Strategic Director of Patient Access & Scheduling

Socket.dev; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Socket.dev is seeking a Director of Patient Access & Scheduling to provide strategic and operational leadership for centralized patient-access and scheduling functions across a multi-site specialty healthcare platform.

The role oversees teams handling scheduling, authorization coordination, pre-procedure readiness, cancellations, and related workflows, partnering with physicians and site leaders to improve access and patient experience.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in healthcare administration, business, operations, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
• Seven or more years of progressively responsible healthcare operations, patient-access, scheduling, ambulatory operations, revenue-cycle front-end, or related experience.
• Three or more years of leadership experience managing managers, supervisors, or sizable frontline teams.
• Demonstrated success leading centralized or multi-site scheduling, patient access, pre-access, procedure scheduling, ambulatory operations, or comparable healthcare functions.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of prior authorization, insurance verification, pre-certification, patient financial clearance, clinical or procedural readiness, and their impact on scheduling outcomes.
• Experience using data, dashboards, KPIs, and structured operating rhythms to improve performance.
• Strong process-improvement, root-cause analysis, project-management, and change-management capabilities.
• Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Proficiency with EHR/practice-management systems, scheduling platforms, Microsoft Excel, and operational reporting tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead centralized patient access and scheduling across multiple clinic and procedural locations.
• Standardize workflows for new and returning patients, procedure scheduling, cancellations, rescheduling, outreach, and confirmation.
• Establish service-level expectations for contact speed, scheduling turnaround, authorization readiness, escalation, and schedule recovery.
• Align staffing, productivity standards, and workforce coverage to patient demand and provider capacity.
• Lead, coach, and hold managers, supervisors, and staff accountable for performance, service, and execution.
• Own workflows that move patients from order through authorization, readiness, scheduling, and completed procedures.
• Partner with physicians, ASC leadership, practice administrators, and site teams to optimize templates, capacity, and utilization.
• Reduce avoidable cancellations, schedule gaps, no-shows, and late reschedules.
• Implement recovery processes to backfill openings, move appropriate patients forward, and manage waitlists or re-nurture lists.
• Identify root causes of schedule instability and drive corrective action across affected teams.
• Lead daily, weekly, and monthly operating reviews for patient access and scheduling performance.
• Maintain dashboards and scorecards with clear targets, trends, owners, and corrective actions.
• Use data to identify variation and improvement opportunities by site, provider, payer, service line, and team.
• Improve workflows, scheduling accuracy, productivity, patient conversion, and attendance.
• Establish training, quality assurance, audits, and standard work to support consistent execution.
• Partner with technology and vendor teams to improve systems, reporting, work queues, and automation.
• Lead operational changes using defined owners, milestones, risks, communication plans, and measurable outcomes.
• Support new-site openings, acquisitions, integrations, and service-line growth as they relate to access and scheduling.
• Ensure workflows comply with organizational standards, payer requirements, privacy practices, and applicable regulations.

Skills

Leadership

Data-driven

Process improvement

Project management

Change management

Communication

Excel

Reporting tools

EHR systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in healthcare administration, business, operations, or a related field

Tools

Microsoft Excel

Scheduling platforms

EHR/PM systems

Job description

Socket.dev is seeking a Director of Patient Access & Scheduling to provide strategic and operational leadership for centralized patient-access and scheduling functions across a multi-site specialty healthcare platform.

The role oversees teams handling scheduling, authorization coordination, pre-procedure readiness, cancellations, and related workflows, partnering with physicians and site leaders to improve access and patient experience.