Are you a doctor’s office or hospital patient access rep? Maybe you are called something else by your employer such as a Medical Office Clerk or Insurance Clerk or maybe even an Admission Clerk or Registrar. Whatever the title we all do about the same thing. We collect demographic and insurance information about patients and input them into some kind of software program. Some of us do more than that such as post charges, collect co-pays and coinsurance amounts from patients and some of us even bill insurance companies or follow-up with the patient’s insurance to get them to pay the claims that have been billed to them. A few will even have to call the insurance companies to get pre-certification for a procedure. Whatever your duties are you need to know that you are “The Face of a Medical Practice” . And by that I mean you will generally be the first and possibly the last person that patient sees when getting medical services. You will set the tone of the visit for the patient and you could actually get a patient to return for future services or end up losing that patient for the clinic or hospital if you do not do your job correctly.

Most of us do not have specific training in our field. There is no college courses for our particular specialty. There are so vocational courses that can be taken and we will post another article on that soon enough. You can even take a certification exam as discussed in the CHAA Exam posting previously. Mostly, we are taught how to do our jobs by someone already doing the job. On-the-job training is the best way to learn how to do a new job, if you have the right trainer. So much depends on the trainer actually have the done the job, done it well and be willing to impart that knowledge to the trainee. But you must also be willing to learn some stuff on your own as well. To that end I would like to suggest, again, that you find and bookmark websites that give you updated information on insurances, medical regulations that affect patient access reps and possibly find a local source such as a state agency that keeps up on the current trends in our area of expertise. To start click on some of our links and bookmark them. Read through the materials on each and check back on them about once a month or so to see if anything new has been posted. We would even suggest that if they offer a newsletter or updating email service that you sign up for that as well.

Remember, learning some new everyday should be your motto or mantra!