A Medical Staff Coordinator is someone who provides technical and administrative services at a hospital or some clinic. They are entirely responsible for providing professional nursing and taking care of patients which might include assessment, treatment, planning, and evaluation for their medical care while adhering to the proper rules and regulations.
It is required that a Medical Staff Coordinator should serve as a supervisor in the absence of the senior management and other medical staff. Thus, this person coordinates the essential operational processes and ongoing credentialing, privileging, and medical staff governance functions for the hospital.
They might be responsible for reviewing, analyzing, and keeping up with the credentialing and prioritizing essential applications, maintaining strict confidentiality, ensuring adherence to organizational policies and accrediting and other regulatory processes.
Responsibilities of a Medical Staff Coordinator
It is well known that the majority of medical and health services managers, such as Medical Staff Coordinators work in office-like settings which are located under medical businesses such as multi-specialty hospitals, long-term care centers, or doctors’ clinics. While most coordinators work full time just like corporate employees, during business hours, others working in hospitals or emergency centers might expect night and weekend shifts.
- Provides assistance in the management of the medical staff, space functioning for the entire medical staff as per requirements.
- Coordination in credentialing and privileging applications by the following processing and verifying primary source by an authorized Office like Health System Credentialing Verification Office, reviewing and analyzing.
- Work on maintaining confidential credential and peer review files on all medical staff.
- Identification of the hazardous items and work on preparing essential data and files which contain review and recommendation by the medical staff.
- Prepare for medical committee meetings by scheduling, establishing, meeting reminders, agenda packets, recording and processing the meeting.
- Provides clerical oversight related to the filing maintenance and works on retrieving information for all aspects of the responsibilities.
- Coordinating credentialing end-of-committee process and publishing notifications to departments and Health System Offices, maintaining files; updating databases and deleting unimportant large junk data files, breakdown, completion, and scanning of files as per requirements.
- Scheduling, coordinating, and preparing agenda to provide a thorough follow-up for the medical staff and committees.
- Ensures the maintenance of positive professional communications with administration, nursing staff, and other hospital departments.
- Demonstrate high order of compliance with the Hospital/clinics Employee Code of Conduct.
- Performs research to obtain information about the requirements and issues related to medical staff.
- Provides referral of services to the outside community.
- Must exhibit a high level of responsibility for confidential matters.
- Preparing summary reports for the credentialing and privileging recommendations must ensure the flow of information and other items required by medical staff committees.
- Assists in the coordination, tracking, and monitoring of different processes in the hospitals and clinics while ensuring their compliance to the regulatory standards and other hospital staff policies.
- Responsible for interpreting the federal, state, local, and government/ insurance agency guidelines and regulations, policies, and procedures and advises providers, management, and administrators on adherence issues if any in an appropriate manner.
- Generates queries and reports from credentialing and privileging large data files.
- Other miscellaneous duties as per requirements.
Medical Staff Coordinator Job Requirements
- High School Degree or GED equivalent.
- Degree/degrees from an accredited school or university which is above minimum education requirement in Business, Health Information Technology or any other related field.
- A minimum of 3 or 5 years of experience related to the duties as mentioned above.
- Successful completion of more than 60 college-level credit hours.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities Required
- Medical staff operational processes
- Credentialing and privileging procedures and standards
- Basic knowledge of related accreditation and certification requirements
- Knowledge of clinical and hospital operations and procedures
- Medical staff laws, policies, rules, regulations and procedures, and the legal environment.
- Knowledge of different techniques related to performance inputs
- Research and Development skills
- Analytical skills, can interpret and draw inferences from research findings and prepare files from large raw data
- Good Communication Skills, both written and verbal at all levels of the organization
- Ability to use independent judgment and can demonstrate high order of confidentiality regarding any personal information
- Have skills in Project Management principles, practices, techniques, and tools.
- Data Management skills might include analyzing, query, clarification, and report generation.
- Ability to make administrative decisions; decision-making skills.
- Excellent interpersonal skills, exhibit a high quality of professionalism
- Should know basic computer and programs; Microsoft office proficiency and word processing.
Working Conditions and Physical Requirement
A Medical Staff Coordinator works in an office kind of setting of a multi-specialty hospital or a clinic. They do not have any field type of job conditions, as compared to other medical staff, a coordinator is not exposed to any physical hazard and is required to do very limited physical labor.
Education and Certification Requirement for Medical Staff Coordinator
- 2-year applicable and related college program
- High School Diploma or equivalence
- An associate degree with training in medical terminology
- Specializing degree or training or experience in healthcare administration or medical staff services.
- NAMSS, CPCS, CPMSM Certification
NAMSS or the National Association of Medical Staff Services provides two kinds of voluntary certifications for medical staff coordinators. While CPCS ( Certified Provider Credentialing Specialist) certification is for medical staff coordinators who generally manage to credential medical practitioners and doctors in health care settings.
CPMSM or Certified Professional Medical Services Management certification is for those individual working as a Medical Staff Coordinator who oversees the responsibility in the management and enrollment process.
For an individual seeking to get these certifications, it is mandatory to complete an exam, however, these certifications do not require any education but you need to be employed in a health care setting as Medical Staff Coordinator for almost 12 consecutive months.
Additionally, CPCS and CPMSM seeking candidates require at least three or five years of experience or a CPMSM credential. Similarly, candidates for the CPMSM exam must have a minimum of five years of experience in the past nine years or a CPCS credential.
NAMSS certifications are required to be renewed after every three years. As for the Medical Staff Coordinators holding only one of the certifications are required to complete a minimum of 30 continuing education units before the renewal of their credential. While those holding both certifications are required to complete a minimum of 45 continuing education credits.
Benefits of working as a Medical Staff Coordinator
- 401k retirement plan
- Wellness program
- Parental Leave
- Flexible Spending Account
- Employment Assistance program
- AD&D Insurance
- Dental and Vision Insurance
- Disability Insurance
- Life Insurance
- Tuition Reimbursement
- 403b plan
- Competitive base pay
- Paid holidays and time off
Salary of a Medical Staff Coordinator
The average base salary of a medical coordinator is $26.89 per hour which means $55,932 per year for 9 hours, six days a week of work. Being a Medical Staff Coordinator is pretty much a tiresome job and if you look closely, work hours are long but you will enjoy an extensive amount of benefits and salary.
As of 2020, it is reported that the medical staff coordinator earns an average annual salary of $51,558 per year.
It is worth noting that individuals at the lower end of the spectrum, at the bottom 10 percent approximately make about $34,000 annually while the individuals at the upper end of the spectrum at the top 10 percent make about $89,000 per year. Location and the workplace play an important part in estimating the salary of a Medical Staff Coordinator. Places like New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania provide the highest medical staff coordinator salaries.
How to Become a Medical Staff Coordinator?
Most positions of a Medical Staff Coordinator require a bachelor’s degree, and the professionals already in this occupation have two or more degrees in areas related to business or health, health administration, public health administration, business administration, nursing, or health management.
Some employers seek employees with a master’s degree as a view of high experience and knowledge which a master’s degree holder might have. A graduate degree for a Medical Staff Coordinators takes about two to three years for completion and an additional supervision experience at a hospital or a healthcare center.
Individuals looking for a career as Medical Staff Coordinator need further certifications or kind of licensing. All the states in the USA require that health staff coordinators practicing in a health care center must have an appropriate license for practicing and must be trained. So you need to get those licenses and certifications before starting your career as a Medical Staff coordinator.
Nursing or Social worker licenses mostly benefit the coordinators in any area of healthcare, most of the individuals seek to do the additional certification to boost up their knowledge and expertise in their specialties.
If you are a professional and seeking certifications to make your expertise broad in your field, here are some of the popular certification programs which include,
- Certified Medical Manager
- Health Information Management Certification
- Certified Nursing Home Administrator
- Certified Assisted Living Administrator
Conclusion
Lastly, being a Medical Staff Coordinator is a popular career among individuals who have high chances of growth in the healthcare industry as per estimation. However with only a bachelor’s degree, you won’t get a job in this field, it is important to gain enough experience and broaden your knowledge and expertise in the healthcare industry for a successful career as a Medical Staff Coordinator.
