• Michael J Comunale, Terence S Dermody, Michelle Peters, Jeffrey A Rudolph, Mark Sevco, and Seth Young.
• UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, 4401 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15224. Email: comunalemj@upmc.edu.
• Am J Manag Care. 2022 Jun 1; 28 (6): e228-e231.

ObjectivesHealth systems must adapt to an increased consumer-centric environment to remain relevant in an ever-growing competitive health care landscape in which convenience is a key driver of patient satisfaction and loyalty. To adapt to this new environment, health systems must redesign processes to transform the delivery of ambulatory care and provide near real-time access to specialty care.Study DesignA pediatric academic medical center in western Pennsylvania used a process-improvement approach to enhance timely access to specialty care and deliver a consumer-centric patient experience.MethodsCritical factors in this process included engagement of key stakeholders, implementation of scheduling best practices, development of a set of scheduling guidelines, increased use of advanced practice providers, and use of data analytics to measure and benchmark performance.ResultsThe time to schedule a new patient appointment decreased from 42 to 4 days and the patient satisfaction access domain increased by 57 percentile points.ConclusionsThese factors should scale to other institutions, thereby enabling generalizable results.

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