Financial Clearance Specialist

City of Hope; Irwindale (CA); On-site; USD 48,000 - 72,000; Full time

Job summary

City of Hope in California is seeking a Financial Clearance Specialist to handle pre-registration, insurance verification, and prior authorization coordination across care lines. You will work under supervision to obtain authorizations and ensure timely patient access to services.

This role requires independent judgment, strong communication with patients and payers, and fluency with EMR systems, particularly EPIC.

Qualifications

• School Diploma or equivalent GED.
• Three years related healthcare pre-registration/referral experience.
• Medical terminology and electronic medical record experience required.
• Prefer oncology front desk experience registering patients and EPIC EMR familiarity.

Responsibilities

• Identify insurance companies needing prior authorization and obtain approvals for procedures and testing.
• Educate patients on their insurance policies and prepare letters to payors for authorization or appeals.
• Perform pre-registration including demographics, insurance, consent, and service eligibility; verify information with payers and departments.

Skills

Referral coordination

Pre-registration

Healthcare terminology

Education

GED or high school diploma

Tools

EPIC EMR

Job description

Join the transformative team at City of Hope, where we're changing lives and making a real difference in the fight against cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening illnesses. City of Hope’s growing national system includes its Los Angeles campus, a network of clinical care locations across Southern California, a new cancer center in Orange County, California, and treatment facilities in Atlanta, Chicago and Phoenix. Our dedicated and compassionate employees are driven by a common mission: To deliver the cures of tomorrow to the people who need them today.

Position Overview:

This role works under the general direction of a supervisor or manager, responsible for performing pre-registration functions and obtaining authorizations from various insurance carriers. This role requires a high level of independent judgement in order to successfully coordinate and obtain authorization requests for complex managed care patients in a timely and efficient manner. This individual is expected to utilize telecommunications and computer information systems to pre-register patients, verify information and insurance, and obtain authorizations. The Financial Clearance Specialist is best defined as a highly independent and flexible resource that focuses on system-specific service lines that are in alignment with the patient experience initiative. Furthermore, this role must multi-task between different patient care areas to ensure an extraordinary patient experience and that quality standards are met. Additional duties include, but are not limited to physician and patient communication serving as an information resource.

As a successful candidate, you will:

Referral Coordination

• Identifies insurance companies requiring prior authorization for services and obtains authorization. Coordinates authorizations for procedures and testing requested by providers for their managed care patient. Reviews charts on outpatients and reports to third party payors. Retrieves chemo/surgery orders from chart, and requesting authorization through the insurance companies. Prepares all forms required by third party payor for treatment authorization requests. Work on all pending utilization review patients, and achieve authorization for the following day. Getting emergent authorizations from walk-in patients. Verifying with the insurance companies and documents what needs to be pre-certified.


• Educates patient of their insurance policy. Composes letters and memoranda from physician dictation, or verbal direction for submission to insurance companies to obtain authorization or appeal denials. Maintains current records on managed care patients. Keeps Case Managers updated on all BMO and BMT patients.

Pre-Registration

• Performs pre-registration functions prior to the patient appointment (including, but not limited to: obtains and/or verifies demographic, clinical, financial, insurance information, service eligibility, consent forms, and patient/guarantor information for pre-registered accounts).


• Contacts patients, payers, or other departments to confirm and verify insurance and demographic information. Refers patients to financial counselors to resolve insurance or payments issues.


• Identifies and resolves issues by working with patients, payors, and/or other CoH departments and personnel in a single interaction with the patient. Identifies patients with “share of cost” or co-payments by performing pricing estimations, and notifies patients of their expected patient liability and financial responsibility.


• Collects patient/guarantor liabilities and refers patients who are uninsured/underinsured to Financial Counselor for charity, financial assistance or governmental program screening and application processes.


• Notifies CoH contracting department of patients with a non-contracted insurance to prepare a Letter of Agreement (LOA) should patient to pursue services at COH and informs patient of approval status.


• Performs activities required to financial clearance for all patient types. Frequent communications will occur with patients/family members/guarantors, physicians/office staff, medical center and payors.

Your qualifications should include:

• School Diploma or equivalent GED.


• Three years related healthcare pre-registration/referral experience required.


• Medical terminology and electronic medical record experience required.


• Preferably: At least two years front desk oncology practice experience registering patients and scheduling appointments. EPIC EMR experience.

City of Hope employees pay is based on the following criteria: work experience, qualifications, and work location.

City of Hope is an equal opportunity employer.

To learn more about our Comprehensive Benefits, please CLICK HERE.