Referral Specialist Lead - USFTGP Physician Services Healthpark Clinics

The Referral Specialist Lead provides day to day operational support and oversight for referral and front desk functions to ensure timely, accurate, and compliant patient access processes. Supports onboarding and orientation for front desk, referral specialist, and surgical scheduler staff; monitors referral work queues and financial operations; conducts quality audits; and provides coaching to reinforce standards and improve performance. Serves as a key resource for staff and leadership, supports process improvement initiatives, ensures HIPAA compliance, and assists with coverage during high volume periods, staff absences, or operational disruptions. Responsible for performing job duties in accordance with mission, vision, and values of USFTGP.

Essential Functions: 

• Provides day-to-day functional leadership for referral and patient access operations, serving as the primary escalation point for complex referrals, scheduling issues, and authorization challenges. 
• Oversees referral workflow performance, ensuring consistent adherence to timeliness standards, patient access benchmarks, and organizational expectations. 
• Coordinates and prioritizes work across referral queues, messages, and calls to balance workload, mitigate delays, and maintain service continuity. 
• Partners with clinical leaders, providers, and operational stakeholders to resolve systemic referral and scheduling barriers and improve end-to-end patient access. 
• Ensures accurate routing, tracking, and documentation of referral and appointment activity in the EHR, supporting compliance, reporting, and operational visibility. 
• Reviews referral trends, recurring errors, and access delays, recommending process improvements and supporting implementation of workflow changes. 
• Provides training, and is a resource to staff on referral processing, scheduling standards, insurance verification, and authorization workflows. 
• Supports onboarding and ongoing competency development for referral staff, reinforcing standard work, quality expectations, and patient experience principles.
• Serves as a liaison between frontline staff and leadership, escalating risks, capacity concerns, or compliance issues as appropriate. 
• Ensures adherence to HIPAA, regulatory requirements, and organizational policies, promoting a culture of accountability, accuracy, and patient-centered care. 
• Obtains authorizations required for patient visits, procedure, surgeries and medication to be approved by payer, as applicable. 
• Assist with daily cash drawer close issues, support payment related questions, run reconciliation reports and assist with ensuring accurate cash handling 
• Support team coverage during high-volume periods or staff absences. 
• To support team-based care and ensure consistent patient access, team members may occasionally be asked to float to other clinic locations based on staffing needs. Every effort will be made to provide advance notice when possible