Practice Management Alert

Question: Our practice is looking for a new medical office receptionist. What are some of the elements I should include in the job description?

Massachusetts Subscriber

Answer: The job description you decide on will obviously depend on the size and needs of your practice. Some offices are so big that the receptionist handles standard receptionist duties, such as greeting patients, answering the phone, scheduling, etc.

At some smaller practices, however, the receptionist might have more responsibilities. When you’ll expect your receptionist to perform duties outside of the traditional role — if the receptionist needs to do some light coding or billing, for example — you’d include that information in the job description.

According to monster.com, some of the general elements you should include in a medical office receptionist job description include:

• Ensuring patient satisfaction, and maximizing provider time, by scheduling appointments via phone or in person;
• Answering the patients’ questions, when she can;
• Maintaining the reception area; and
• Filing and retrieving patient records to give providers treatment information.

Also: As long as the current receptionist is still around, ask her about the job description and also refer to past job descriptions for the position, if any exist.

Medicalofficeabout.com also offers these tasks you might want to list in your job description for a medical office receptionist:

• Recording and updating financial information;
• Collecting payment from patients;
• Filing and collecting third-party claims;
• Maintaining office inventory and supplies;
• Scheduling repairs for affected equipment; and
• Keeping patients’ personal and financial information private.

More generally, these are the abilities medicaloffice.about.com thinks every medical office receptionist should be experienced in: multitasking; customer service; time management; attention to detail; typing skills; and professionalism.