Patient Registrar, Registration

Mercy Health System Corporation•Lake Geneva, WI

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Patient Registrar is responsible for engaging in positive interactions, providing helpful assistance, and managing patient registration processes. This role involves anticipating and responding to patient needs, staying calm under pressure, and dealing effectively with difficult situations. The Patient Registrar participates in team building, continuous quality improvement, and educational activities. They provide shadowing and training to new partners, use good judgment in emotional situations, and are responsible for patient arrival and check-in for various hospital services including the ER, Urgent Care, surgical admissions, and outpatient visits. A key aspect of the role is accurately identifying patients using electronic medical records to prevent errors, entering patient complaints and symptoms, and generating necessary patient identification materials like armbands and labels. The position also involves gathering demographic and billing information, verifying insurance, assisting patients without insurance with financial counselors, collecting payments, and coordinating patient flow. Additionally, the Patient Registrar performs pre-admission and pre-registration functions, secures patient valuables, assists staff during system downtime or disasters, manages a cash drawer, resolves registration errors, assesses interpreter needs, handles telephone inquiries, monitors security systems, and utilizes service recovery skills. Flexibility, reliability, and efficient time management are crucial due to frequent changes in duties and work volume across multiple locations. The role requires a friendly, approachable, professional demeanor and appearance, and involves tasks such as completing travel screening questionnaires, tracking visitors, providing directions, and escorting patients. Teamwork, clear communication with leadership and partners, and adherence to healthcare regulations are essential. Light cleaning duties and completion of assigned educational courses are also part of the role. The position may require working alternate shifts, weekends, and overtime.

Requirements

Graduate of high school or equivalent preferred
One to two years customer service experience required
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 preferred
Medical terminology preferred
EPIC knowledge preferred but not required

Responsibilities

Engages in positive interactions, demonstrating friendliness by smiling and making eye contact when greeting all patients, visitors, and customers.
Provides helpful assistance in anticipating and responding to the needs of patients, visitors, and customers, and stays 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 patients to the ER and Urgent Care.
Signs in or checks 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 the correct electronic medical record, thus reducing the chance for privacy, medical, or duplicate medical record errors.
Enters patient’s complaints/symptoms and them in the appropriate order based on severity of symptoms, also 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 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-pays, 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 the 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. Additionally 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 the 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 the leadership team, charge nurse, physician, and partners.
Uses excellent judgment to notify the leadership team of all unusual occurrences 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 of 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.