Celebrating Patient Access Week: Securing the care journey from registration to outcome
This Patient Access Week, we recognize the teams on the front lines of care and the critical role of trusted identity in delivering secure, seamless patient experiences.
Each year, Patient Access Week—established by the National Association of Healthcare Access Management (NAHAM) in 1982—celebrates the professionals who serve as the first point of connection in healthcare. Taking place this year from April 5–11, the week marks NAHAM’s founding and honors the individuals responsible for patient communications, registration, and the overall access experience.
Now more than ever, it is essential to recognize the contributions these teams make. Their work has always been essential, but it has never been more complex. Patient access professionals are not just facilitating entry into care. They are shaping first impressions, ensuring data accuracy, and enabling the healthcare system to function efficiently.
Every care journey begins with access. That first interaction, whether digital or in-person, sets the tone for everything that follows. When access is secure and seamless, it supports patient safety, operational performance, and trust throughout the entire care journey. When it is not, the consequences can follow the patient throughout their entire experience.
The growing challenge of patient identification
Despite its importance, accurate patient identification remains one of the most persistent challenges in healthcare.
Patients are still routinely asked to provide the same information at every encounter—name, date of birth, insurance details—often through manual, repetitive processes. What should be simple becomes fragmented and error-prone. In critical situations, such as emergency care, patients may not be able to identify themselves at all.
These early moments in the care journey carry inherent risk. Misidentification, duplicate records, and identity fraud create downstream consequences, including patient safety events, denied claims, delayed reimbursements, and administrative rework.
At Imprivata, we strongly advocate for initiatives to address these challenges, such as the CMS “Kill the Clipboard”—an effort focused on eliminating manual, error-prone workflows and advancing secure, interoperable digital access. By reducing reliance on repeated self-reporting, the very process that introduces errors and inconsistencies, healthcare organizations can improve both accuracy and trust from the start.
Enabling patient access with trusted identity
Addressing these challenges requires a shift in the way organizations approach patient identification. High-assurance identity verification that leverages technologies such as biometric facial recognition and aligns with IAL2 standards enables healthcare organizations to confidently match patients to their records from the very beginning. Establishing identity once, and establishing it correctly, reduces downstream clinical, financial, and operational issues.
Solutions like Imprivata Patient Access, now available within Epic Toolbox for MyChart, allow organizations to bring this approach into practice. Patients can securely create accounts through a self-service experience, while organizations reduce manual processes and administrative burden.
But identity does not stop at enrollment. It must extend across the entire care journey—from digital onboarding to registration and in-person check-in. By leveraging biometric matching and existing patient data, organizations can ensure consistent, accurate identification at every touchpoint.
First impressions matter
When patients enter the healthcare system, they are often placing their health—and in many cases, their lives—into the hands of care teams they’ve just met. In those moments, trust matters immediately. And that trust begins not in the exam room, but at the very first point of access.
In healthcare, first impressions are about more than delivering a good experience. They influence patient confidence, engagement, and trust in the care that follows. A fragmented or error-prone start can introduce doubt at the very moment patients are most vulnerable. A strong, positive, accurate, and secure start does the opposite: it reinforces confidence, supports better outcomes, and sets the tone for the entire care journey.
Patient Access Week is an opportunity to recognize the professionals who make these first impressions possible—often under increasing pressure and complexity. Their ability to balance speed, accuracy, and compassion at the very start of the care journey is critical. But they cannot do it alone. Equipping these teams with modern, identity-driven technologies enables them to work more efficiently and accurately, while reducing manual burden and strengthening the integrity of patient data.
As healthcare continues to evolve, the future of patient access will depend on both the teams at the front door and the solutions that enable them to do their jobs more effectively. By investing in their people and the technologies that support accurate, secure identification, organizations can ensure every care journey begins with confidence and assurance.