Access Design Specialist, Senior

UPMC Talent Acquisition is hiring a Full-Time Access Design Specialist, Senior to help support Scheduling Services.

Hours: Typically Monday through Friday, daylight. On call hours required on an as-needed basis.

Location: Remote

Department Details: The ideal candidate is a strong communicator and critical thinker who enjoys solving problems. Join a collaborative team with plenty of opportunities to learn, grow, and advance your career!

Purpose:
The Access Design Specialist partners with operational, clinical, and technical teams to optimize patient access through thoughtful workflow design, system configuration support, and strategic consultation. This role translates operational goals into scalable access solutions by improving scheduling and referral workflows, documenting standards and decisions, and aligning technology capabilities with front-line practice needs. The specialist serves as a bridge between technical build teams and operational stakeholders to advance access, efficiency, and the patient experience. This role works closely with access operations, clinical leaders, digital and application teams, and other cross-functional partners to design, evaluate, and refine workflows that improve access performance, support operational goals, and enable sustainable process improvement across the organization.
Responsibilities:
 

• Patient Access Workflow Design: Design, optimize, and maintain patient access workflows that improve scheduling efficiency, referral management, capacity utilization, and the overall patient and provider experience across ambulatory and access operations. 
• Access Solution Development: Translate operational and clinical requirements into effective access designs, including templates, scheduling logic, decision support tools, and related system workflows that align with best practices and organizational goals. 
• Documentation and Standards: Create and maintain clear documentation for workflow designs, build standards, operational requirements, decision rationale, and process changes to support consistency, governance, training, and future optimization efforts. 
• Strategic Consultation: Serve as a consultative partner to operational and clinical leaders by assessing access challenges, identifying improvement opportunities, and recommending scalable solutions that support patient access goals, service standards, and operational performance. 
• Technical and Operational Translation: Bridge communication between technical teams and operational stakeholders by clarifying business needs, translating workflows into functional requirements, supporting design discussions, and ensuring implemented solutions meet intended operational outcomes. 
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with application teams, operations leaders, clinical partners, and other stakeholders to support access-related initiatives, workflow redesign, system enhancements, and change implementation across departments and service lines.
• Analysis and Continuous Improvement: Review workflow performance, operational data, and stakeholder feedback to identify trends, measure the impact of changes, and drive continuous improvement in patient access processes and supporting technology. 
• Testing, Implementation, and Support: Participate in testing, validation, implementation, and post-go-live support for new workflows, system updates, and enhancement requests to ensure changes are functional, sustainable, and well adopted by end users.

• Bachelor’s degree in Healthcare Management, Business Administration, Public Health, Industrial Engineering, or a related field preferred
• Equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will be considered 
• Minimum 2–4 years of experience in healthcare operations, patient access, or related roles required
• Experience with outpatient scheduling workflows and systems (e.g., Epic Cadence) strongly preferred
• Experience supporting or optimizing clinical, operational, or revenue cycle processes in a complex healthcare environment preferred
• Experience in a large health system or academic medical center environment is a plus
• Strong understanding of patient access workflows, scheduling practices, and operational drivers of access performance
• Ability to translate operational and clinical needs into technical requirements and workflow designs, and vice versa
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities, work independently, and collaborate effectively across teams•
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills, with the ability to identify improvement opportunities and drive solutions
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, including the ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical audiences
• Proven ability to build relationships and partner with stakeholders across operational, clinical, and technical teams
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook) and healthcare systems; experience with reporting tools or workflow documentation tools is a plus
  Licensure, Certifications, and Clearances:
  • Epic Cadence Certification preferred (or ability to obtain within a defined timeframe)
   
• Act 34

UPMC is an Equal Opportunity Employer/Disability/Veteran