Medical Secretary

A medical secretary is a person who performs various administrative and supportive tasks for practitioners, depending on the practice requirements, and is an important link between the practitioner and their patients. As well as normal secretarial duties they will usually require knowledge of medical terminology and familiarity with various medical procedures and business practices. The medical secretary can be based on-site at one of the practitioner's places of work, e.g. a hospital, clinic or private consulting room, or can work remotely, even being based at their own home. They may also be known as a Personal Assistant (PA) or Practice Manager and their main duties are generally:

patient liaison, always by telephone and often face-to-face
appointment scheduling
billing patients and dealing with payments (this function is often undertaken by a third-party organisation)
compiling and recording medical charts, reports and correspondence
general office filing and administration, including dealing with incoming and outgoing mail
dealing with incoming and outgoing emails
providing support to the practitioner and possibly other medical staff

Further duties can include marketing, practice accounting and anything else the practitioner requires in order to run their practice.

Medical secretaries can work for the practitioner on a part-time or full-time basis and can be:

employed directly by the practitioner
self-employed
employed by a company that provides secretarial support
formally employed by the NHS but working additional hours supporting the practitioner's private practice

Data elements required and their visibility to insurer and hospital organisations:

FIELD	DESCRIPTION	INSURER	HOSPITAL
Med Sec Title	The standard form of address used to proceed the medical secretary's name.
Name	The combination of words by which the medical secretary is called or known. Further details on this separate standard can be found here.
Med Sec Contact Type	The preferred address of the medical secretary, whether correspondence, billing or at a listed private practice facility.
Address - correspondence	Indication of which correspondence address is to be linked to the medical secretary. This can either be the address of a private medical facility used by the practitioner or another address, inputted by the practitioner. Further details on this separate standard can be found here.
Telecoms - correspondence	The telecommunications associated with the correspondence address. Further details on this separate standard can be found here.
Address - billing	Indication of which billing address is to be linked to the medical secretary. This can either be the address of a private medical facility used by the practitioner or another address, inputted by the practitioner. Further details on this separate standard can be found here.
Telecoms - billing	The telecommunications associated with the billing address. Further details on this separate standard can be found here.
Primary Telecom	The preferred method of contact for the medical secretary from a choice of email, telephone, mobile and fax.
Med Sec Working Hours	The start and finish times, allocated by days of the week, that the medical secretary is working for the practitioner at that address and any associated private medical facility.
Hospitals/ Practices Managed	The site(s) where the practitioner sees patients and which is/are managed by the named medical secretary.

Red = Mandatory Blue = Conditional Green = Automatically populated