Patients’ access to outpatient medical care is one of the top concerns of health care executives nationwide, according to the Annual Health Care CEO Survey from Washington, D.C.-based best practices firm Advisory Board.

For the survey, the health care business of The Advisory Board Company asked 183 C-suite hospital and health system executives their opinions on 26 different topics of concern in December 2016 and January 2017.

Executives’ top concern is improving patients’ access to care in outpatient or ambulatory locations, the survey revealed. About 57% of respondents expressed “extreme interest” in the topic.

In last year’s survey, improving ambulatory access was executives’ sixth-greatest concern.

Additionally, approximately 55% of the executives surveyed said increasing outpatient procedural market share is of “extreme interest” to them this year. Last year, boosting outpatient procedural market share was executives’ 10th-greatest concern.

Other topics of concern included identifying innovative ways to reduce costs, minimizing unwanted clinical variation and controlling avoidable utilization.

According to the survey, the top five areas of “extreme interest” to health system and hospital executives are:

1. Improving ambulatory access (57%)

2. Innovative approaches to expense reduction (57%)

3. Boosting outpatient procedural market share (55%)

4. Minimizing unwarranted clinical variation (54%)

5. Controlling avoidable utilization (49%)

Written by Mary Kate Nelson