Patient Navigator (Vietnamese)

Asian Health Services, founded in 1974, provides health, social, and advocacy services for all regardless of income, insurance status, immigration status, language, or culture. Our approach to wellbeing focuses on “whole patient health,” which is why we provide more than primary care services, including mental health, case management, nutrition, and dental care to more than 50,000 patients in English and 15 languages: Korean, Lao, Burmese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mien, Karen, Mongolian, Karenni, Tagalog, Khmer, and Vietnamese. We offer medical, dental, and mental health services for all ages.
Location: HMC
JOB SUMMARYContributes as a team member to facilitate and enhance access to, appropriate utilization of, and satisfaction with AHS services by patients and community members.  They help to plan and implement advocacy activities through patient and community education and engagement.  Job functions span duties in Member Services, Support Services, Clinical Services, and Community Services.  The assignment of tasks and the percentage of time spent in each area will be determined by the Community and Patient Relations Manager, in consultation with managers and supervisors in those work areas. This will vary by position and may shift depending on staffing levels (sickness, vacation, leaves) and as patient and community need change.

• Greet and register patients, update patients’ records, and create and distribute forms related to patients’ visits.
• Verify the insurance and financial status of patients and update records.
• Determine and explain to patients the extent of their insurance benefits and payment responsibilities, and collect insurance co-payments.  
• Answer and appropriately handle intercom and phone calls.  Assess callers’ needs and assist them in getting their needs met.
• Facilitate internal and external referrals and appointments:  Schedule, cancel, and reschedule referrals and appointments as needed.  Internally, it includes all AHS services appointments (e.g., medical clinic, eligibility, nutrition, dental, behavioral health, special clinics, health education, etc.).  Externally, includes appointments for specialists, hospitals, clinics, diagnostic testing, treatment, and other organizations providing health and social services. 
• Make daily appointment reminder calls to assigned patients.
• Anticipate and take proactive steps to identify and avoid patient problems.  Facilitate resolution of problems that are within AHS departments, between AHS departments, or involve external organizations, providers, and services. Includes but is not limited to billing issues, medication requests/refills/questions, lab results, specimen collection, equipment loan, eligibility, referrals, etc.
• Assist patients to complete all healthcare-related paperwork, including but not limited to 32 weeks prenatal records, CHDP forms, medical record releases, disability, WIC, pregnancy verification, MSP, and other requests.  Process their paperwork. 
• Assist medical records to pull charts, retrieve or return medical records, respond to requests for Release of Medical Records, copy patient records, and participate in the annual purge of medical records. 
• Carry out phone and mail communications with patients related to their health care needs and AHS treatment and services.  Includes but is not limited to broken appointments.
• Create a welcoming environment in the waiting area that addresses patients’ needs by greeting, scanning for difficulties such as long waits or delays, answering questions, assisting, and directing patients to appropriate services and staff in the organization.  
• Conduct outreach/education activities and patient surveys in the waiting room.
• Provide phone, on-site, and message-relay interpreting services for all healthcare-related interactions between patients and any AHS staff (e.g., front desk interactions, triage, clinicians, billing, perinatal, behavioral health, nutrition, dental, AMSHO, etc.)
• Provide interpreting services during educational workshops and activities, special events, meetings, hearings, media events, and other organizational activities. 
• Observe current codes of ethics and standards of practice for health care interpreting (e.g., interprets all speakers’ messages accurately and completely; transparently carries out various interpreter interventions, such as cultural brokering, to facilitate clear communication between speakers; etc.)
• Sight-translate written materials between English and the language of service.
• Interpret over the phone, on occasion, for other health care organizations and providers.
• Translate written clinic, health education, and organizational materials, acting as primary translator, word-processor, editor, proofreader, and/or back-translator as assigned.