Care Access Specialist

UNC Health; North Carolina; Hybrid; USD 26,000 - 37,000; Full time

Job summary

UNC Health in Chapel Hill, NC, is seeking a Care Access Specialist to join a 40-hour hybrid schedule. This role supports outpatient registrations, appointment scheduling, and call-center communications, primarily in an Epic environment. Training is onsite for 30–60 days, then monthly onsite reporting.

The position emphasizes high-volume call handling, accuracy in patient data, and strong organizational skills. Requires experience in customer service and clerical work.

Qualifications

• High school diploma or GED required; higher-level degree may satisfy.
• Three years of customer service and/or clerical experience required.

Responsibilities

• Ensures excellent customer service by maintaining a caring, professional demeanor in a busy call center or outpatient clinic.
• Verifies patient information (insurance, demographics) to ensure accurate charging, insurance processing, and billing.
• Schedules patient appointments and reschedules as needed; notifies providers of cancellations.
• Manages referrals for multiple clinics and follows referral management policies.
• Handles calls in Epic, directing and messaging as needed.
• Supports teammates by being proactive, communicative, and collaborative.
• Participates in QA by using system queues and reducing errors in registration.
• Precepts new coworkers and responds to patient messages in two-way texting; manages in-basket messages.
• Performs additional administrative tasks as required.

Skills

Customer service

Clerical experience

Communication

Team player

Education

High school diploma or GED

Tools

Epic

Job description

Description

Your passion belongs at UNC Health. Join more than 56,000 teammates working together to improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve across North Carolina.

Description

Your passion belongs at UNC Health. Join more than 56,000 teammates working together to improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve across North Carolina.

Summary

The Care Access Specialist team serves as the information center and first point of contact for the patient community, staff, and physicians either over the phone or in person. This role assists in the patient registration process by scheduling outpatient appointments, entering patient information, check appointments in and out, and transferring calls to appropriate personnel and coordinating communication between business units.

The role will support our Wound, Vascular, and Podiatry teams and follows a hybrid schedule, Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM-4:30 PM with a 30-minute lunch. Training will be onsite for the first 30-60 days. After training, the position will report onsite once per month. This is a highly detail-oriented role that manages a large volume of incoming calls and requires strong organizational skills.

Responsibilities

• Ensures excellent customer service by consistently demonstrating a caring, positive, professional, and helpful disposition with all customer relations in a busy call center or outpatient clinic environment Meets call quality, patient registration, and scheduling standards.


• Call center staff ensures and verifies key patient information (insurance verification, patient and guarantor demographics, etc.) is current and accurate to ensure patient safety, charging, coding, insurance processing, and billing accuracy. Outpatient clinic staff will perform the aforementioned tasks and all pertinent registration, check in/out, scheduling, and patient liability collection workflows as applicable for their location.


• Schedules all patient appointments as required. Attempt to reschedule cancellations whenever possible. Communicates cancellations to provider as necessary.


• Manages incoming and outgoing referrals for multiple clinics. Follows referral management policies and procedures.


• Answers telephones, directs calls, places outbound calls, takes and delivers messages in Epic.


• Enhances co-worker satisfaction by being self-motivated, a positive communicator, team player, and a willing and approachable resource to other co-workers. Demonstrates willingness to change to ensure continuous improvement.


• Actively participates in departmental QA by utilizing system work queues, making a personal effort to reduce individual errors, and making corrections. Utilizes system work queues as a daily part of the registration process to minimize errors.


• Effectively precepts new co-workers as assigned, message and respond to patient messages in the two-way texting platform, answer clinic and provider in-basket messages, work clinic cancellation, no show, and recall worklists.


• Other admin work as needed.

Education Requirements

• High school diploma or GED required; higher-level degree may satisfy this requirement.

Professional Experience Requirements

• Three (3) years of customer service and/or clerical experience required.

Job Details

Legal Employer: NCHEALTH

Entity: Shared Services

Organization Unit: Care Access AC Faculty Physicians

Work Type: Full Time

Standard Hours Per Week: 40.00

Salary Range: $19.12 - $27.17 per hour (Hiring Range)

Pay offers are determined by experience and internal equity

Work Assignment Type: Hybrid

Work Schedule: Day Job

Location of Job: US:NC:Chapel Hill

Exempt From Overtime: Exempt: No

This position is employed by NC Health (Rex Healthcare, Inc., d/b/a NC Health), a private, fully-owned subsidiary of UNC Health Care System, in a department that provides shared services to operations across UNC Health Care; except that, if you are currently a UNCHCS State employee already working in a designated shared services department, you may remain a UNCHCS State employee if selected for this job.

Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran or political affiliation.

UNC Health makes reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as applicants and employees with disabilities. Please email [e-mail] if you need a reasonable accommodation to search and/or to apply for a career opportunity.