Medical Office Coordinator

The Department of Neurosurgery is seeking a Medical Office Coordinator to coordinate the day-to-day activities of a multi-faceted complex surgical practice to ensure a smoothly functioning office and good patient relations. Serve as resource in team environment. Address patient problems, third party issues and patient-related situations based on past experiences, and resolve issues independently. As appropriate, refer patients to other resources. Adapt to changes in technology and software to ensure efficient office practice. Provide administrative support for medical matters on behalf of physicians, as well as general academic/general administrative support. Provide administrative support for medical matters on behalf of physicians, as well as general academic/general administrative support including coordination of visiting medical students.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

Administrative Duties

• Assistance maintaining a case log with all the surgeries performed by the surgeon.
• Prepares correspondence, schedules meetings, constructs minutes, and maintains professional calendar, including meetings, medical courses, and conferences.
• Assistance writing or reviewing academic and medical letters.
• Coordinating shadowing of visiting medical students or other rotating students.
• Provide administrative support for medical matters on behalf of physicians.
• Answer in-coming call from patients and provide information to patients, as appropriate
• Routinely check voice mail and return calls to patients within 24 hours.
• Coordinate with patient and/or referring physician to obtain outside medical records. Ensure that all relevant outside medical records are received and scanned into Epic in advance of clinic. Ensuring that physician gets medical records in advance per protocol as appropriate.
• Refer patient to appropriate resources/clinical areas.
• Send out letters and post op information to referring physicians, if needed.
• Send out confirmation letters to patients when appointment is scheduled in less than 2-week timeframe as needed.
• Receive from physician completed and signed forms requested by the patient such as: Disability, Family Medical Leave, Workers Compensation, Medical Assistance Application, MVA, etc. All completed forms should be scanned into EPIC and send original to the patients for their records.
• Review clinic schedules and make adjustment as appropriate.
• Other activity processed in EPIC.
• Enter patient phone messages and route to physician.
• Print and send patient letters as necessary.
• Document inbound/outbound phone messages to patients.
• Send orders based on defined “Practice Preferences.”
• In-basket – Check messages daily and respond as directed by department policy.
• Reinforce information for office visits (e.g. scheduled dates of service, information to bring to the visit, driving instructions, where to park, etc.

Medical Administrative Support

• Professionally and efficiently handle incoming requests from patients and ensure that issues are resolved both promptly and thoroughly.
• Gather patient information, fulfill patient needs, educate patients, where applicable, to prevent the need for future contacts and document interactions in applicable systems.
• Provide quality service and support in a variety of areas which may include, but not limited to scheduling, registration and care coordination.
• Serve as a resource for other Medical Office Coordinators and other administrative support staff in the department. Assist in training new staff, and may serve as a super user for new systems.
• Talk to prospective patients and/or family members to determine appropriate health care provider for patient(s). Advanced discussion includes: if provider is appropriate specialist, or if someone else may be more appropriate based on area of specialization, timeframe to get an appointment, insurance coverage, and geographic location. Offer effective alternatives to patient when appropriate.
• Routinely addresses complex situations based on past experiences, and knowledge and understanding of healthcare resources and how they should be used. Examples may include working with complex patients, work with international patients, and unique scheduling situations. This includes last minute schedule and clinic changes when emergent situations arise. Provider may be on call and emergent operative cases may arise requiring quick response including changing clinic appointment times or in person to virtual visits.
• Attend in person clinic and coordinate care with the other clinical team members.
• Coordinate all pieces of complex patient visits pre and post op. This includes scheduling all preliminary exams, imaging studies, and other tests in a timely fashion, and then gathering results for physician review. Coordinate patient visits within specialty program that requires more complex coordination of care across departments and/or multiple locations, departments, institutions and/or entity lines of service, and multiple systems.
• Gather information to send RX request and route to physician.
• Assist as needed with insurance authorizations for non-formulary medications.
• Work with surgical scheduling coordinator to post all OR cases.
• Verify that the posting sheet is completed and signed by the surgeon and scanned within EPIC.
• Coordinate with other physicians and their offices when multiple surgeons required.
• Send out surgical packet to patient with pre-op instructions.
• Verify all documents are received and scanned appropriately into EPIC prior to date of surgery.
• If applicable, prepare to support clinic activities from home in case of JHU closure (install virtual desktop and keep electronic reference lists as needed, and make sure you have cell or home phone numbers for physicians, supervisors, and clinic manager). 

Patient Scheduling

• Schedule new and follow-up clinic appointments and assist in canceling and rescheduling of clinics for providers who have a non-scheduler as their MOC.
• Collect and answer more complex questions with accuracy and provide up to date insurance information found on Johns Hopkins Managed Care website, and complete registration in EPIC.
• Answer more complex questions from patients about billing and refer to JHU Physician Billing Services and/or JHH Patient Financial Services.
• Support the physician with insurance preauthorization and single case agreement processes by submitting necessary clinical information as instructed by the physician.
• Coordinate follow-up office visits by providing information about treatment, and testing locations.
• Schedule lab tests and other procedures, and/or coordinates with other areas to complete scheduling process.
• When physician’s clinic is cancelled, call patient to re-schedule physician and/or testing appointments pertaining to that visit.
• If requested by physician, complete courtesy calls to patients to remind them of appointment arrival times and answer questions about location, parking, what to bring, etc.
• All information entered into EPIC will be subject to evaluation, quality controls and performance management standards.
• Act as a liaison for patient, coordinating future consultations, diagnostics tests, or procedures.
• Determine appropriate schedule for clinical appointments based on physician schedule and does three-way call to hand off patient to call center.

Academic/General Administrative Support

• As necessary.
• Provide general administrative support to one or more physicians.
• Answer office phone, schedule meetings/maintains calendar for physicians, make travel arrangements, maintains filing system (copy or scan as indicated).
• Assist with preparation of correspondence, reports, posters, and related documents.
• Compiles information for reports, grant applications, manuscripts, etc.
• Orders stock and maintains office supplies.
• May coordinate large meetings and/or seminars (e.g., arrange logistics for speakers, meeting space, refreshments, invitations).
• May assist with preparation of sponsored project material.
• Process reimbursements per department protocol as applicable.

• High School Diploma or graduation equivalent.
• Two years administrative experience.
• Additional education may substitute for experience to the extent permitted by the JHU equivalency formula.

Classified Title: Medical Office Coordinator 
Role/Level/Range: ATO 40/E/02/OD  
Starting Salary Range: $16.20 - $28.80 HRLY (Commensurate with experience) 
Employee group: Full Time 
Schedule: M-F 8:30-5 
Exempt Status: Non-Exempt 
Location: School of Medicine Campus 
Department name: SOM Neuro Sur Vascular  
Personnel area: School of Medicine