ABSTRACT
The first component of patient access is knowing the types of care that a patient is accessing or what types they need. Patients might seek a Same Day medical appointment for an acute reason such as flu-like symptoms. A patient might seek an Annual Wellness check for next year. A patient might need a follow-up visit after being discharged from a hospital. The second component to patient access is physically the method of how patients access the care that is available or the care that they need. Two high level categories of accessing care are spontaneously arriving or scheduling to arrive. From these two high level categories there are many different options and specific clinics will offer many of these options or may just offer one option to access care. One way to measure Patient Access times is by retrospectively assessing the lead time from when a patient requests services to when the patient receives the services.
