Medical Receptionist

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Medical Receptionist to join our friendly well-established practice team. Must be a good team player, have excellent communication skills, be well-organised, and be a highly motivated individual looking to join our friendly hardworking practice team. The ideal candidate will have excellent interpersonal skills, experience within Primary Care, and knowledge of SystmOne with the ability to work well under pressure and provide a high-quality patient service.

Main duties of the job include:

• Providing a helpful and friendly service to patients looking to make appointments either in person or over the telephone in accordance with the practice appointment system.
• Assisting patients with enquiries and supporting them in all aspects of their health care needs.
• Complying with the practice protocol for the printing of prescription requests and queries.
• Complying with the practice procedure for the registration of new patients.
• Advising patients of any action/advice requested by the GP.
• Following practice procedure regarding letters and correspondence that arrives at the surgery from patients.
• Maintaining confidentiality with particular reference to patient records.
• Liaising with the Practice Manager when required and following instructions from them when necessary.
• Undertaking any other duties as deemed appropriate by the Practice.

About us: Lister Medical Centre is based in Harlow, Essex. We are a well-established, friendly teaching practice, and our dedicated team includes 8 GPs, 4 Emergency Care Practitioners, 3 Practice Nurses, 2 Nursing Associates, 2 Physician Associates, 4 HCAs, and 17 admin/support staff. We have been providing a full range of GP services for over 30 years and have a patient list size of over 21,000 patients. As a teaching practice, we have Foundation Doctors and Students from Cambridge University based with us. We are situated in a purpose-built health centre close to local amenities.

Job responsibilities include:

• Utilising a number system to ensure efficiency of the appointment system and monitor flow of patients into consulting and treatment rooms.
• Explaining practice arrangements and formal requirements to new patients and those seeking temporary cover, ensuring registration procedures are completed on the computer.
• Advising patients of relevant charges for private services, accepting payment and issuing receipts.
• Responding to all queries and requests for assistance from patients and other visitors.
• Entering requests for home visits onto the visit screen including all relevant information and where necessary referring to the Duty Doctor.
• In conjunction with the Repeat Prescriptions Clerk, ensuring that requests for prescriptions are actioned where possible within two working days.
• Actioning requests for ambulance transportation and entering details in the appropriate book.
• Ensuring reception and waiting areas are kept neat and tidy.
• Making tea and coffee for Partners as and when required.
• Ensuring visitors sign the Visitors Book upon arrival and departure.
• Using own judgement, resourcefulness, common sense, and local knowledge to respond to patients' enquiries and requests.
• Assisting the Sifting GP with Admin Support for total Triage.

Management of Appointment Systems:

• Ensuring total familiarity with all appointment systems in effect including regular and incidental variations.
• Booking appointments and recalls ensuring sufficient information is recorded to retrieve medical records.
• Monitoring effectiveness of the system and reporting any problems or variations required.

Preparation of Consulting Rooms:

• Ensuring that the consulting rooms are prepared in readiness for each consulting session, checking the full range of forms and requirements and re-stocking as required.
• Ensuring that the consulting rooms are checked at the end of each consulting session and left tidy and secure.

Operation of Telephone System:

• Receiving and making calls as required. Diverting calls and taking messages as appropriate.

Start and End of Day Procedures:

• Opening premises at the start of the day, setting alarm to day function and making all necessary preparations to receive patients.
• Emptying refrigerator of any specimens and putting ready for collection by local hospital courier.
• Securing premises at the end of the day, ensuring the building is totally secured, internal lights off (where appropriate) and alarm activated.
• Putting any specimens into the refrigerator ready for the morning.

Training and Professional Development:

• Maintaining continued education by attendance at courses and study days as deemed useful or necessary for personal development and complying with mandatory and statutory training requirements.
• Participating in the practice performance review and appraisal process.
• Taking appropriate action in relation to any feedback around care/performance in relation to improving practice/developmental needs.
• Taking responsibility for own learning and identifying development opportunities.
• Applying practice policies, standards, and guidance.

Quality:

• Contributing to maintaining/improving patient care as appropriate.
• Contributing to audit as requested by the Partners of the Health Care Centre.
• Working effectively with other agencies to support effective patient care.
• Managing workload, resources, and own time effectively in order to support effective and high-quality patient care.
• Escalating appropriately and completing relevant reporting tools on identification of any patient/non-patient related incident.

Health & Safety:

• Implementing and leading on a full range of promotion and management of their own and others' health and safety and infection control as defined in the practice health & safety policy, the practice health & safety manual, and the practice infection control policy and published procedures.
• Using personal security systems within the workplace according to practice guidelines.
• Being aware of standards of infection control.
• Responsible for the correct and safe management of the specimens process, including collection, labelling, handling, use of correct and clean containers, storage, and transport arrangements.
• Active observation of current working practices across the practice in relation to infection control, cleanliness, and related activities, ensuring that procedures are followed and weaknesses/training needs are identified, escalating issues as appropriate.
• Using appropriate infection control procedures, maintaining work areas in a tidy, clean, and sterile way, safe and free from hazards.
• Initiating remedial/corrective action where needed or escalating to responsible management.
• Keeping own work areas and general/patient areas generally clean, sterile, identifying issues and hazards/risks in relation to other work areas within the business, and assuming responsibility in the maintenance of general standards of cleanliness across the business in consultation (where appropriate) with other sector managers.

Equality and Diversity:

• Supporting the equality, diversity, and rights of patients, carers, and colleagues.
• Acting in a way that recognises the importance of people's rights, interpreting them in a way that is consistent with practice procedures and policies, and current legislation.
• Respecting the privacy, dignity, needs, and beliefs of patients, carers, and colleagues in a manner that is welcoming to and of the individual, is non-judgmental and respects their circumstances, feelings, priorities, and rights.

Confidentiality:

• In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust us with, or allow us to gather, sensitive information in relation to their health and other matters. They do so in confidence and have the right to expect that staff will respect their privacy and act appropriately.
• In the performance of the duties outlined in this job description, the post-holder may have access to confidential information relating to patients and their carers, practice staff, and other healthcare workers. They may also have access to information relating to the practice as a business organisation. All such information from any source is to be regarded as strictly confidential.
• Information relating to patients, carers, colleagues, other healthcare workers, or the business of the practice may only be divulged to authorised persons in accordance with the practice policies and procedures relating to confidentiality and the protection of personal and sensitive data.

The above duties and responsibilities are intended to represent current priorities and are not meant to be an exhaustive list. The post holder may from time to time be asked to undertake other duties and responsibilities. Any changes to this job description that take account of changing service needs will be made in discussion with the post holder.

Person Specification:

• Good standard of general education with a minimum GCSE English and Maths or equivalent.
• NVQ Level 2-3 in Business/Admin.

Skills and Abilities:

• An acceptable level of literacy and numeracy skills.
• Interpersonal, organisational, and administrative skills.
• Ability to learn Clinical System rota.
• Ability to organise and prioritise workload to achieve deadlines.
• Ability to investigate complex patient queries and anomalies when required.
• Ability to monitor and process accurate patient data.
• Commitment to equalities and the promotion of diversity in all aspects of working.
• Being open to innovative thinking and assisting in developing new ways of working/systems as required.

Experience:

• Experience of patient and customer-facing roles.
• Experience of telephone call centres.
• Knowledge of implementing a range of administrative procedures.
• Knowledge of a range of IT systems packages.
• Awareness of Data Protection and confidentiality issues.
• SystmOne experience.
• Experience of Primary Care/GP Practices.

Other:

• To adhere to the Practice core values: Dignity, Respect, Compassion, Empathy.
• Willingness to attend training as deemed appropriate.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.