Patient Advocate Specialist; Hybrid, bilingual Spanish; Intermountain Health, Saint Joseph Hospital

At Patient Funding Alternatives (PFA), we remove the barriers that keep Medicaid-eligible and medically underserved people from getting the care they deserve. We partner with hospitals and health systems across the country to help patients secure coverage through employer-sponsored insurance, which simplifies the process for the patient, protects them financially, and improves outcomes for the hospital.

The Patient Advocate Specialist (PAS) identifies, educates, and enrolls eligible hospital patients into the Health Insurance Premium Payment (HIPP) program. HIPP lets medically complex Medicaid beneficiaries access employer-sponsored coverage alongside their Medicaid benefits, which opens up broader networks and more comprehensive care. This is a full-time hybrid role, 2-3 days per week on-site based at Intermountain Health, Saint Joseph Hospital performing bedside and NICU interviews;

return to home office to complete the remainder of the days work as the hospital does not have available workspace for PFA employees. A typical workday will look like morning bedside visits to patient floors and NICU. If no contact with the patient or family is completed then the PAS can find a common area within the hospital (lobby, cafeteria, etc.)

to enter notes in their system and try to revisit patient rooms and NICU an hour or so later. A varied schedule of onsite patient visits is recommended (mornings, afternoons, etc.) and then return to their home office to complete phone calls to patients s/he was unable to reach. Read this part carefully, because it is the part people misjudge.

The day-to-day of this job looks a lot like a sales role. You work a referral list. You approach patients and families who did not ask to speak with you, often on a difficult day. You explain something unfamiliar in 3 minutes, answer the same 5 objections you heard yesterday, and follow up 4 or 5 times to get one form back.

You are measured every week on activity and results. Nothing is being sold and there is no commission pitch, but the skills that make someone good at sales are the same skills that make someone good at this: persistence, comfort with rejection, reading a room, and running your own day without someone assigning your next task. The people who do this best pair those skills with a real belief in what the program does for patients.

One without the other does not hold up.

• Identify and approach eligible patients and families from hospital referrals and daily census review.
• Explain HIPP clearly and compassionately, adapting how you communicate to each family's situation.
• Work through hesitation, confusion, and mistrust without pressuring anyone.
• Gather the authorizations and documentation needed to move an application forward.
• Build trust with patients while holding professional boundaries.

• Collect complete, accurate application data: employer details, plan information, premium costs, dependent information.
• Solve problems before they stall a case, including unresponsive employers, missing paperwork, and eligibility questions.
• Hand off cleanly to PFA's State Operations and Benefit & Advocacy teams so applications get submitted, approved, and supported after enrollment.
• Own your caseload from first contact to enrollment.

• Explain how employer coverage and Medicaid work together.
• Verify and update ongoing eligibility so families do not lose coverage.
• Help patients resolve insurance issues as they come up.

• Manage referrals and patient records in PFA's CRM.
• Upload, scan, and transmit documentation securely.
• Document every patient interaction in line with HIPAA and internal compliance standards.
• Work comfortably on an iPad and iPhone throughout the day.

• Represent PFA on-site as the primary contact for hospital staff.
• Build working relationships with case managers, social workers, financial counselors, state agency contacts, and community partners.
• Protect PFA's reputation inside the health system through how you handle every interaction.

This role sits in a metrics-driven environment, and we are direct about that from the first interview. You will have weekly and monthly targets, review them with your manager regularly, and see your own numbers.

• Patients contacted and…