Patient Support Specialist

A Casa Esperanza, Inc. is a bilingual/bicultural behavioral health treatment provider serving Boston and the Merrimack Valley. Our mission is to empower individuals and families to recover from addiction, trauma, mental illness, and other chronic medical conditions; overcome homelessness and discrimination; and achieve health and wellness through comprehensive, integrated care.

The Patient Support Specialist role is a multi‑tasking position that consists of all front‑end functions for Familias Unidas Outpatient Programs (FUOP). This role is intended to “extend” the capabilities of the practice by working as a partner with the Patient Access Team and supporting the major work flows of the practice. Its functions include maintaining confidentiality and privacy, consistent with HIPAA guidelines, providing the highest quality of customer service, telephone management, scheduling patient appointments, checking patients in, verifying insurance eligibility, closing procedures, waiting area security, meeting room reservations, meeting with patients to support/complete the intake process, and other practice management clerical tasks.

• Provide a friendly, welcoming and caring greeting face and attitude to all patients arriving for visits.
• Communicate with patients and staff using multiple advanced communication tools, including phone calls, emails, alerts in electronic health record, mail.
• Answer and resolve patient inquiries, in a professional, empathetic and patient‑centered way, through the use of effective listening, written and verbal communication skills.
• Utilize established practice guidelines to ensure patients issues are addressed in a timely manner and when necessary, transfer the call to the appropriate person at FUOP or Casa Esperanza for additional consultation.
• Place reminder calls to outpatient patients to ensure participation in all scheduled services and document contact in the electronic health record.
• Email key staff at residential programs to ensure participation in all scheduled services.
• Contact patients who have missed their appointments for rescheduling and document contact in the electronic health record.
• Provide outstanding customer service to external and internal customers over the phone and in person.
• Escalate appropriately any issues that fall outside of an existing protocol or process to meet the needs of the patient.

• Communicate closely with the Patient Access Manager to coordinate new intake visits and to schedule follow up appointments.
• Meet with patients for initial appointment to complete all clinical intake documents including Biopsychosocial Assessment, Joint Consent to Treat, Releases of Information and Consents for Grant involvement.
• Ensure all clinical documentation is signed and saved in the electronic health record.
• Conduct all BSAS enrollments as needed on a regular schedule.
• Communicate with patients about the intake process so they understand who they will interact with once they complete the initial meeting and what the next steps entail.
• Communicate with Recovery Support Services Staff, Peer Recovery Staff and Clinicians to coordinate a warm introduction for new patients.
• In conjunction with the Patient Access Manager, process internal referrals to accept new patients and create patient charts in the electronic health record system.

• Manage scheduling for all meeting rooms and common areas.
• Enter and/or scan all referral and demographic information into electronic health record.
• Create and/or update all benefit assignments in the Practice Management System to ensure billing workflow compliance.
• Schedule/reschedule patient appointments in practice management system for psychiatry, individual therapy, medical case management, care coordination, nursing, medication assisted therapy, labs, primary care, intakes, adult comprehensive assessments, insurance coordination, transportation services, employment and education services, peer support, legal support and group therapy.
• Check‑in and/or enroll all patients in the practice management system for the following services: psychiatry, individual therapy, medical case…