Healthcare organisations face growing pressure to improve access as patients wait for appointments, specialist care and clinical answers. Delays can worsen outcomes, increase costs and heighten frustration for both patients and clinicians. In a 2025 McKinsey physician survey, 83 percent of surveyed physicians reported that patients had postponed care, with access barriers among the most common reasons. Many organisations have responded by trying to increase physician productivity or recruit more doctors. Workforce shortages, however, limit the impact of those measures, and further pressure on physicians risks worsening burnout. Efforts to reduce wasted capacity through scheduling redesign and no-show prevention remain important, but they do not fully address rising demand and changing expectations. A broader response combines those measures with redesign of care delivery, closer alignment with patient preferences and more deliberate expansion of capacity.
Redesigning Care Teams and Care Pathways
Improving access requires reassessing who delivers care, where it is delivered and what level of acuity each setting should manage. Traditional single-physician models are increasingly strained by patients with complex chronic conditions. Administrative work and fragmented information further limit how much any one clinician can manage. Redesigning care delivery also requires investment in technology and AI, along with structured change management, role clarification and retraining across in-clinic and centralised functions.
Care models can be built around patients’ baseline clinical needs so that new issues are directed to the most appropriate setting from the outset. Between 10 and 30 percent of a doctor’s schedule is spent on visits where care was unnecessary or could have been managed more effectively. In the same survey, physicians said that 42 percent of time spent on patient care could be delegated to other care team members. Expanded care teams can therefore improve access by shifting appropriate work to advanced-practice clinicians and community health workers.
Must Read: Why Medicine Access Remains Delayed
When advanced-practice clinicians take on more preoperative and postoperative care, surgeons can devote more time to procedures. Speciality co-management can also preserve specialist capacity, as patients with stable, uncomplicated hypertension can often remain under primary care rather than cardiology. Technology supports these changes as well: physicians reported spending 11 percent of clinical time on charting and documentation, while nursing data indicated that technology could free about 20 percent of nurses’ time for direct patient care.
Aligning Access with Patient Preferences
Care model redesign improves access only when services match individual patient needs. Personalisation needs to extend across the patient journey, beginning with scheduling. Traditional methods such as reminders, double-booking and template adjustments remain largely supply-driven and static. They can improve efficiency, but they offer limited flexibility as patient needs evolve and care teams expand. A more adaptive approach uses a digital front door or omnichannel model to align scheduling and engagement with both clinical requirements and patient preferences.
Clinical needs and felt needs represent two distinct dimensions in care delivery. Felt needs include consumer preferences, behaviours, mindsets and self-identity. Segmenting patients across these dimensions allows reminders, recommendations and administrative outreach to be tailored more precisely. When engagement reflects these preferences, patients are more likely to reach the most appropriate care in the right setting and at the right time. Preferences do not always match clinical recommendations, and some patients may prefer specialist consultations or physician-led care when other options are clinically appropriate. In these cases, expectations can be addressed through trust and transparency while maintaining patient choice. Embedding this approach into operations requires integration between patient profiles, electronic health records and engagement channels, as well as staff training and monitoring of routing patterns and waiting times to support equitable care.
Expanding Capacity in a Targeted Way
Capacity expansion remains important, but it works best when aligned with redesigned care models and scheduling processes. Capacity can be expanded through workforce changes and through physical and virtual care settings. Without coordinated planning, additional capacity may simply reinforce existing inefficiencies. Expansion is also resource-intensive, which can place pressure on operating margins if underlying operational issues remain unresolved.
A more targeted approach links expansion decisions to patient population characteristics and service demand. Organisations serving many low-complexity patients who prefer digital engagement may prioritise virtual care over new physical sites. Where additional facilities are needed, workforce planning, build specifications and location choices should address known mismatches between demand and capacity. Large increases in care capacity may require relatively few extra physicians and specialists, but substantially more advanced-practice clinicians, nursing staff, care management roles and technicians. Virtual care adds further flexibility. Both synchronous formats, such as video or audio telehealth, and asynchronous formats, such as provider-to-provider e-consults, can expand access. Physicians reported seeing 18 percent more patients per hour through virtual care than through in-person care. Dedicated virtual sessions can also reduce capital requirements.
Improving access to healthcare requires coordinated action across care delivery, patient engagement and capacity planning. Three conditions support success: input from frontline care and operations teams, senior leadership able to coordinate strategic change and a holistic approach across the care delivery ecosystem. Redesigning care teams, aligning services with patient preferences and expanding capacity in a targeted manner work best when implemented together. This integrated approach aims to reduce barriers across the patient journey while supporting delivery of appropriate care at the right time and in the right setting, alongside improvements in patient and clinician experience and health outcomes.
Source: McKinsey & Co
Image Credit: iStock
