Justin Daniel- Iowa Healthcare, Patient Access Center (MHA '26)

 Hi everyone from Iowa City! 

I’ve had a great experience so far this summer working as an intern with the Patient Access Center (PAC). The department is based out of HSSB in Coralville and mainly handles scheduling appointments for patients at UIHC. It’s split into two groups: PAC schedulers, who are non-provider staff, and ICC, which focuses on nurse triage. My preceptor is Keri Semrau, the director of the PAC and ICC, but I also work closely with other managers, including Michael Hesseltine (ancillary services), Neil Christiansen (operations), and Jen Boyd (nurse manager). We’ve been working on several projects aimed at improving workflow and productivity in the department. 

One of the projects I’m currently working on is improving curbside provider-to-provider consultations. We’re tackling this from three angles: revisiting provider reimbursement, addressing legal concerns, and finding ways to improve the technology. This project is still in the early stages, but some of my current responsibilities include digging into academic articles and sending surveys to other academic medical centers to see how they handle their curbside consultations. So far, only one person has responded to my survey, which is annoying.  

Another project I’m working on is analyzing the University’s performance in the 2025 Patient Access Collaborative benchmarking study. As the University’s contact center, providing great access and running efficiently is super important to what we do. Comparing our metrics to other academic medical centers across the country helps us see where we can improve and where we’re already doing really well. Now that we’ve wrapped up data collection, I’m putting together a presentation for senior leadership to show how important the PAC is to daily operations throughout the hospital and clinics. 

The last project I’m working on is creating a set of standardized benchmarks to assess recently hired schedulers. The idea is to make sure new schedulers are on the right track and to identify anyone who might slow down the department’s productivity. This project has been heavy on analytics and Excel — so I’ve been putting what I learned in Dan Shane’s class to good use! 


Outside of work, I’ve been enjoying a lot of golfing and exploring some of the running trails around Iowa City. That said, I haven’t spent a ton of time here in the city because I usually head back to Minnesota every other weekend. I also took a road trip to western South Dakota for a wedding with some college buddies — which turned out to be a hilarious and kind of messed-up experience. Coming up, I’ve got another trip planned to Gull Lake in northern Minnesota for one of my best friend’s bachelor parties, where I’ll do some very Minnesotan things like boating, hanging out on the lake, and of course, more golfing. 

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