Administrative Assistant - Patient Advocate- Richmond Community Hospital

Bon Secours Mercy Health • Richmond, VA

22h • $22 - $33 • Onsite

About The Position

The Patient Advocate / Administrative Assistant serves as the hospital’s patient advocate and is responsible for bridging the communication gap between patients and medical staff, resolving formal complaints, and protecting patient rights to ensure a safe and transparent healthcare experience. This role combines patient advocacy responsibilities with administrative office support to also ensure optimal office operations are delivered with professionalism and service excellence. The individual in this position assists patients in navigating healthcare services, resolving concerns, coordinating appointments, maintaining records, and supporting daily administrative activities.

Requirements

• High School degree required
• Minimum of (1) year of experience in patient services, customer service, or healthcare office settings.
• Requires experience assessing and solving problems with diverse groups of internal and external callers and visitors.
• Requires experience in utilization of skills specifically related to conflict management.
• Previous work experience required in an administrative/secretarial capacity that requires the handling of administrative details such as preparing reports by combining confidential data from several sources.

Nice To Haves

• Associates or bachelor’s degree in business administration, Communications, Social Work, or related field preferred
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office, Teams, and outlook preferred, along with the ability to utilize additional software programs as implemented, proofread reports, oversee maintenance record keeping and filing systems.

Responsibilities

• Receives concerns and inquiries from patients, their families, visitors, hospital staff and physicians.
• Follow all regulatory and internal processes to ensure the best experience and/or service recovery.
• Refers unresolved or formal patient complaints to the appropriate internal points of contact such as administration, risk management, department manager, quality, pastoral care, physicians for awareness, input or their response as needed.
• Follows up to ensure that responses to concerns are shared with the appropriate leadership.
• Gives appropriate feedback to the person who reported the concern.
• Ensures that all documentation of concerns is added to documentation software in a timely manner using professional, unbiased language.
• Ensures that written communication and documentation is professional in appearance and grammatically correct
• Assist patients in understanding their rights and responsibilities through discussion of written information including, but not limited to, the Patients’ Rights and Responsibilities statement.
• Establishes and utilizes the concern monitoring system to understand trends and system problems and makes appropriate recommendations for improvement as a result of these findings.
• Maintains confidentiality as defined by hospital policy.
• Participates with interdepartmental teams to reduce patient concerns across department lines.
• Makes daily rounds of inpatient and outpatient areas, as assigned, talk with patients, families, and staff in resolution of immediate concerns and create an atmosphere of caring.
• Recommends policy and procedure changes to improve quality of care for patients, families, and visitors.
• Serves as a resource person to hospital committees as requested.
• Report all known/observed incidents/occurrences to the appropriate supervisor to assure that an occurrence report is completed.
• Demonstrates and promotes Service Excellence in all interactions with volunteers, staff, patients and patients’ families.
• Provides training, scheduling and counseling of Patient Advocate volunteers.
• Prepare correspondence, reports, presentations, meeting agendas, and meeting minutes.
• Coordinate departmental meetings, committee meetings, and leadership calendars.
• Schedule appointments, conferences, educational sessions, and special events.
• Maintain confidential files, records, and departmental databases.
• Compile, analyze, and prepare patient experience metrics, departmental reports, and quality dashboards.
• Proofread and edit reports, policies, presentations, and communications for accuracy and professionalism.
• Assist with department budgeting, purchasing requests, invoices, and expense tracking as assigned.
• Coordinate volunteer schedules, onboarding documentation, and educational materials for Patient Advocate volunteers.
• Manage incoming telephone calls, visitors, email correspondence, and departmental communications.
• Organize and maintain electronic and paper filing systems.
• Assist leadership with special projects, accreditation preparation, regulatory surveys, and performance improvement initiatives
• Assumes and completes other projects/requests assigned by the Director of Outpatient Infusion Center
• Accepts other duties as assigned by the Director of Outpatient Infusion Center

Benefits

• Competitive pay, incentives, referral bonuses and 403(b) with employer contributions (when eligible)
• Medical, dental, vision, prescription coverage, HSA/FSA options, life insurances, mental health resources and discounts
• Paid time off, parental and FMLA leave, short- and long-term disability, backup care for children and elders
• Tuition assistance, professional development and continuing education support

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: High school or GED