How Health Systems Are Using PEP Health’s Fast Access Insights
Access is one of the most frequently discussed topics in online hospital reviews and healthcare commentary.
It is often the very first interaction patients have with a healthcare organization. It shapes expectations early, sets the tone for the rest of the encounter, and, for many, becomes the deciding factor in whether they continue or choose to go elsewhere.
Healthcare organizations have traditionally relied on structured measures to understand access, most notably surveys. Tools such as HCAHPS play an important role in accountability and benchmarking, but they often capture only a narrow slice of access, primarily focused on staff responsiveness during an inpatient stay. For example, HCAHPS asks how often patients received help as soon as they needed it, or how often they received help getting to the bathroom or using a bedpan when they wanted it.
These questions reflect an important aspect of access within inpatient settings, but they do not address the broader access journey, like how easy it was to secure an appointment, how long patients waited before being seen, how efficiently care progressed once it began, or whether patients could reach the right staff members when they needed them. On their own, they are not sufficient to provide a comprehensive view of access.
A better way to understand access
The answer is not to add more surveys or increase burden on patients and staff. It is to listen where patients are already describing these experiences in detail, without being asked.
In the United States, 1 in 9 people already share their healthcare experiences online.
Within that, millions of patients take time every day to describe how they perceived scheduling and availability of appointments, wait times and wait lists, availability of staff, and myriad other access challenges.
Taken together, this commentary contains signals that can be used to understand where access is working well, where it is constrained, and where it may be deteriorating. It also provides early visibility into access-related risks that can affect engagement, utilization, and patient choice.
Historically, the challenge with interpreting this feedback has been methodological. Free-text commentary at scale is complex, unstructured, and difficult to analyze accurately or consistently.
As a result, access-related data has often remained incomplete and fragmented across platforms and silos, monitored primarily by manual teams and reputation tools, and rarely integrated into operational or strategic decision-making.
Advances in healthcare AI are changing that.
Access-related commentary can now be analyzed systematically, grouped into consistent categories, and tracked over time. When examined in aggregate, patterns become visible. Not individual frustrations, but recurring signals about where access is slow, constrained, or difficult to sustain.
When monitored continuously, this data shifts access from something reviewed periodically to something that can be observed daily. Health systems can see trends develop, identify peaks and troughs in access performance, and assess whether changes to scheduling, staffing, or processes are having the intended impact.
Seen this way, online patient feedback becomes a crucial tool for access performance. It does not replace operational data or survey measures. It complements them by adding timing and context that are often missing elsewhere.
How health systems are using Fast Access insights today
Health systems like ECU Health use Fast Access insights to support organizational efficiency and day-to-day decision-making.
Teams use these insights to evaluate and improve booking and scheduling experiences, including online scheduling and centralized scheduling for service lines.
Patient feedback reveals where the digital front door creates friction, such as limited appointment visibility or breakdowns between digital and human access points, and where access bottlenecks are emerging due to staffing pressure, demand surges, or capacity constraints.
Because access sentiment reflects real-world strain, these signals inform staffing allocation decisions, including where additional coverage or extended hours may be needed before backlogs become systemic.
Fast Access insights also support navigation and concierge services by showing where patients struggle to find the right entry point to care and where additional guidance or human support can reduce abandonment, delay, and missed appointments.
At the same time, experience and strategy teams use this data to surface access equity gaps, revealing where certain locations, service lines, or populations consistently experience longer waits or greater difficulty reaching care.
Because the data is refreshed daily, operations, access, and experience teams can identify signs of strain at the earlier opportunity and respond while there is still time to intervene, before delays and frustration translate into disengagement, delayed care, or patient leakage.
What Fast Access measures
Fast Access reflects how patients experience the timeliness and availability of care across key moments in the healthcare journey.
The Fast Access domain captures patient perceptions across four elements of access:
- Booking & Scheduling – how easy the booking process is
- Wait Times for Appointments – how long patients wait for appointments
- Wait Times for Treatment – how long patients wait to be seen once they arrive for care
- Access to Staff – how available staff are and whether patients can reach the right professionals throughout different stages of care
Together, these signals provide a patient-centered view of how reachable, timely, and responsive care feels from the patient’s point of view.
Why Fast Access matters and where it fits within the broader experience picture
Access is the gateway to clinical care and shapes the experience before the actual care even begins. When access feels difficult or delayed, patients adjust their behavior accordingly. They may postpone care, disengage from follow-up, or choose a different provider next time.
Access does not operate in isolation, it is one part of the broader experience picture, alongside treatment quality, communication, emotional support, and continuity of care. These factors interact with one another, often amplifying strengths or exposing weaknesses elsewhere in the system.
A validated, real-time signal of access
Fast Access is one of seven experience domains that contribute to a hospital’s real-time PEP Score. It has been validated through peer-review against HCAHPS, demonstrating strong alignment with HCAHPS outcomes and proving that unsolicited patient feedback can serve as a reliable, early indicator of access issues.
This work has also been featured in Becker’s Hospital Review, highlighting its relevance for healthcare leaders navigating quality, safety, and value-based performance.
By amplifying real patient voices, where patients are already speaking online, PEP Health provides a transparent, experience-driven signal of how care is perceived as it is lived, not months later.
To find out how our insights can support your organization, email hello@pephealth.ai.
