Patient Access Representative, Per Diem, Scheduling

About the role

When you join the growing BILH team, you're not just taking a job, you’re making a difference in people’s lives. Working in Patient Access and as a member of the Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH) System Services team, you can have a career that allows you to grow and advance while making a difference in people’s lives. We use a coordinated approach to delivering administrative and operational services across our entire healthcare system. By leveraging resources across the organization, we're able to provide high-quality, high-value care to the patients and the communities we proudly serve.

Responsibilities

• Registers patients presenting for visits.
• Explains the registration process to patients and responds to patient questions.
• Processes patient co-payments, co-insurance, deductibles, and balances due.
• Safeguards cash, checks and receipts and reconciles cash drawer at the end of each business day.
• Affords assistance with Kiosk check-in as needed.
• Completes the Medicare Secondary Payer Questionnaire for each patient and adjusts patient coverage based on results.
• Instructs patients and obtains signatures on consent forms, financial forms, and other documents required by the clinical department; distributes documents to patients; scans, processes, and records receipt of all documents collected during registration encounter.
• Counsels patients regarding non-covered services, obtaining signatures on Advance Notice Beneficiaries (ABNs), consents and waivers.
• Maintains a smooth, efficient registration flow by monitoring patient waiting area.
• Advises patients of potential delays and takes steps to ensure a pleasant patient experience.
• Responds to patient concerns and potential patient safety issues accordingly.
• Recognizes health conditions that are a possible risk to others and adheres to appropriate established procedures to help contain risk.
• Safeguards a neat, orderly registration desk and patient waiting area, securing all confidential patient information.
• Schedules patient appointments by prioritizing and accessing a variety of sources, including patient phone calls and digital messaging, orders, scheduled order work queues.
• Utilizes a variety of information sources to schedule, reschedule, and cancel patient appointments.
• Establishes working relationships with staff of assigned clinical departments.
• Understands and correctly applies unique clinical department scheduling protocols.
• Remains current on scheduling protocols and applies judgment, or seeks management assistance, to ensure safe patient care when clinical department scheduling protocols do not meet patient needs.
• Ensures all required key patient scheduling and registration information is captured and verified.
• Identifies and communicates to Patient Access management issues that may impact the timeliness and accuracy of patient appointments and subsequent patient care.
• Strictly follows confidentiality and equipment security and safeguarding guidelines when working in a remote setting.
• Maintains productivity, quality, and accuracy levels and communicates regularly with the Supervisor and Manager.
• Efficiently registers patients, capturing and verifying all required information in order to identify the patient, contact the patient, and receive proper reimbursement for services on initial claim submission.
• Ascertains, creates, and assigns the guarantor for each patient, including personal/family relations, workers compensation insurance, third parties, behavioral health, or others as required.
• Identifies records and verifies patient insurance coverage using real-time eligibility (RTE); reviews the insurer’s response to each verification request and takes appropriate action based on this response.
• Applies the appropriate guarantor and insurance to each patient visit.
• Communicates financial clearance status to patients.
• Advises patients of contract status, self-pay status, and payment responsibility and schedules patients with Financial Counseling as needed.

Qualifications

• Education: High school degree or equivalent. Associate’s degree preferred.
• Experience: 1-3 years related work experience. Experience with computer systems required, including web-based applications and some Microsoft Office applications which may include Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Access.
• Skills, Knowledge & Abilities: Able to work successfully in a fast-paced, multi-task environment, where some independent decision-making is necessary. Able to process electronic information and data accurately and efficiently.

Preferred Qualifications & Skills

• Call Center and/or telephone customer service experience.
• Strong typing skills 40+wpm.
• Knowledge of medical terminology.
• Bilingual written and verbal communication skills.
• Familiar with EHR Software.