Appointment Scheduler

Essential Job Functions

1. Patient Appointment Scheduling: Schedule new and established patient appointments for all physicians and advanced practice providers in accordance with approved scheduling templates, provider preferences, and established scheduling guidelines.

2. Insurance Verification and Accuracy: Obtain, verify, and accurately document patient demographic and insurance information during the scheduling process. Identify insurance requirements, including referrals, prior authorizations, and network participation, and communicate necessarily follow up actions to the appropriate team.

3. Appointment Availability and Patient Access: Offer patients with the earliest appropriate appointment availability and alternative physicians, advanced practice providers, or locations when applicable. Work to improve patient access, reduce scheduling delays, and maximize provider schedule utilization.

4. Provider Scheduling Guidelines: Maintain a thorough understanding of physician scheduling templates, appointment types, provider rules, scheduling restrictions, and location assignments to ensure appointments are scheduled accurately and according to established protocols.

5. Appointment Coordination: Schedule, confirm, cancel, and reschedule patient appointments as needed while ensuring all changes are accurately documented and communicated to the appropriate departments.

6. Urgent Appointment Requests: Identify urgent appointment requests and promptly communicate them to the appropriate medical secretary, clinical staff, triage nurse, or provider for review and further direction. Follow established escalation procedures to ensure timely patient care while remaining within the scope of the Appointment Scheduler role and refraining from providing clinical advice.

7. Patient Communication and Customer Service: Provide professional, courteous, and compassionate service during all patient interactions. Clearly communicate appointment details, office locations, arrival times, required documentation, and other relevant scheduling instructions.

8. Call Management and Productivity: Manage incoming and outgoing calls efficiently while meeting established departmental expectations for call handling, availability, scheduling accuracy, productivity, and customer service.

9. Patient Information and Documentation: Accurately enter, verify, and maintain patient demographics, insurance information, appointment details, and scheduling notes within the practice of management and electronic health record systems.

10. Referral and Authorization Coordination: Identify appointments requiring insurance referrals, prior authorizations, or additional documentation. Notify the appropriate medical secretary or designated personnel and follow established workflows to support timely completion of requirements before the scheduled appointment.

11. Schedule Optimization: Assist with filling available appointments, minimizing scheduling gaps, managing cancellations, and identifying opportunities to improve appointment availability and provider schedule utilization.

12. Internal Communication and Collaboration: Communicate effectively with medical secretaries, front desk personnel, clinical teams, referral coordinators, and management to resolve scheduling concerns, address patient needs, and ensure continuity of patient care.

13. Patient Messages and Follow Up: Accurately document patient requests, route messages to the appropriate team or department, and complete assigned scheduling follow up tasks within established timeframes.

14. Appointment Confirmation: Assist with appointment confirmations, patient outreach, and rescheduling efforts as assigned to reduce missed appointments and improve patient engagement.

15. Confidentiality and Compliance: Protect patient information and maintain confidentiality in accordance with HIPAA regulations, organizational policies, and applicable healthcare requirements.

16. Training and Professional Development: Participate in required staff meetings, departmental training, continuing education, and workflow improvement initiatives. Maintain current knowledge of scheduling systems, departmental procedures, and operational changes.

17. Professionalism and Accountability: Demonstrate dependability, professionalism, teamwork, and accountability while adhering to UCA's Employee Handbook, attendance policies, performance standards, and organizational core values.

18. Process Improvement: Identify scheduling challenges, workflow inefficiencies, and recurring patient access concerns. Communicate recommendations to leadership to support operational improvements, scheduling accuracy, and the overall patient experience.

19. Additional Duties: Perform other related duties as assigned by departmental leadership to support the overall operations and objectives of Urology Centers of Alabama.

General Performance Expectations

Appointment Schedulers are expected to:

• Maintain a high level of scheduling accuracy and follow all provider specific scheduling guidelines.

• Meet established departmental standards for call handling, productivity, availability, and attendance.

• Verify and accurately document patient demographic and insurance information.

• Identify and appropriately communicate referral, authorization, and insurance requirements.

• Demonstrate excellent customer service, professionalism, compassion, and effective communication.

• Complete assigned tasks, patient messages, and follow up responsibilities in a timely manner.

• Collaborate with clinical and administrative teams to improve patient access and reduce scheduling errors.

• Remain adaptable to changes in scheduling procedures, technology, staffing, and organizational workflows.

• Demonstrate UCA's core values: Communicate, Collaborate, Adapt, Respect, Excel, and Serve.