Advanced Medical Support Assistant

Advanced Medical Support Assistant

The incumbent serves as an Advanced Medical Support Assistant (AMSA) for Louisville VA's Daytime Clinical Contact Center (CCC) within Primary Care as part of a multidisciplinary healthcare team. Within the facility and VISN 09, the AMSA provides telephone support across primary care CBOCs & multiple ancillary clinics as part of the first contact resolution mission to provide Veteran-centered care services. This position is located at Fort Knox VA CBOC.

Responsibilities include:

• Providing specialized and expert administrative patient support while working collaboratively in an interprofessional coordinated care delivery model.
• Involving specialized administrative judgment and the flexible use of a wide range of clinical flow processes relating to access to care across multiple clinics, specialties, and/or care in the community resources.
• Working collaboratively with VISN programs, services, and interprofessional coordinated care team members to provide access to care and meet the needs of Veterans via various available contact modalities.
• Answering telephones, securing messages and chat messages, greets patients, relays messages to appropriate staff inside or outside of the VISN CCC.
• Scheduling appointments, interpreting and verifying provider orders in accordance with VHA national scheduling guidelines.
• Recommending changes to existing clinic procedures based on current administrative guidelines.
• Utilizing numerous advanced patient systems in support of multiple clinics involved in an interprofessional coordinated care delivery model.
• Developing and/or maintaining effective and efficient communication with the patient, interprofessional care delivery teams, VA medical centers, and other agencies.
• Providing information and resolution to Veterans' requests within scope, using administrative judgement to escalate symptomatic concerns to clinicians within the VISN CCC.
• Providing accurate details of organizational information to Veterans regarding the different services the VA offers.
• Providing high-quality customer service to Veterans and their families/caregivers.
• Communicating tactfully and effectively to challenging customers who may be threatening, abusive, or distraught.
• Resolving Veteran complaints at lowest level or escalates to leadership as appropriate.

Work Schedule: 8:00am - 4:30pm, Monday - Friday

Telework: Not Available

Functional Statement #: 40925-F

Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized

Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized

Requirements:

You must be a U.S. Citizen to apply for this job. Selective Service Registration is required for males born after 12/31/1959. Must be proficient in written and spoken English. You may be required to serve a trial period. Subject to background/security investigation. Selected applicants will be required to complete an online onboarding process.

Qualifications:

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the cut-off date of each applicant referral for this announcement.

Basic Requirements:

United States Citizenship: Non-citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy.

English Language Proficiency: MSAs must be proficient in spoken and written English in accordance with VA Handbook 5005, Part II, Chapter 3, Section A, paragraph 3.j.

Experience and Education: Experience. Six months experience of clerical, office, customer service, or other administrative work that indicates the ability to acquire the particular knowledge and skills needed to perform the duties of the position; OR Education. One year above high school; OR Experience/Education Combination. Equivalent combination of experience and education are qualifying for entry level for which both education and experience are acceptable.

Grade Determinations:

Medical Support Assistant (Advanced), GS-6:

Experience. One year of experience equivalent to the GS-5 grade level.

GS-5 grade level experience includes, but is not limited to:

• Scheduling, canceling, re-scheduling patient appointments and/or consults; entering no-show information; monitoring appointment requests from multiple electronic sources; participating in huddles with other MSAs and/or clinic staff to determine the daily needs of the clinic, monitoring both inpatient and outpatient appointments in areas of responsibility; verifying and updating demographics and insurance information when patients check-in for appointments.
• Coordinates administrative functions relating to emergency and non-emergency transfers to other VA facilities or private hospitals and determines appointment type based on the patient's eligibility status (i.e., TRICARE, sharing agreements, collaterals, research patient, VA employee, etc.).

AND

Demonstrated Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Ability to collaborate and communicate with a wide range of medical clinicians across multiple disciplines (e.g. medical doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, clinical pharmacists, and nursing staff) to accomplish team goal setting to ensure medical care to patients is met.
• Ability to independently set priorities and organize work to meet deadlines, ensuring compliance with established processes, policies, and regulations.
• Ability to communicate tactfully and effectively, electronically, by phone, in person, and in writing with internal and external customers. This may include preparing reports in various formats and presenting data to various organizational levels, as well as resolving patient concerns.
• Advanced knowledge of the technical health care process (including, but not limited to, scheduling across interdisciplinary coordinated care delivery and/or care in the community models and patient health care portals) as it relates to access to care.
• Advanced knowledge of policies and procedures associated with interdisciplinary coordinated care delivery and/or care in the community operational activities that affect patient flow, and patient support care administrative functions to include, but not limited to appointment cycles, outside patient referrals, follow-up care, overbooking, provider availability, etc.
• Advanced knowledge of medical terminology due to the technical nature of language utilized by clinicians.

Preferred Experience: Previous experience in Clinical Call Center setting preferred.

Minimum one year of previous experience with customer service in medical setting.

References: For more information on this qualification standard, please visit https://www.va.gov/ohrm/QualificationStandards/.

The full performance level of this vacancy is GS-06.

Physical Requirements: Typically, the Advanced Medical Support Assistant must be able to operate a computer terminal and be able to manage multiple activities at one time.

Work Environment: The work may be stressful due to the accelerated pace for several hours at a time during peak clinic hours or on days that have a large volume of clinic activity.

Education: There is no substitution of education for experience at this grade level.

Additional Information: This job opportunity announcement may be used to fill additional vacancies.

This position is in the Excepted Service and does not confer competitive status.

VA encourages persons with disabilities to apply.

If you are unable to apply online or need an alternate method to submit documents, please reach out to the Agency Contact listed in this Job Opportunity Announcement.