What are the responsibilities and job description for the Director of Patient Access & Revenue Cycle position at Elevate Physical Therapy?
Elevate Physical Therapy | Priceville, Alabama
Full-Time Leadership Position
Elevate Physical Therapy is seeking an experienced Director of Patient Access & Revenue Cycle to lead the administrative and revenue-cycle operations of our growing outpatient physical therapy practice.
This is not a traditional front-desk manager or billing specialist position.
We are looking for an experienced healthcare professional who understands the entire patient and revenue cycle—from the first phone call and insurance verification through authorization, billing, payment, denial management, accounts receivable, and final resolution of the patient's account.
The right person will be capable of leading people, building systems, solving problems, and taking ownership of results.
As Elevate grows, this individual will help build the administrative infrastructure necessary to support additional clinic locations.
Lead and continuously improve:
- New-patient intake and referrals
- Patient scheduling
- Registration and demographic accuracy
- Insurance information
- Eligibility and benefits
- Referrals and prescriptions
- Intake and consent forms
- Patient check-in and check-out
- Ongoing scheduling
- Cancellation and waitlist management
- Collection of patient responsibility
- Patient communication
- Front-office workflow and customer service
Develop and oversee reliable processes for:
- Insurance verification
- Benefits interpretation
- Therapy-specific insurance requirements
- Prior authorization
- Authorized visit tracking
- Authorization expiration
- Referral and prescription requirements
- Communication of patient financial responsibility
- Prevention of avoidable authorization-related denials
Maintain strong working knowledge and oversight of:
- Charge capture
- CPT and ICD-10 fundamentals
- Claim creation and submission
- Clearinghouse workflows
- Claim rejections
- ERA/EOB review
- Payment posting
- Contractual adjustments
- Secondary billing
- Denial management
- Appeals
- Insurance follow-up
- Accounts receivable
- Aging
- Patient balances and collections
- Refunds and credits
- Timely filing
- Medicare outpatient therapy requirements
- Commercial payer requirements
Elevate currently utilizes an outsourced revenue-cycle partner.
The Director will serve as Elevate's internal owner of revenue-cycle performance and will be expected to:
- Monitor A/R and aging
- Monitor denials and rejection trends
- Identify unresolved claims
- Review reimbursement trends
- Investigate recurring payer problems
- Monitor significant adjustments and write-offs
- Identify potential revenue leakage
- Ensure internal staff respond to billing requests
- Escalate unresolved problems
- Hold outside billing partners accountable
Outsourcing billing does not mean outsourcing ownership.
A critical requirement for this position is the ability to lead a future transition from outsourced billing to an internal billing operation if Elevate determines that bringing billing in-house is strategically appropriate.
The successful candidate should have the knowledge and leadership ability to:
- Develop the transition plan
- Determine staffing requirements
- Recruit and train billing personnel
- Establish internal billing workflows
- Coordinate with the EMR, clearinghouse, payers, and billing vendor
- Develop claim-submission processes
- Establish payment-posting procedures
- Build denial-management and A/R workflows
- Develop patient collections processes
- Establish billing SOPs
- Train and audit billing personnel
- Establish revenue-cycle KPIs
- Protect cash flow during the transition
- Lead implementation through stabilization
Experience personally leading a billing transition, building an internal billing department, changing billing vendors, or implementing a major revenue-cycle system is highly desirable.
This individual will lead Elevate's Patient Access and administrative revenue-cycle team.
The Director will be expected to:
- Establish clear responsibilities
- Train employees to competency
- Delegate effectively
- Develop written processes and SOPs
- Monitor performance
- Coach and develop employees
- Address performance problems
- Cross-train the department
- Improve inefficient workflows
- Implement accountability systems
- Solve problems before they unnecessarily reach executive leadership
We are looking for someone who does not simply identify problems.
We want someone who takes ownership of solving them.
The ideal candidate is:
- Highly organized
- Detail-oriented
- Proactive
- Accountable
- Comfortable leading others
- Excellent with patients
- Strong with technology
- Able to learn systems quickly
- Confident communicating expectations
- Able to prioritize in a busy environment
- Comfortable analyzing numbers and reports
- Able to identify root causes
- Capable of building systems rather than relying on memory
- Comfortable making decisions within established authority
- Humble enough to receive feedback
- Driven to continually improve
Strong candidates should ideally possess:
- 5 years of medical billing/revenue-cycle experience
- Meaningful experience managing A/R and denials
- Leadership or supervisory experience
- Experience training billing or administrative personnel
- Insurance eligibility and authorization experience
- Medicare and commercial payer experience
- Experience with EMR/practice-management systems
- Experience with clearinghouses and payer portals
- Experience developing or improving revenue-cycle workflows
Experience in outpatient physical therapy, rehabilitation, orthopedics, or another insurance-intensive medical specialty is strongly preferred.
Experience with Prompt is beneficial but not required.
Success in this role means:
Patients receive excellent service.
Administrative processes are organized and reliable.
Insurance and authorization problems are identified before they become billing problems.
A/R is actively managed.
Denials are investigated instead of simply accepted.
Outside billing partners are held accountable.
Employees understand their responsibilities.
The department does not depend on one person's memory.
Problems are solved at the appropriate level.
Leadership receives accurate information about revenue-cycle performance.
And routine administrative issues no longer require constant Owner/CEO intervention.
Our mission is:
To honor God by serving others with exceptional physical therapy that restores function, renews hope, and elevates lives.
Our core values are:
Faith | Service | Excellence | Joy
We are building more than a physical therapy clinic. Our vision is to develop an exceptional organization that serves our patients, develops our people, and grows throughout North Alabama.