What does a medical secretary do?
Since the number of healthcare facilities has increased all over the world, many professions start to have an important presence in every medical facility. Therefore, every profession has its unique requirements and roles. Also, this explains why every healthcare worker should have their own certificate and license, duties and responsibilities, and regulations and laws.
What does a medical secretary do?
This is a critical question that should be explained in detail. The medical secretary is a unique profession that should be included in all healthcare facilities. The medical secretary role is essential like other healthcare professions roles like a physician, pharmacist, nurse, psychiatric, medical coders and others. The role of the medical secretary is to organize the function of any hospital or medical office. Tasks of a medical secretary are various and need some concentration in doing their duties and responsibilities, which describe by handling the patients' bills, patients' medical history files, phone calls, and sending their greeting for the visitors.
The medical secretary quality is detected by how the medical secretary deal with the equipment. The medical secretary should have the ability to do his/ her tasks with a plethora of types of equipment such as:
- Dealing with computers and fixing any problem that he/ she faces
- Using scanners and fixing any issue that he/ she faces
- Having the ability to use fax machines.
- Feeling comfortable when using multi-line telephone systems.
Also, the quality of the medical secretary increases when the medical secretary has a well-known knowledge in medical coding, medical billing, medical terminology and health insurance rules.
Medical Secretary Job Description
Every job has its unique descriptions that make the employees understand his/ her duties and responsibilities. Also, this job description specifies the functionary of the medical secretary about the tasks, rules. Qualifications and salary. The medical secretary Job description are described in the following points:
- Typing the patients' reports and preparing them in an organized manner.
- Maintaining the patients' history files.
- Handling the health insurance forms for every patient.
- Paying for vendors
- Handling the patients' bills
- Interacting with phone calls for any queries and take notes.
- Showing empathy with the patients and answering their questions.
- Scheduling the appointments for the patients.
- Sending their greeting to or the patients to make them feel comfortable.
- Scheduling meetings, and conferences whether between the physician and the patient or with the whole healthcare team.
- Scheduling the appointments for the surgeries and sending reminders to the patients for following up via email or phone calls.
- Answering emails and handling the public complaints
- Handling faxes of the public.
- Performing a well-structured database.
The medical secretary description is formed to keep the office operations running smoothly and easily without more complications. So this leads to the reason that the medical secretary should be aware of the medical terminology and other medical procedures.
In addition, there are multiple other tasks of a medical secretary that are necessary for his/ her progress. The quality of a medical secretary is detected by how the medical secretary communicates with the public smoothly, how the medical secretary handles any technical problem that happened in computers, laptops and fax machines, how the medical secretary types the reports of the patients fastly, and how the medical secretary manages the physicians' appointments and send reminders for them. Also, the medical secretary task is to deal with computers smoothly for providing accurate patient information. Therefore, the medical secretary skills are various.
The Qualities of a Medical Secretary
Qualities of a medical secretary should be enforced with the integration of certifications and intellectual skills. Let's start to talk about the certifications for a medical secretary to be qualified for this position. Although the medical secretary profession does not need advanced degrees, such as physicians, pharmacists, nurses, psychiatrists and others, the medical secretary job description requires a bachelor degree. However, the qualities of a medical secretary empowered with further coursework and other certifications to increase the evolution of a medical secretary.
So we should describe the highly recommended education and certifications as the following:
- High school is required
- Any equivalent diploma is accepted
- A bachelor degree is more required for a trusted and well-educated medical secretary.
- Certifications are various, so we will mention them in details.
- Certified Administrative Professional (CAP)
It is offered by The International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP). This certification is designed for the medical secretary who graduated with 2- years of a bachelor degree but they suffer from a lack of experience in medical secretary description.
ORGANIZATIONAL MANAGEMENT (OM) certificate
It is offered by The International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP). This certificate is designed to enhance the skills of a medical secretary in organizational management, project management and technology. In order to get the organizational management (OM) certificate, the medical secretary should be an active Certified Administrative Professional (CAP) holder.
To gain those valuable certificates, the medical secretary should pass written examinations. Also, the medical secretary skills should be improved by subscribing to work courses. Those types of courses cover computer skills, word processing, keyboarding, time management and office management. Moreover, to evolution the medical secretary, the medical secretary should understand the basic knowledge in medical terminology and laboratories procedures.
Medical Secretary Competence
Not only the medical secretary must have a bachelor degree for quality to be a medical secretary, but also the competence of a medical secretary should integrate together. Therefore, the medical secretary skills should include how to handle the emails, records, bills and spreadsheets.
Also, soft skills are really valuable for the evolution of a medical secretary and this sort of skills includes the following:
- Verbal communication: One of the most important skills of the medical secretary is how to communicate verbally with different sorts of people like patients, physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers.
- Active listening: The quality to be a medical secretary is to listen carefully the others and understand their needs, whether they are patients or healthcare workers.
- Writing: This soft skill is essential for any quality medical secretary. The medical secretary should write carefully the reports, health insurance and other medical office works.
- Interpersonal skills: This skill is critical to being a quality medical secretary. The medical secretary should understand the body language of the patients and other colleagues in the healthcare facility. And the medical secretary should know how to persuade the others, according to their demands.
- Organizational skills: To be a quality medical secretary, the medical secretary should have organization skills in time, reports, bills, insurance forms, schedule appointments, answer phone calls quickly and other of office work.
There are many soft skills that should be integrated with the certificates and qualifications to be a quality medical secretary.
Medical Secretary Salary
The more a quality medical secretary, the more has a good salary. The annual salary for the medical secretary varies from one to another, according to the medical secretary skills, the medical secretary competence, and the medical secretary quality and the medical secretary experience.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the statistics have shown the median (50%) annual salary of the medical secretary in May 2020 is $37,350, and the median (50%) hourly rate is $17.96.
Medical Secretary Work Environment
According to the roles of a medical secretary, a typical medical secretary should work in office settings in hospitals, clinics, other surgical facilities, pharmacies, laboratories and non-governmental agencies. And this like physician, nurses and other healthcare professionals.
According to the medical secretary description, he/ she works under stress because of the high rates of responsibilities and the tight deadlines and work delivery.
Therefore, answering the question of does the medical secretary is fit for me depends on how to deal with the medical secretary job description. They should be caring, efficient, understandable, cooperative, patient and kind.
To sum up
The medical secretary tasks are heavy and various. Therefore, the medical secretary job description has many tasks from handling reports and bills, receiving the insurance forms, collaborating with the patients, answering the phone calls, organizing the meetings, remaindering the patients' appointments and handling the faxes.
The qualities of a medical secretory vary from one to another in this job, so it depends on the collaboration of medical secretary skills and qualifications. The bachelor degree is a required issue with cooperation with other certificates such as the Certified Administrative Professional (CAP) and the organizational management (OM) that could boost the qualities of the medical secretary. Also, the skills of the medical secretary are too much and include soft skills. The soft skills deprive into active listening, efficient writing, verbal communication, interpersonal skills and organizational skills. Also, there are many other skills of the medical secretary that are gained from work courses such as typing smoothly on the keyboard, handling emails and printers, and many other office management skills that can lead to the evolution of the medical secretary.
The work environment of the medical secretary is heavy in the hospitals, clinics, medical offices, pharmacists, laboratories and non-governmental medical facilities. The medical secretary salary varies according to the medical secretory skills, and his/ her experience.
