Director, Access Strategy and Operations- Patient Access Organization

Uclahealthcareers; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 89,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

UCLA Health in Los Angeles, CA, seeks a Director, Access Strategy and Operations to lead enterprise-level initiatives across centralized scheduling, referral intake, capacity management, and access optimization, aligning strategy with execution.

This role partners with senior leaders and cross-functional teams to drive performance, establish governance, monitor quality, and deliver scalable improvements in patient access.

Job description

Description

UCLA Health runs and operates over 280 outpatient clinics located in Southern California with over 3,000,000 outpatient encounters annually. The Patient Access Organization (PAO) serves as the centralized access team for UCLA Health’s ambulatory enterprise, ensuring timely, convenient, and equitable access to care for patients and the communities we serve. Our teams oversee high-volume centralized scheduling and call center operations, new patient referral intake and navigation, enterprise template and capacity management, workforce training and quality oversight, and scheduling pathways and technology optimization, including decision tree development and digital innovations. We operate at the intersection of operations, technology, and clinical partnership to align supply and demand, streamline workflows, and continuously improve how patients enter and engage with UCLA Health.

The Director, Access Strategy and Operations, serves as a strategic and operational partner to the Senior Director of Patient Access, providing enterprise-level support to advance performance, accountability, and transformation across the Patient Access Organization. This role strengthens initiative governance, execution tracking, and leadership alignment across centralized scheduling, referral intake, capacity management, and access optimization functions. The Director, Access Strategy and Operations, is responsible for driving execution of complex initiatives, ensuring alignment across access functions, auditing quality and outcomes, and enabling leaders to deliver consistent, high-quality results at scale. This role establishes structured operating cadence, audits work products for quality and readiness, coordinates cross-functional initiatives, and ensures timely delivery of strategic priorities across a complex, matrixed health system environment. Operating with significant autonomy and influence, this individual acts as an integrator, connecting strategy to execution, surfacing risks and gaps, and ensuring priorities move forward on time and with rigor. The role partners closely with the Patient Access Organization Directors, Administrators, Supervisors, and Access Performance Coaches, as well as cross-disciplinary stakeholders across the health system, to improve the end-to-end patient access journey.

Annual salary: $88,900-$190,300