Terms of Engagement

Terms of Engagement

This Memorandum of Understanding serves to document the foundational elements of the membership to the Patient Access Symposium, LLC, dba Patient Access Collaborative, and provide for membership obligations. Since 2011, the Patient Access Collaborative has provided a forum for the nation’s largest and most prestigious health systems to discuss and advance initiatives that can improve patient access to ambulatory care.

This invitation-only community consists of leaders from academic health systems, children’s hospitals, and cancer centers across the nation. Together, our organizational members operate multi-specialty ambulatory enterprises that manage anywhere from a half a million to more than six million patient encounters a year. One out of every four ambulatory encounters in the United States comes through one of our members’ doors.

Our mission is:  “Innovation through Collaboration.”  Our focus area is the ambulatory enterprise, with content and knowledge-sharing around five pillars:  Ambulatory clinic, Capacity management, Contact center, Digital transformation, and Patient engagement.

The Patient Access Collaborative is an invitation-only community. Invitations are extended to those institutions that meet following membership criteria:

• Represents a large, multi-specialty ambulatory enterprise with a core academic and teaching mission centered on its school of medicine; or, are a large, multi-specialty ambulatory enterprises of a freestanding children’s hospital or a CMS PPS-exempt cancer hospital with a core academic and teaching mission; and

• Actively involved in access-related improvements; and

• Agrees to actively partner, share data, network, and collaborate with other PAC members

Membership is reviewed and determined by our Board of Advisors. After we invite a health system to become an “Organizational Member,” and it accepts, we will then grant its designated employees access to our learning community and enjoyment of the benefits of Patient Access Collaborative. Upon joining, the main contact for the new Organizational Member will transmit, in writing, a list of employees, and their position titles and email addresses, to us (admin@patientaccesscollaborative.net) that it wishes to include in the Collaborative. There will be a designated employee as the main contact for us. (This may be the leader who applied for membership – or another person as assigned. It can be changed at any time.) We will issue access to our learning community to the employees so provided. An Organizational Member may add additional employees at any time. Contractors and consultants are not allowed access to the website.  

In exchange for membership, Organizational Members agree to the terms outlined on the following page:

1.  To pay their annual dues each membership year, which runs July 1 to June 30.  (There is no discount for partial years as the membership unlocks access to all historical education, data, etc.).  The fee is set each year by the Board of Advisors.  Organizational Members can renounce their membership at any time, with no advanced notice. No refunds will be granted if the membership is ended during the membership year (July 1 to June 30). An unlimited number of employees can gain access to our learning community under the organization’s membership (i.e., there are no individual dues), but Organizational Members may not allow their consultants or contractors to have such access.

2.  All information labeled as “benchmarks” anywhere on our website, or that individuals otherwise received from us, are the Trade Secrets of Patient Access Collaborative.  The individuals who are employed by our Organizational Members will keep such information secret as long as they remain a Trade Secret and will take reasonable measures to guard their secrecy to at least the level that Organizational Members would guard their own Trade Secrets.  Organizational Members will have confidentiality agreements in place with all employees for whom they seek access to our learning community.

3.  We require all Organizational Members to share their benchmarking data around access; this includes scheduling information and contact center data.  The only two persons who sees the non-blinded data are the Executive Director, Elizabeth Woodcock, and the Senior Director of Research, Chris Profeta. The file is maintained in a secure environment. Data are reported in a blinded format; no data are released unless there is a minimum of 10 submissions for the category. All Organizational Members must participate in the self-reported data request. Partial submissions may fulfill this requirement. . If data are not received following a minimum of three requests over a 60-day period, we reserve the right to remove the organization’s membership and all employees who fall under it.

4.  Members are required to participate in a bi-annual interview in which we collect information about the access initiatives that is shared only within the learning community. The interview lasts 45 minutes, and the document is reviewed and approved by a representative of the Organizational Member for accuracy.   

5.  Limited access to registration for the annual symposium, as each Organizational Member typically has a maximum delegation of four individuals, which must include a director (or above). Note that there are registration fees for in-person programming. 

6. Individuals who have access to our benefits (through their organization’s membership) can apply for and serve on a committee or board of advisors.

7. PAC, by majority vote of our Board of Advisors, reserve the right to remove membership from any organization that is no longer contributing to the community for any reason.

Any questions or concerns, email Patient Access Collaborative at admin@patientaccesscollaborative.net or call 404.272.2274.

By:

Elizabeth Woodcock, DrPH, MBA, FACMPE, CPC

Founder & Executive Director

November 2023