The Next Generation of Patient Access: Lessons for Young Professionals
What does it take to build a successful career in patient access? Technical knowledge about templates, referrals, and digital tools certainly helps. So does understanding scheduling workstreams, capacity management, and the many complexities of ambulatory care delivery. But as two emerging leaders recently reminded us, some of the most important skills have little to do with technical expertise.
In a recent episode of the Patient Access Collaborative podcast, Senior Director Chris Profeta, MPH, spoke with Mariah Yannerella, Senior Project Manager at Texas Children’s and Austin Loomis, MHA, CAACM, Associate Vice President, Ambulatory Access and Analytics at OU Health, recipients of our 2026 Emerging Access Leader of the Year award. The award recognizes rising professionals who demonstrate exceptional promise and impact early in their patient access careers, celebrating innovation, professional growth, measurable results, and leadership potential.
Our conversation revealed several lessons worth sharing with anyone beginning or growing a career in patient access.
Bring energy, even before you have expertise. Early in a career, it's easy to focus on what you don't know. But enthusiasm, initiative, and a willingness to tackle challenges can be just as valuable as experience.
Both Mariah and Austin demonstrated how bringing energy to their work has helped them contribute meaningfully, even as they continue to learn. In a field where challenges can seem endless and progress sometimes incremental, a proactive attitude matters. You don't need to have every answer to identify a problem, ask thoughtful questions, or help move an initiative forward.
Find mentors, and learn from them. One of the most striking moments in our conversation was that both leaders brought up their mentors – a shout out to Grace Karon Fangman (Texas Children’s Hospital) and Mandy Newman (OU Health) – without even being asked. Neither Mariah nor Austin described professional growth as something accomplished alone.
Mentorship can provide technical guidance, but its value extends much further. A good mentor can help you navigate organizational dynamics, understand unfamiliar challenges, build confidence, and recognize opportunities you might otherwise overlook.
For young professionals, the lesson is simple: seek out people whose experience and judgment you admire. Ask questions, stay curious, and make an effort to maintain those connections. Professional development doesn't happen exclusively in classrooms or training programs. Often, it happens through conversations with people willing to share what they've learned.
Relationships aren't separate from the work. They are the work. Perhaps the most interesting theme was the importance both award winners placed on developing and nurturing relationships.
Patient access is unusually interconnected. Improving access requires collaboration among physicians, practice managers, contact center management, revenue cycle leaders, facility representatives, information technology personnel, clinical operations and nursing administration, and executive leaders. Rarely can any one person or department accomplish meaningful change independently.
Both Mariah and Austin recognized that relationship-building plays a particularly important role in getting things done in healthcare, sometimes more so than in other industries.
For young professionals eager to demonstrate their capabilities, it can be tempting to focus exclusively on racking up technical expertise – or prioritizing deliverables and results. But in patient access, your ability to establish trust, communicate effectively, and collaborate across stakeholders may be the path to success.
Understand perspectives beyond your own. Another important lesson was the ability to appreciate the experiences and priorities of different stakeholders, even without having personally worked in their roles.
A physician, scheduler, practice manager, nurse, referral coordinator - and a patient - may all experience the same process very differently. Each brings legitimate concerns, competing priorities, and valuable knowledge. Effective access leaders must learn to see these different perspectives, recognize where interests align or conflict, and help people work toward shared solutions.
This is a remarkably nuanced responsibility, especially for professionals relatively early in their careers. It requires humility, careful listening, and the recognition that understanding someone else's work doesn't necessarily require having done it yourself.
Mariah and Austin offer an important reminder that leadership starts long before you have the title. Access leadership isn't reserved for those with decades of experience or executive titles. It can begin with bringing positive energy to a difficult problem, investing in a relationship, seeking guidance, and making a genuine effort to understand someone else's perspective.
For anyone considering a career in patient access, that's an encouraging message. You don't have to know everything to make a difference. You do, however, have to be willing to learn, connect, contribute, and keep growing.
Listen to our conversation with Mariah Yannerella and Austin Loomis in The Next Generation of Access Leadership. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2aPqcEI5ibrGEMGvCtObE4?si=ZsLKOEMUStOpsU09d-DIqA