In this episode

Marlena Kane is the former VP, New Patient Access & Acquisition at City of Hope and a powerhouse in patient access leadership. Kane shares her insights on what it takes to modernize access, the critical role of investing in people, and how a culture of engagement leads to real operational impact. She breaks down the strategies that turn access centers into strategic front doors for healthcare organizations.

“If you invest in people first—develop them, empower them, and get them bought in—you create a team of problem-solvers instead of just fire-fighters. That’s when real transformation happens.”

– Marlena Kane

 

Key takeaways

While improving access involves solving complex problems, delivering a stellar, empathetic patient experience is something that teams can control and directly impact. In this episode, Kane dives in to the long-term benefits of investing in people, both for improving KPIs and fostering a positive organizational culture. Here are her strategies:

Investing in people drives real change.

Kane asserts that true transformation in patient access starts with investing in and empowering teams. By fostering a culture of engagement, transparency, and ownership, organizations can significantly reduce turnover and improve operational efficiency.

“I’ve been in healthcare my whole career. I love solving complex problems to make things better for patients and developing people along the way to be able to to do it even better than before,” Kane said.

“You tend to come in as a leader and focus on process and technology first. What I’ve learned is that that doesn’t work,” Kane said.

“You really have to make sure that you’re putting all of your most of your time and energy and investments in the people, particularly with access centers. I mean, I think you would hear a lot of leaders say that, you know, invest in the people. Particularly in my experience with access centers, this is a team. You really have to make sure that you’re putting most of your time and energy and investments in the people… really getting the people and the leaders on board with what you’re trying to do and having them help shape it is gonna go much further,” she said.

Kane recommends meeting with front-line teams often and making sure they have the resources they need to solve problems. “You’re investing a lot of time upfront, [but] now you have not only a team of leaders, but you’ve empowered their teams to solve problems. And then you have 200 problem-solvers instead of five of us fighting fires,” she said.

Treat patient access as your strategic front door and invest in it.

Many organizations treat access as a transactional department, Kane said, but she advocates for it as a critical, strategic entry point. “Access in particular is the front door. It’s very tightly connected to how our physicians get reimbursed and how they advance their research… it tends to be a department that is most ignored, least invested in, but we get the most feedback and complaints, she said.

Kane outlined a unique “rounding” process she implemented with her team to transform the culture of the access department, empower her staff, and understand friction points. She shared how transformational regular, face-to-face time between leader and team has been at City of Hope.

“When I first started, I would ask my team, ‘Can I go [look] around? They thought I was crazy. They were like, ‘We didn’t prep for this.’ People wouldn’t even give me eye contact,” she remembered.

“Now I have my set rounds, we have huddles. [Even] with four days of working from home…they’re involved in process improvement. They know how we’re doing on our metrics. They can speak to the why. They’re calling me over for ideas. They’ll give me crap for paying more attention to [another team],” she laughed. “When we compare our KPIs to before, it’s an incredible improvement, and the team is super engaged,” she said.