Medical Admin Assistants

A Day in the Life

As a medical secretary, it is your duty to arrive at the office or clinic where you work about 15 minutes before any patients arrive. If you work in a hospital or 24-hour clinic, you may work late-night shifts. You currently work in a private medical office, but you have also worked in a large public health clinic. Some medical secretaries also work in mental health facilities. Those secretaries who work in small private offices generally handle reception duties in addition to administration duties.

When you get to the office, you check for phone messages. A patient called to cancel her appointment late last night, so you make a note on the schedule and call another patient who has been waiting for an appointment to open up. You work with the other administrative staff in your office to pull all the needed patient charts for the day and arrange them.

Two patients walk into the office right after the front door has been opened. The receptionist greets them and gives them paperwork that they need to fill out. After they have completed the paperwork, you put it in their individual charts and quickly review it for any information that needs to be updated in their patient records. You notice that the insurance information you have for one of the patients is expired, so you ask him if you can copy his new card.

The doctor you work for comes out of his first appointment and asks you if you can enter the notes that he has taken about a patient diagnosis into the medical tracking program. You enter the information, then make sure that it is coded correctly so that the patient's insurance company will pay for at least a portion of the exams that the doctor has ordered. You give the patient all the paperwork she needs to have off-site exams completed.

After lunch, you take advantage of a lull in appointments to assess the office's supply levels. You see that you need another printer cartridge and other miscellaneous supplies. You prepare an order and fax it to an office supply company. You'll keep a copy of the order in your files so that you can review the supplies that you are sent. You are responsible for managing front office finances and must carefully track all of your expenditures.

Before heading home for the day, you review several resumes that have been emailed to you in response to a job posting for a receptionist. You see that three of the candidates have prior medical office experience, so you call them to arrange interviews. As the office staff leaves for the evening, you do a final check of the area to ensure that all sensitive medical files are stored securely. You look over the appointment schedule for tomorrow and give the doctor an update on tomorrow's patients.