Cleveland Clinic realized it wanted to expand access to weekend appointments and that there was genuine patient demand for it. When the system surveyed approximately 13,000 patients regarding what time periods worked best for them, what locations made sense and what services they were looking to access, the answers pointed toward Saturdays.
“We wanted to meet people where they’re at, particularly those patients who were not able to make appointments at traditional times,” Scott Steele, MD, president of Cleveland Clinic’s main campus submarket, told Becker’s. “In many cases due to work or family [circumstances].”
The initiative launched in July 2025 with endoscopy, OB-GYN, breast surgery, urology and hernia procedures. Endoscopy, including colonoscopies, and chronic pain procedures accounted for the highest weekend volumes. From July 2025 through May 2026, Cleveland Clinic added more than 33,000 specialty appointments under the program, which also added evening hours during the week in addition to the Saturday expansion.
“Our patients were extremely excited about this,” Dr. Steele said. “They were extremely excited to have Saturday morning, Saturday evenings, and we also added evening hours during the week in the course of this initiative, in addition to what we were already providing.”
In January, the system expanded Saturday access at its main campus to include complex surgeries, among them complex robotic surgeries. The Cole Eye Institute on the system’s main campus is set to begin offering Saturday procedures beginning this month. On the east side of the metropolitan area, Marymount Hospital and Marymount Ambulatory Surgery Center are adding orthopedic elective outpatient procedures and surgery on Saturdays. Medina Hospital on the south side is doing the same.
Since launching Saturday surgery hours, Cleveland Clinic has performed nearly 1,600 weekend procedures, with endoscopies and chronic pain treatments accounting for the highest volumes.
One concern heading into the expansion was whether adding weekend surgical volume would simply shift Monday capacity pressure earlier without resolving it. Dr. Steele said that did not materialize.
“Our initial concern was about adding to capacity and throughput issues, that as we added on the weekend, that might be a time when some of the hospitals decompress and wait for Monday,” Dr. Steele said. “We found that with the right systems in place, that did not become an issue. So that initial hesitancy was proven not to be true.”
For other systems aiming to scale something similar, Dr. Steele recommends starting with service lines where demand is already visible, and to treat surgical expansion as a whole-patient issue.
“Begin with service lines where there’s growing demand,” he said. “I know this seems obvious, but at the end of the day, each one of us practices in a slightly different type of patient population where there are different demands.”
Getting there required building buy-in across a multidisciplinary team: nursing, operating teams, ambulatory operations, front desk staff, security and supply chain, all before the first Saturday case. For orthopedics, that meant physical therapy and occupational therapy on site, the right supplies available, and proper follow-up in place during hours when those services typically are not available.
“Without those wraparound services, it can’t be just the surgery alone,” Dr. Steele said. “You have to look at the entirety of the patient and the entire care that patient would need, and make sure those services are available during extended hours and weekends, just as they would during regular service during the week.”
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