critical information technology (IT) and digital innovation priority.
According to insights from Becker’s Health IT, access pressures are now shaping nearly every major strategic initiative across American health systems. Dr. Judd Hollander, MD, senior vice president of healthcare delivery innovation and chief virtual care officer at Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health, summarized the industry-wide challenge succinctly: “The pressure point, I think, at health systems all across the country is access, access and more access.”
Healthcare organizations are increasingly recognizing that traditional approaches to expanding capacity—such as constructing new facilities or hiring additional staff—are neither financially sustainable nor operationally feasible in today’s constrained environment. Instead, forward-thinking health systems are turning to artificial intelligence (AI), digital tools, and data-driven strategies to increase operational capacity, reduce care delivery delays, and fundamentally reimagine how patients connect with providers.
AI and Digital Tools Expand Care Capacity
Ambient AI Reduces Documentation Burden
Jefferson Health’s access strategy exemplifies how technology can unlock capacity within existing resources. The health system has implemented an ambitious systemwide initiative to reclaim 10 million patient care hours over three years through strategic deployment of AI and digital solutions.
Dr. Hollander emphasized that technology serves as the cornerstone of creating capacity without requiring additional infrastructure. “We’ve grown out ambient listening to thousands of our clinicians, physicians and advanced care providers, across the enterprise,” he explained during the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: How do you get in?”
The health system has extended ambient AI technology beyond physicians to include nursing staff, a critical innovation led by Colleen Malazzi, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing informatics officer. This expansion specifically targets documentation time reduction, allowing nurses to spend more time providing direct patient care at the bedside rather than completing administrative tasks.
Reclaiming Millions of Patient Care Hours
The strategic deployment of ambient AI technology delivers benefits that extend far beyond simple efficiency gains. Dr. Hollander noted that these tools may fundamentally improve workforce recruitment and retention by creating more satisfying work environments.
“[AI for nurses] may help create capacity,” Dr. Hollander said. “It may also help us recruit more people to take care of patients, because the job may be better, burnout may be less, retention may be better.”
This approach reflects a broader industry shift as health systems recognize the critical importance of preserving and optimizing clinician time in an environment characterized by rising patient demand and persistent workforce constraints.
Technology-Driven Patient Scheduling and Workflow Optimization
Matching Patients with Available Appointments
Beyond reducing documentation burden, healthcare access challenges increasingly require sophisticated data analytics and intelligent workflow design. Jefferson Health is leveraging technology to identify unused capacity across its practice network while simultaneously redesigning workflows to create entirely new access points for patients.
“There’s practices that have capacity. That’s easy,” Dr. Hollander explained. “How do we identify the patients that need to see those specialists so they could take the open slots and we could provide better care to people in the community?”
This data-driven approach transforms patient scheduling from a simple appointment-booking function into a strategic capacity optimization challenge that requires real-time visibility into provider availability, patient needs, and clinical appropriateness.
Same-Day Cancer Care Through Centralized Systems
Jefferson Health’s same-day, next-day cancer care program demonstrates how technology, intelligent scheduling, and redesigned clinical workflows can intersect to dramatically improve patient access for time-sensitive conditions. The program employs centralized scheduling combined with real-time clinical escalation protocols that empower staff to resolve complex questions immediately.
“Rather than send them to the cancer specialist, they have permission to call and disturb that specialist in the middle of the day to get the answer,” Dr. Hollander said. This approach eliminates traditional appointment delays while ensuring patients receive appropriate specialist consultation when clinically necessary.
The Strategic Role of CIOs in Care Delivery
As access challenges continue to intensify across American healthcare, chief information officers (CIOs) and IT leadership teams are being drawn deeper into core care delivery strategy. The traditional separation between clinical operations and IT infrastructure is rapidly dissolving as technology becomes inseparable from effective patient care delivery.
Dr. Hollander emphasized the competitive imperative driving this transformation: “If we have clinicians that haven’t figured out how to use AI where AI can be used … then patients are going to go somewhere else.”
This observation highlights how patient access challenges are becoming a critical differentiator in an increasingly competitive healthcare marketplace. Health systems that successfully integrate AI and digital tools into clinical workflows will be better positioned to meet patient expectations, while those that lag behind risk losing market share to more technologically advanced competitors.
The Future of Healthcare Access Management
For U.S. health systems, patient access has evolved from a downstream operational issue into a defining strategic challenge that tests how effectively technology, workflows, and clinical expertise can collaborate to meet patient expectations in an increasingly strained care environment.
The convergence of AI-powered documentation tools, intelligent scheduling systems, data analytics, and redesigned clinical workflows represents a fundamental reimagining of how healthcare organizations approach capacity management and patient access. Success in this new environment requires close collaboration between clinical leaders, IT executives, and operational teams to deploy technology solutions that genuinely enhance both provider experience and patient outcomes.
As workforce pressures persist and patient expectations continue to rise, healthcare organizations that treat access as a technology-enabled strategic priority—rather than simply an administrative function—will be best positioned to thrive in an increasingly competitive and resource-constrained industry landscape.
