Medical Assistant Floater Job Description

The majority of medical assistants including the Certified Medical Assistants (CMA) and Registered Medical Assistants (RMA) are employed in the doctor’s and physician’s offices, hospitals, nursing homes, clinics and in a number of health care providers. In the same way, a medical assistant floater also works for different doctors and physicians in a huge medical practice or a health care setups. Such medical assistant floaters will have to perform clerical, clinical, accounting, laboratory and managerial duties.

In addition, the exact duties of a medical assistant floater or a hospital floater shall be widely different among different health care offices. Under the direct supervision of a chief nursing administrator or a designee, a medical assistant floater will be responsible for eligibility screening of the patients, front office duties, responding to the questions of the patients and providing the essential information to the patients and other staffs. In general, the medical assistant floater position will bestow a strong support and assistance in an assortment of health care settings. No doubt, medical assistant floater salary is also determined by his job capabilities.

Job Descriptions and Duties of a Medical Assistant Floater

Floating duties

At all times, a medical assistant floater job description is expected to be very flexible. He or she might have to concentrate more on clerical responsibilities in one medical office and immediately switch his or her concentration towards medical duties in another health care setting.

If truth be told, the medical assistant floaters should have to prepare, review and understand their job responsibilities each morning. This is because medical assistant floaters will have the need to work in different health care settings every day. At all times, a medical assistant floater should be able to convey excellent and outstanding customer service. He or she should be able to work in a quick paced medical setting and should multi-task during emergency situations and whenever needed. They should clearly understand the place of work and the exact role of their job every day and should be able to carry deep involvement and dedication in order to meet their job responsibilities in an efficient manner.

If a medical assistant floater is employed in a medical practice that has several branches in different places, he or she may have to take a trip to various parts of a state or city (to work in different branches of the original medical office) every day. For this reason, a medical assistant floater should have a great revelation, knowledge and good work experience in an assortment of primary health care and specialty doctors’ offices.

Administrative and clerical duties

A medical assistant floater job includes the capability to perform the duties of a receptionist as well as the front office administration. In few hospitals, she or he might answer to the phone calls, schedule doctor’s appointments for the patients and register the incoming patients at the office front desk. In some medical offices, patients may simply walk-in without any prior appointments when there is an emergency situation. In such circumstances, a hospital floater should be in charge for the triage. In this situation hospital floater job description becomes tougher than usual.

Clerical jobs on computer

Most of the time a medical assistant floater performs clerical work on computer, which may take account of duties such as:

• Computer data entry.
• Spreadsheet preparation.
• Patients’ health records update.
• Word processing of emails, posts and letters.
• Filling up the Insurance forms and bills.
• Filling up patients’ medical forms and fetching the essential information for reviewing a patient’s health history.
• Help out in providing patient medical appointments and maintaining a register (log) book.
• Examining the patients’ charts for completing the essential medical forms and the doctor’s orders.
• Offering support in billing processes.
• Ordering learning materials, other essential forms, office and clinical supplies as desirable.

Medical duties

A medical assistant floater must also be capable of doing clinical or medical duties. On the other hand, he or she should understand that the medical duties may show a discrepancy from one health care setting to the other. In addition, a medical assistant floater should work for different doctors and physicians who may specialize in different areas of medicine.

A medical assistant floater may perform the following medical duties (in different medical settings) such as:

• Accomplish preliminary patient evaluation, triage and record the imperative signs in accordance with the regular procedures and protocols.
• A medical assistant floater will document the health histories of the patients and clearly explains the following medical procedures to the patients.
• Records the patients’ vital signs, for instance the blood pressure, heart rate and draw blood samples from the patients for further testing purposes.
• Get hold of the specimens for analytical testing in accordance with the regular procedures and protocols.
• Give a hand to the doctor or physician during patient examination.
• Gather and contribute essential information with the purpose of reporting.
• He or she may also have to prepare the patients for taking X-rays.
• He or she may remove sutures and will also be responsible for changing the dressings of the patients in a hygienic way.
• He or she may have to perform Veni-puncture to the patients (if needed) and also should be able to administer injections (if needed).
• May have to help out surgeons with minor medical procedures and surgeries.
• A health care setting shall need a medical assistant floater to prepare, arrange, clean up and fill up (re-fill) essential medical supplies in the patient examination rooms.
• He or she may have to sanitize and disinfect medical tools, equipments and other surgical utensils.

Laboratory duties

The Laboratory duties of a medical assistant floater may include:

• Take blood samples, pap smears for women, throat cultures and urine specimens for further examination.
• A few medical assistant floaters may perform fundamental laboratory tests on these specimens as well. Subsequently, they record the test results on the forms and on the computer records.