3Dhealth defines how health systems can accurately measure physician access through Served Lives, bringing precision to one of healthcare’s most elusive metrics
CHICAGO, IL, UNITED STATES, January 22, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — 3Dhealth, the national leader in provider development planning and access strategy, today announced the release of Served Lives: The Hidden Metric That Defines Physician Access – a new article detailing how health systems can quantify true patient reach with actuarial accuracy.
For decades, hospitals and health systems have tracked visits, work RVUs, and attributed panels to understand provider performance. Yet those activity-based measures miss a crucial question: How many patients does each physician truly serve?
That number, what 3Dhealth defines as Served Lives, captures the real measure of physician access. Using a proprietary actuarial approach refined over 24 years, 3Dhealth converts productivity data (RVUs, visits, and encounters) into an inferred count of patients served, revealing how effectively each provider translates productivity into community access.
“Attribution tells you who’s ever been seen,” said Ron Flower, President & CEO of 3Dhealth. “Served Lives tell you who’s being cared for today, and how efficiently each physician uses their capacity to reach patients.”
Across thousands of physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) in General Primary Care, OB/GYN, and Pediatrics, 3Dhealth’s analyses reveal striking variation:
– The most productive quartile of primary care providers serves nearly 70% more patients than their lowest-productivity peers, hundreds of additional patients per FTE.
– In OB/GYN, Served Lives nearly double between the 25th and 75th percentiles.
– Even in Pediatrics, where visit frequency limits panel size, variations in Served Lives highlight hidden access potential.
These findings demonstrate that most health systems possess 10 to 20% hidden access capacity within their existing physician workforce, the equivalent of adding multiple new providers without recruitment.
“Served Lives shift the access question from ‘How many doctors do we have?’ to ‘How effectively are we using the doctors we already have?’” added Flower.
3Dhealth’s Served Lives methodology provides health systems with a quantifiable, actionable foundation for physician access strategy, empowering leaders to benchmark performance, optimize productivity, and expand community reach.
About 3Dhealth
3Dhealth helps hospitals and health systems nationwide quantify physician need, model access, and optimize provider development with precision. Powered by proprietary data engines and more than two decades of expertise, 3Dhealth’s analytics transform physician supply-demand data into actionable strategies that strengthen access, efficiency, and growth.
Elizabeth Blanchard
3Dhealth
+1 312-423-2670
email us here
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