Patient Registrar

Mercyhealth Wisconsin and Illinois•Janesville, WI

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Patient Registrar is responsible for positive patient, visitor, and customer interactions, providing helpful assistance, and maintaining composure in demanding situations. Key duties include arriving patients to the ER and Urgent Care, checking in hospital outpatient visits, identifying patients needing immediate care, and admitting surgical and direct admit patients. The role involves scheduling lab patients, accurately identifying patients to prevent errors, entering patient complaints and symptoms, and generating patient identification materials. The registrar gathers and enters demographic, guarantor, and billing information, obtains necessary signatures, verifies and updates insurance, and identifies out-of-network or uninsured patients, coordinating with financial counselors as needed. They collect applicable co-pays and pre-payments, assist with patient unit coordination, provide timely updates, and support other departments and EMS agencies. Additional responsibilities include performing pre-admission and pre-registration functions, securing patient valuables, assisting during system downtimes, providing transportation assistance, managing and balancing cash drawers, and resolving registration errors. The role also involves assessing interpreter needs, handling telephone inquiries, monitoring security systems, addressing questions, and utilizing service recovery skills. The Patient Registrar must be flexible to adapt to changing duties and work volume across multiple locations, manage their schedule efficiently, and maintain a professional demeanor. They complete travel screening questionnaires, track visitors, provide directions, demonstrate teamwork, communicate effectively with leadership and partners, use resources efficiently, follow healthcare regulations, and perform light cleaning of registration areas. The position may require working alternate shifts, weekends, and overtime during peak periods.

Requirements

Graduate of high school or equivalent
One to two years customer service experience
Knowledge of computer systems, to include navigation, typing, and data entry
Detail oriented
Strong oral and written communication skills
Excellent problem solving, conflict management, time management and stress management skills in highly emotional and demanding situations
Ability to use good judgment and utilize independent decision-making skills
Able to work independently, as well as collaborate in a team environment
Interpersonal skills to interact with patients to obtain needed information to communicate to partners and providers

Nice To Haves

Knowledge of third-party payors
Medical terminology
EPIC knowledge

Responsibilities

Engages in positive interactions; demonstrate friendliness by smiling and making eye contact when greeting all patients, visitors and customers
Provide helpful assistance in anticipating and responding to the needs of our patients, visitors and customers and staying calm under pressure to deal effectively with difficult people
Participates in team building activities, continuous quality improvement activities and educational experiences in support of departmental or Mercyhealth initiatives
Provides shadowing and training to new partners
Uses good judgment in highly emotional and demanding situations
Arrives patient to the ER and Urgent Care
Signs in or checking in hospital outpatient visits
Identifies patients in need of immediate care by visual assessment at time of registration, prioritizes patient registration by severity of complaint, and monitors waiting area for changing patient conditions and alerts triage RN to the need to re-evaluate patients
Admits all surgical and direct admit patients
Schedules and checks in hospital outpatient lab patients
Identifies and selects patients using department required patient identifiers to select correct electronic medical record
Enters patient’s complaints/symptoms and them in the appropriate order based on severity of symptoms
Completing all other required arrival information with the electronic medical record
Generates patient arm band, face sheet, and patient labels
Verifies information before quickly applying patient armband during traumas or other chaotic situations
Gathers and enters into EPIC all necessary demographic, guarantors, and billing information from patients/family
Obtains necessary signatures and documents for inpatient and outpatient registrations
Verifies patient insurance information and updates insurance information as appropriate
Identifies patients in the ER that have an out of network insurance and provides this information to the appropriate ED partners
Completes our out of network paperwork and adds an account note documenting conversation with staff and that paperwork was completed
Identifies patients without insurance and works closely with patient financial counselors to help facilitate self-pay services for patients without insurance
Identifies appropriate primary/secondary payees
Completes MSPQ as required for Medicare patients
Collects all applicable co-pay’s, self-pay payments, and in some cases pre-payment for services
Assists with coordination of patients into the appropriate unit
Provides accurate information and timely updates to patients, visitors, and customers
Assists other departments at various hospital locations to notify when patients have arrived
Assists outside EMS/EMT agencies to arrive patients to the facility and provide paperwork for billing purposes
Performs Pre-admission functions for patients
Performs Pre-registration functions for patients
Upon admission provides patients with admission information such as the VIP Folder as needed
Obtains signatures for Medicare forms as required for admission within required timeframe
Properly secures and returns all patient valuables in accordance with Mercyhealth policy
Assists hospital staff to facilitate patient care during periods of EPIC Downtime or during disaster mode
Assists nursing staff to provide transportation vouchers and payment for transportation services for patients
Maintains an accurate cash drawer
Closes and balances cash drawer at the end of each shift in compliance with our cash handling policy
Manages work queues to resolve registration errors thus allowing patient bills to process in a timely manner
Assesses and determines situations requiring an interpreter and when to use interpreter services effectively
Logs in, answers, returns, and transfers all incoming telephone inquiries
Makes outbound calls as needed
Monitors security cameras and door entry systems in a polite manner and communicates information to the appropriate staff, patient or visitor
Addresses questions or concerns promptly or identifies appropriate resource to do so
Uses effective service recovery skills to solve problems or service breakdowns when they occur
Remains flexible and reliable to react to frequent changes in duties and volume of work to meet the needs of our many locations and patients
Manages work schedule efficiently to ensure all tasks and assignments are completed on time
Presents a friendly, approachable, professional demeanor and appearance
Completes travel screening questionnaire for every patient, visitor and customer that enters the facility
Tracks patient's visitors as needed and appropriate based on current hospital guidelines
Provides directions, helps or escorts patients/visitors to the correct area
Demonstrates teamwork by helping co-workers in and across departments
Communicates appropriately, clearly, and timely to leadership team, charge nurse, physician and partners
Uses excellent judgment to notify leadership team of all unusual occurrence or situations requiring leadership team attention or action
Uses organizational and departmental resources efficiently
Follows local, state, and federal healthcare regulations
Performs light duty cleaning or registration, lobby and waiting room areas
Completes all required educational courses as assigned by leadership
May be required to work alternate shifts, weekends, and overtime during peak periods
Performs other duties as assigned