How One Healthcare Network Turned a 20% Access Goal into Its Strongest Growth Year
Knowing where you’re going is only half the battle. Knowing how to get there — and how to bring everyone with you — is what turns strategy into results.
A leading U.S. healthcare services network had a clear goal: increase profitability by improving patient access. To achieve it, leadership set an ambitious target: reduce the time to first patient consultation by 20%. The logic was simple: faster access meant fuller schedules, higher patient volume, and stronger financial performance. But with hundreds of independently operated practices, each pursuing its own priorities, leadership couldn’t translate vision into coordinated action.
Disconnected goals, rising pressures
Each practice operated as its own entity, setting goals and managing day-to-day work independently. Leadership couldn’t see how local decisions affected overall outcomes. Practices had no line of sight to the network’s strategic priorities.
Worse, the network measured only what had already happened. Leadership tracked lagging indicators like revenue and patient volume; outcomes that reflected past performance but revealed little about what actions would improve them.
Focus fragmented quickly. Each site pursued what mattered most locally — scheduling, staffing, throughput — but no one could see how their work connected to the whole. The organization was busy everywhere, but aligned nowhere. Patient access suffered, and strategic growth stalled.
The network didn’t lack direction. It lacked activation. Leadership needed a practical system to align its practices around a shared priority, measure the actions that would drive results, and ensure the urgent work of daily operations didn’t overwhelm the important work of strategy execution.
Activating a shared goal
Acquis partnered with the COO and C-suite to turn the north star — 20% reduction in time to first consultation — into a breakthrough priority that every practice could rally behind.
The engagement began with discovery: document reviews, interviews, and collaborative workshops that revealed where delays occurred in patient care, how practices made decisions, and what barriers prevented coordination across the network. These insights shaped a series of cross-functional leadership sessions that defined the priority clearly and established how it would cascade throughout the network.
With leadership aligned, Acquis built the infrastructure for execution, tailoring its principles to the client’s complex, decentralized environment.
Leading indicators that drive results
The breakthrough came in shifting how the client measured progress. Rather than tracking only lagging indicators — outcomes that showed what had already happened — Acquis helped practices identify leading indicators: the specific actions most likely to drive results.
Through virtual workshops, Acquis trained staff to identify and monitor the leading behaviors that would move the needle on patient access and profitability in their own context. Teams could now direct their energy toward actions that created outcomes, not simply measure them after the fact.
To maintain visibility across all practices, Acquis created a real-time scoreboard that tracked progress for both leadership and frontline teams, along with communication materials to sustain focus and alignment.
Turning intention into execution
Knowing measurement alone doesn’t change behavior, Acquis helped the network establish cadences of accountability: regular, structured touchpoints where teams committed to specific actions and reported on progress. In brief weekly stand-ups, individuals signed up publicly for what they would accomplish that week and reported back the following week. This simple rhythm created accountability and ensured continued momentum towards the goal.
The result was more than a goal and a scorecard. It was a complete system — one priority cascading through leading metrics, transparent progress tracking, and accountability rhythms that kept each practice aligned and executing together.
Execution that sticks
The network now operates with a clear, repeatable system for strategic execution. Leadership and practices work from one priority, track progress transparently, and understand how their daily decisions connect to network-wide objectives.
The shift from lagging to leading indicators gave teams clarity and confidence. Instead of hoping their work would improve outcomes, they could see in real time whether their actions drove the results that mattered. The network achieved one of its strongest years to date, with measurable improvements in consultation throughput and patient access across all practices.
As Acquis continues to support the organization with new goals, the infrastructure for sustained execution is already in place — a repeatable system that positions the network to execute on whatever comes next.
The difference between having a goal and achieving it comes down to activation, translating strategy into coordinated action at every level of the organization. For this healthcare network, that activation didn’t just deliver growth. It created a new way of working.
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