Access Is the Product: The Shared Growth Lever for Health Systems & Health Plans
OCTOBER 2025
Access Is the Product: The Shared Growth Lever for Health Systems & Health Plans
The Signal
Consumers aren’t buying “care” or “coverage.” They’re buying access—fast, simple, and trustworthy. For CEOs of health systems and plans alike, growth now hinges on one question: How quickly can a member/patient get to the right visit with confidence?
Media spend, network design, and brand campaigns all collapse if the last mile fails. Delays turn acquisition into churn. And the CFO’s patience for “great awareness, weak throughput” just ran out.
The Shift
Here’s what this means for operators on both sides of the table:
Speed beats spend. Time-to-first-appointment (TTFA) and prior-auth turnaround are now profit metrics, not ops trivia.
Reputation is conversion. Reviews, clinical credibility, and service-line proof swing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and steerage as much as pricing.
Capacity is currency. If your access isn’t bookable in real time, your marketing is subsidizing your competitors.
Delegated risk = shared incentives. Plans need steerage to high-performing access; systems need plan-backed simplicity at the front door.
One ecosystem, one truth. Separate dashboards for plan “enrollment” and system “volumes” hide leakage. Tie both to kept appointments and contribution to margin.
The Move
Operate access like an integrated growth system—brand + demand + operations + finance—regardless of which logo is on the card or the building.
Build one scoreboard. Track Time to First Appointment (TTFA), digital bookability, prior-auth cycle time, no-show rate, kept-appointment yield, and contribution to margin—daily. One owner.
Engineer the Front Door Experience. Implement <60s human connection in the IVR, two-click scheduling, real-time eligibility, “save & finish later” functionality, and precise handoffs for virtual/in-person care."
Throttle to capacity. Align media and outreach to actual bookable slots by geo, daypart, and service line. Stop paying for demand you can’t serve.
Co-author the playbook. Plans + systems agree on Service Level Agreements (SLA) (e.g., 72-hour access for priority segments), reputation goals (review velocity & rating), and care-path routing.
Make reputation visible at the decision point. Place service-line proof, clinician reviews, and cost clarity where people click “Book” or “Enroll.”
Govern like capital. Treat access improvements as investments with a return: approve, measure, reallocate—inside 24 hours, not 24 days.
SPIRTO Insight: Health systems and plans that unified access + marketing + finance into a single daily operating model cut acquisition costs while lifting kept-appointment rates—without adding headcount. The differentiator wasn’t bigger budgets; it was last-mile discipline and shared accountability.
Closing Thought
Access is the new brand—and the new benefit. In a market where time is the scarcest resource, speed is strategy, simplicity is trust, and trust is growth.