MedCall Center Agent (Transfer Center Coordinator) – Day/Evening Shift, FT Flex

MedCall Central PA is a rapidly growing “command center” for patient access to care. We provide centralized bed placement, transfer center, and capacity management functions for all of UPMC Central PA. We have tripled in our transfer intake volume in the last 3 years. We are mission critical, with support from the highest levels of UPMC leadership (both locally and in Pittsburgh). We provide an experience that gives team members exposure to the inner workings of hospitals, as well as valuable experience in working with providers, nursing, and other departments collaboratively. Through the transfer center, we offer advanced resources for all aspects of patient referrals, including urgent and non-urgent transfers, direct admissions, and provider-to-provider consultation. Our transfer center coordinators work directly with providers to document patient information and facilitate timely transfers. MedCall uses escalation processes to expedite transfers when needed. All incoming calls are recorded for quality assurance and patient safety. Because of these characteristics, calling MedCall is the most efficient and timely way to transport a patient at UPMC. Our centralized patient placement department is responsible for managing, coordinating, and communicating activities related to bed assignment and patient flow. Our team strategizes to organize patient placement for each campus from all sources, including incoming transfers, direct admissions, ED admissions, post-procedural cases, and more. They work in tandem with our house supervisors, directors of nursing and chief nursing officers to actively create plans to provide the right patient the right bed at the right time. In addition, we partner with UPMC Community LifeTeam EMS (ground) and Stat MedEvac (air) to facilitate timely transports for our patients. By aligning all of these assets (and more), we optimize our resource utilization to allow safe, efficient, and collaborative care on behalf of our patients

Responsibilities:

• Manage, coordinate and communicate all activities related to patient movement and flow.
• Provide a single point of contact to assist referring providers (scope unlimited, local and worldwide) with emergent and non-emergent transfers, direct admissions and consults into MedCall Central PA.
• Efficiently manage referral and transfer of patients to align with most appropriate UPMC Central PA resources, determining level of care and affirming need for transfer while providing continuum of care for all patients.
• Maximize provider and patient satisfaction when accessing UPMC Central PA resources.
• Ensure patient safety by optimizing alignment of transport assets via integration with UPMC Community LifeTeam with clinical condition of patient.
• Coordinate internal and external facility transport. 
• Work collaboratively to manage communication between various services (physicians, APPs, RNs, unit directors, House Supervisors, etc) to efficiently place the right patient in the right bed at the right time.
• Performs all bed placement activities for all 7 UPMC Central PA facilities.
• Utilize critical thinking to operationalize all strategies related to capacity management, including but not limited to triaging transfer requests, enacting facility capacity plans, regional load balancing, etc.
• Provide supplemental assistance to other departmental functions including internal medicine physician assignment, provider notification of inpatient consults, scheduling of observation unit outpatient services, and off-hours registration activity.
• Efficiently and accurately transcribe all relevant documentation related to patient movement, bed placement, and transfer center intake.
• Maintain a familiarity with internal systems available and necessary in the performance of the job.
• Ability to utilize multiple communication methods within the department.
• Assist in the onboarding of new employees, including primary preceptorship over the transfer and direct admission process.
• Meet departmental benchmarks related to call handling, agent performance, and bed placement metrics. 
• Maintain an awareness of services and capabilities of UPMC facilities in support of the outreach efforts of MedCall Central PA.
•  Appropriate escalation of any issues or problems as determined by departmental protocols.