Medical Assistant Jobs

Medical Receptionist Jobs - The Front Desk

Medical Receptionist Jobs are a part of the wider segment called Medical Assistant Jobs. More specifically, medical receptionist jobs refer to those jobs that involve working at the front desk, that is, at the reception. Medical Assistant Jobs are broadly divided as front office jobs and back office jobs. The back office jobs refer to those jobs that need technical expertise. This is where the actual treatment of patients takes place. The workers here interact directly with the patients, assisting the doctors in the treatment. They are more specialized, that is, well versed in the actual medical practices and techniques. The front office, more formally called the reception, refers to those jobs that involve less of the technical aspect. The workers here are more skilled in soft skills like interaction with people, communication skills, hospitality, etc. The job of these people is to admit patients into the hospital or health care center.

A typical medical receptionist occupies the front desk of the hospital or the health care center. The duties of the medical receptionist include scheduling patient appointments, explaining clinic policy to the patients, receiving and delivering messages from patients to doctors or from any third party to the doctors, processing incoming and outgoing mail, receiving calls from hospital labs and X-ray departments, receiving reports and scans from the X-ray or scanning departments of the hospital, taking prescription refill messages, scheduling patient hospital admissions, filing medical reports, filing insurance forms and other policies related to the patients, pulling patient charts, completing any insurance forms or policy documents that have been left incomplete, coding of diagnoses and procedures, opening the office in the morning, maintaining the reception desk, and closing the office at the end of the day.

The Medical Receptionist job requires a set of courses that have to be completed before a person can take up the job of the medical receptionist. The program consists of courses that enhance the basic skills like keyboard handling and computer usage and medically technical skills like the use of medical terminology and medical procedures. The curriculum for the medical receptionist program includes Interpersonal Communication, Composition, Keyboarding, Business English skills, Applied Medical Terminology, Administrative Office Procedures, Microsoft Word, Medical Office Procedures, Written Business Communications, Business Job Seeking Skills, Introduction to Computers, Disease Conditions, Anatomy and Physiology, Medical Terminology, Office Accounting, Integrated Software Applications, Microsoft Power Point, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Desktop Publishing, Introduction to health information management, ICD 9 CM coding, Medical Transcription(this course is covered in two parts), a short course in Windows, Pharmacology and Skill Building. At the completion of the program, the student is tested in all the areas, and if found well equipped with the knowledge required, he is regarded worthy for the job of a medical receptionist and given the certificate.

Some of the main skills required for a medical receptionist are often neglected and overlooked. A medical receptionist ought to be an extrovert. He needs to communicate freely with the patients to understand their ailments and admit them. Also, he needs to be able to do multiple tasks at once. He needs a lot of patience to attend to every patient. Finally, he needs hospitality, a quality that cures half the patient's illness, by itself. All these attributes are essential to a medical receptionist.

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