PATIENT REGISTRATION SPEC

Covenant Health•Morristown, TN

About The Position

The Patient Registration Specialist coordinates centralized scheduling for outpatient diagnostic and surgical procedures and collects and enters the financial and demographic information required for patient registration. The role verifies insurance benefits and pre-certification requirements before scheduled appointments or admissions, follows up on urgent or unscheduled registrations, and helps ensure patients understand their financial liability. The position also supports inpatient and observation admissions, maintains registration and scheduling documentation, and communicates with patients, clinical departments, payers, and other staff.

Requirements

At least one year of experience in a hospital or financial setting, or at least three years of total customer-facing or customer-service experience.
Knowledge, skills, and abilities sufficient to perform the essential job tasks; these may be demonstrated through a combination of formal education and/or prior work experience, typically equivalent to a high school diploma or GED.
Maintain patient confidentiality.
Licensure is not required.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in a directly related field from an accredited college or university.

Responsibilities

Collect co-payments and deposits based on verification information, issue receipts, and deliver cash transactions to the cashier for posting.
Maintain the confidentiality of patient information.
Recommend updates to policies and procedures to improve efficiency and data integrity.
Promptly notify the Financial Counselor when scheduling or registering potential self-pay patients, workers’ compensation patients, or patients having non-covered procedures.
Make patient-type changes based on information from Medical Records Staff or Care Coordinators, ensuring supporting documentation is in the medical record.
Document reservations properly to support departmental statistics.
Schedule operative and diagnostic procedures using the HBOC scheduling system, document details, and notify departments of special resource needs.
Verify insurance benefits, obtain pre-certifications from third-party payers, and provide documentation to DHS and Med Assist staff for patients who may need financial assistance or TennCare enrollment.
Gather and enter demographic, medical, and financial information for scheduling, registration, and account verification; enter verification and pre-certification notes.
Work with clinical and care management areas to identify opportunities to improve collections and cash flow.
Analyze claims denial data to identify opportunities to improve collections, payer and physician-practice relations, and workflows.
Report relevant procedural changes and updates to appropriate leadership.
Keep current with regulatory and insurance requirements and incorporate changes into daily work.
Handle registration professionally and maintain a registration accuracy rate of 95 to 100 percent.
Explain information to patients or family members, including treatment consent, advance directives, medical and financial releases, deposits, billing and payment policies, and advance beneficiary notices.
Direct or escort patients, or provide wheelchair assistance, to the appropriate nursing unit or diagnostic testing area after registration.
Complete preregistration by phone and mail, advising patients of co-payments or deductibles due upon admission.
Maintain the bed board using the computerized bed-tracking system to help minimize admitted-patient wait times.
Coordinate inpatient and observation admissions with Nursing Services.
Use patient registration and scheduling systems, including DeRoyal, HBOC, Account Link, and Medifax.
Update schedules daily for unexpected procedures, cancellations, and changes, and communicate revisions to affected individuals.
Cross-train in scheduling, registration, verification, and pre-certification duties.
Prepare patient account folders by scanning and indexing registration, scheduling, and verification documents into the correct electronic folders using the optical imaging system.
Use hospital equipment and supplies appropriately.
Activate manual procedures during computer-network downtime, print schedules in advance when necessary, and notify leadership of unscheduled downtime.
Coordinate classroom scheduling for meetings and conferences and confirm the correct date and time.
Follow policies, procedures, and safety standards; complete annual education assignments; work toward goals and objectives; and participate in quality-improvement initiatives as requested.
Perform other duties as assigned.