Senior Medical Receptionist / 2IC

Octa Medical; Kingswood; On-site; AUD 39,000 - 52,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-site parking

Café downstairs

Job summary

Octa Medical in Penrith, located in the Nepean Health Hub, seeks a senior receptionist to join a growing, locally owned general practice. This role is hands-on on the floor: greeting patients, handling phones, booking and billing, and keeping the waiting room efficiently moving.

You will work closely with our Practice Manager on inducting and training new receptionists, coaching the team, and resolving desk issues before they reach the doctors.

Qualifications

• Senior receptionist with leadership presence and calm under pressure.
• Familiarity with Medicare item numbers and general practice workflows.
• Ability to induct, train and coach reception staff.

Responsibilities

• Greet patients, manage phones, book and bill appointments.
• Maintain a smooth flow in the waiting area and ensure patients are treated warmly.
• Lead onboarding and training for new receptionists, and coach the team.

Skills

Senior receptionist

People leadership

Medicare knowledge

Job description

Plenty of practices will tell you their front desk is the heart of the place. We can show you. Octa Medical has 690 Google reviews at an average of 4.9 stars, and a striking number of them thank a receptionist by name rather than a doctor. That's the standard you'd be joining. It's also the standard you'd be asked to hold.

We're a locally owned, non-corporate general practice on the ground floor of the Nepean Health Hub, directly opposite Nepean Hospital — 26 consulting rooms with pharmacy, pathology, imaging and allied health in the same building. We're currently extending our hours to operate as the Penrith Urgent Care Clinic, so the practice is growing, and the reception team is growing with it.

The job

This is a senior reception role, and it is also the offsider our Practice Manager has been needing.

It stays a hands-on job, and we won't pretend otherwise. Most of your week is spent on the floor doing the job properly: greeting people, managing the phones, booking and billing, keeping a full waiting room moving without anyone in it feeling like a number. The rest of it is spent working directly with our Practice Manager on the things that keep a large front desk consistent — inducting and training new receptionists, coaching the team, and sorting out the problems that arrive at the desk before they reach the doctors.

She isn't going anywhere, and this isn't a holding pattern for her job. It's a standing partnership: two people who know how the practice runs instead of one. When she's on leave, you're the one holding the reins.

Who this suits

We think this is a step up rather than a step sideways. If you've been the most senior person on a reception desk for a while — the one everybody asks, without the title to match — this is the role that gives you both the title and the scope to use it.

You've worked reception in general practice, you know your Medicare item numbers cold, and Best Practice holds no surprises for you. That last one is preferred rather than essential; we can teach the software, we can't teach the patient care and happy disposition.

More to the point: you're the person others steady themselves against on a bad Monday. New staff should want to ask you things. Nervous patients should feel better for having spoken to you. And when a GP is running forty minutes behind and there are ten people waiting, you should be the calmest person in the room.

What we offer

On-site parking, and a café downstairs for the mornings you didn't get to breakfast.

A team of GPs, nurses, a nurse practitioner, physiotherapists, an exercise physiologist, a psychologist, pharmacists and admin staff who actually talk to each other.

Owners and a Practice Manager who work in this building and are reachable in person — not a head office in another state.

A Practice Manager who wants a right hand rather than a subordinate, and who will teach you how the whole practice fits together — not just the front desk.