Patient Access - Intake Specialist - Emergency Department

Patient Access - Intake Specialist - Emergency Department

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UNC Health Nash, an affiliated member of the UNC Health system, invites passionate healthcare professionals to join our esteemed team. Governed locally, we proudly serve a diverse patient base, spanning Nash, Edgecombe, Halifax, Wilson Counties, and beyond. With a steadfast commitment to elevating community health through exceptional care, we prioritize excellence, compassion, and innovation, ensuring every individual receives the highest standard of support. Joining our team means becoming an integral part of our dedication to wellness, where we constantly strive to redefine excellence in healthcare through state-of-the-art facilities and pioneering programs. Join us in this transformative journey, where your contributions will make a lasting impact on our community's health and wellbeing.

Summary: The Patient Access Intake Specialist is responsible in ensuring that patient access processing is performed in accordance with procedure and documented in a timely and accurate manner for Emergency, Observation, Inpatient, and Outpatient patient classes. This performance must meet the departmental/organizational driven outcome targets to continue the revenue flow cycle of clean claims and point of service cash collections. These functions includes, but not limited to, patient identification, department-based arriving, admitting, or check-in procedures, scheduling, pre-registration, registration, insurance verification, authorization, pre-notification, and financially securing accounts while complying to the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTLA).

Responsibilities:

• Patient Access Prerequisites
  • Ensures and verifies key registration information, performing insurance verification, obtaining/verifying accurately patient and guarantor demographics, initialing MyChart, etc., department-based arrival, admitting, or check-in procedures, pre-notifications and/or authorizations, financial securing accounts while complying with EMTLA guidelines, and billing accuracy.
  • Able to identify the components of a complete outpatient physician order, referral, or posting sheet to ensure appropriate scheduling, financially securing the account according to medical necessity, and the registration of the patient to the service(s) and reason(s) specified according to the provider's request.
  • Utilizes the system's work queues; to appropriately drive daily workflow for securing accounts, fortifying compliance of governmental, regulatory, financial, and contractual forms specified to the patient's hospital status, resolving registration based claim edits and making registration corrections to such accounts.
  • Use proper procedure identifying the patient from the master patient index (MPI) using more than two patient identifiers and when placing armband on the patient, without delay of care.
• Point of Service (POS) Collection Products, Services, and Securities
  • Utilizes price estimation tool, as part of the registration process to provide the most accurate estimate to patients.
  • Accurate and timely processing of all methods of acceptable payments such as cash/check/money order/credit card transactions. Including, reconciling daily cash drawer, depositing daily cash/check and providing patients with cash receipts, and maintaining daily reports as required. Meets departmental targets for up front collections to include deposits, estimated amounts due, co-pays, and/or prior balances.
• Data Accuracy
  • Accurately identifies and armbanding all patients without delaying care and able to determine and implement if necessary, the unidentified patient protocol appropriately.
  • Captures and enters appropriate and accurate documentation of patient registration and demographic information in the hospital billing system (EPIC) to maximize billing accuracy.
• Communicates with Patients and Families
  • Provides patients with appropriate administrative information, as directed. Promoting engagement with patients and family members to prevent loss of integrity and core values that represent the organization.
  • Identifies the needs of the patient population served, and modifies/delivers care that is specific to those needs (i.e., age, culture, language, hearing and/or visually impaired, etc.). This process includes communicating with the patient, parent, and/or primary caregiver(s) at their level (developmental/age, educational, literacy, etc.)
• Auditing
  • Actively participates in departmental QA by utilizing system work queues, making a personal effort to reduce individual errors, and making corrections, and utilizes system work queues as a daily part of the registration process to minimize errors.
• Maintains Regulatory Compliance Documents
  • Completes and documents all governmental, regulatory, financial, and contractual forms in accordance to procedure, while ensuring documents are scanned/saved to correct location and is legible.
• Issue Resolution
  • Attempts to mediate daily registration-based issues and elevates any issues that cannot be resolved independently.
• Other Duties as Assigned
  • Complies with all procedural workflows and departmental policies and procedures as identified.
  • Assumes other responsibilities as directed by Leadership.

Education Requirements:

• High School Diploma or GED
• Associates or Bachelor's Degree in Arts/Business. Course work in medical terminology or medical insurance preferred.

Licensure/Certification Requirements

• None

Professional Experience Requirements:

• 2 years of experience in Healthcare/Medical-Admissions. Patient financial services experience in a professional or healthcare setting.
• 2 5 years of prior experience in hospital operations management and/or revenue cycle preferred.