About This Role
Caring for patients and supporting providers in an Otolaryngology setting is the core of this secretarial role. The Clinical Secretary manages referrals, schedules appointments, and handles patient communications, ensuring smooth operations and patient satisfaction.
Responsibilities
- Respond to patient calls providing general information and education
- Greet patients arriving for appointments, provide appropriate questionnaires, answer questions, and assist patients with form completion and technology use
- Acknowledge any delays and keep patients updated
- Assess needs of patients without appointments and process requests for prescriptions, forms, appointments, or direct communication with clinical support
- Review schedules daily for accuracy in scheduling, needed ancillaries, and incoming records, making adjustments as needed
- Review wait lists, manage multiple e-DH worklists, and reschedule patients to assure schedules are fully booked and patient needs are met
- Complete any follow-up needs for patients as directed by the After Visit Summary (e.g., booking appointments, scheduling lab and radiology exams, or arranging for external procedures)
- Receive incoming phone calls from providers, other staff, external provider offices, and patients
- Appropriately assess caller needs and process requests, take messages, schedule appointments, or transfer calls
- Monitor and complete system messages in a timely manner to meet patient needs
- Monitor incoming faxes regularly and review each to determine the proper course of action in a timely manner
- Complete Authorizations and Pre-Certifications for all external and stat procedures to ensure timely patient services and insurance notification
- Review all provider schedules at the end of the day to identify and contact patients requiring follow-up and process letters to no-shows in accordance with current policy
- Support providers and staff in addressing patient questions/concerns
- Provide instruction/support to providers and staff on communicating with patients regarding these questions or concerns
- Monitor the waiting room for patients in distress and seek assistance when needed
- Respond to minor patient concerns and complaints using service recovery tactics
- Report all concerns and complaints to supervisor/manager
- Manage multiple in-baskets by monitoring, prioritizing, and properly routing messages
- Complete tasks as assigned by providers or clinical staff
- Act as liaison between primary care physicians and specialists outside D-H
- Monitor referral work queues for internal and external referrals
- Process new referrals according to established procedures and track queue status to ensure referrals are completed
