Referral Coordinator - Patient Engagement Center

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About Duke Primary Care

Pursue your passion for caring with Duke Primary Care, which offers family, adolescent, and internal medicine services as well as urgent, general pediatric, and virtual care at nearly 50 clinic locations across central North Carolina.

Referral Coordinator - Duke Primary Care

Work Schedule: Monday through Friday 8am-5pm

Address: Patient Engagement Center - 14 Moore Drive, Durham, NC 27713

General Description of the Job Class

• The Referral Coordinator provides comprehensive scheduling experience to meet the various needs of patients and referring providers within a centralized engagement center.
• The Referral Coordinator performs various appointment and access-related duties for clinic(s) to include scheduling appointments from a referral, following up on referrals faxed externally, and closing the loop on all reconcilable referrals placed.
• The Referral Coordinator remains current on providers, service locations, and insurance payers, while providing the highest levels of service excellence to each patient.

Duties and Responsibilities of this Level

• Provide accurate information to patients regarding various services, providers, and locations available within the Duke University Health System and the surrounding community.
• Actively identify, listen, and understand the needs of each patient. Ask thoughtful questions to determine the appropriate resources or actions to be taken.
• Provide referral and radiology support within designated pod as assigned for PTO coverage and other clinics as needed.
• Monitor voicemail of assigned clinic(s).
• Assist in scheduling for more than 30 specialty departments.
• Utilize 31 different decision trees to schedule patients within the Duke University Health System.
• Utilize referral standard work documents and resources and performs work within established standards at all times.
• Make judgements guided by standard work on how to prioritize patients and complete tasks.
• Obtain authorizations and assist in covering 7 authorization work queues.
• Handle 2-4 clinic assignments daily including referral and radiology work queues and authorizations for each assigned clinic.
• Serve as trainer for all new referral coordinators to include training on referral standard work and referral authorization process.

Patient Scheduling

• Identify patients using 2 identifiers in accordance with compliance guidelines.
• Schedule appointment from the referral using scheduling guidelines and questionnaires in order to determine the appropriate provider, location, and visit type.
• Maintain knowledge and resources to schedule patients outside of Duke as appropriate.
• Ability to answer questions from patients and ordering providers on where to send referrals for quickest access, closest geographic location, as well as specific insurance requirements.
• Provide patient with appropriate directions and pre-visit appointment information.
• Identify and document special needs; schedule interpreters as needed.
• Review assigned work queues and prioritize by emergency, urgent, and routine referrals ensuring all referrals are worked within 48 hours.
• Use all available resources to contact the patient, including phone numbers and MyChart, while following compliance guidelines.
• Perform registration, front desk coverage, scanning, and other related duties incidental to the work described herein as assigned by clinic leadership.

Improvement Initiatives

• Maintain liaison with other offices and departments to coordinate referrals, foster collaboration, leverage resources, and help to accomplish program objectives.
• Contribute to program effectiveness by communicating trends and recommending modifications to current workflows.
• Proactively communicate issues to Referral Manager as it relates to access and decision trees.
• Actively participate in continuous improvement processes and practice level improvement projects.
• Complete time studies to conduct preliminary analysis of trends as assigned by Referral Manager.
• Actively participate and engage in network level process improvement projects.

Required Qualifications at this Level

Education

• A high school diploma or equivalency, is required.
• College or completion of post-secondary education is strongly preferred.

Experience

• Minimum of 1 year of health care related experience. An associate degree or higher may substitute for the experience requirement.
• Strongly Preferred for Referral Coordinator:
• Two years of health care related experience
• Active user of electronic medical records (EMR) software
• Experience with obtaining insurance authorizations
• Comprehensive knowledge of primary care referral protocol
• Familiar with process-improvement methods (PDSA, A3, 5S)
• Comfortable training peers

Degrees, Licensure, and/or Certification

• N/A

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Ability to professionally communicate both verbally and in writing with patients, providers, internal specialty departments, and clinics in the surrounding community.
• Exceed patient experience expectations.
• Meet or exceed daily productivity goals as set forth by department.
• Demonstrate Duke's values and behaviors in every interaction.
• Consistently use "Words that Work" and "RELATE" in all daily interactions.
• Comply with all regulatory and compliance policies and procedures.
• Strong ability to handle complex workflows utilizing critical thinking skills.
• Autonomous problem-solving and decision- making as it relates to referrals, patient appointment and scheduling support, and other duties as assigned by clinic leadership.
• Accurate typing and data entry skills.
• Excellent customer service and communication skills.
• Knowledge of HIPAA requirements regarding patient confidentiality.

Distinguishing Characteristics of this Level

• N/A

Duke is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to providing employment opportunity without regard to an individual's age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy related conditions), sexual orientation or military status.

Duke aspires to create a community built on collaboration, innovation, creativity, and belonging. Our collective success depends on the robust exchange of ideas - an exchange that is best when the rich diversity of our perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences flourishes. To achieve this exchange, it is essential that all members of the community feel secure and welcome, that the contributions of all individuals are respected, and that all voices are heard. All members of our community have a responsibility to uphold these values.

Essential Physical Job Functions:

Certain jobs at Duke University and Duke University Health System may include essential job functions that require specific physical and/or mental abilities. Additional information and provision for requests for reasonable accommodation will be provided by each hiring department.