Medical Office Specialist, SCERT

Short-Term Certificate: (SCERT-MES)

About the Program

This Medical Office Specialist Short-Term Certificate is a short-term program established to prepare students for employment in physician’s offices, medical insurance companies and hospital offices. Some of the duties of a Medical Office Specialist include, but are not limited to, preparing patient insurance claims, processing accounts payable and accounts receivable, scheduling appointments, preparing patient files, coordinating the patient filing system, preparing medical correspondence, processing medical records, and scheduling hospital admissions.

Certificate Goals

• To prepare students to gain employment in a health care system or private practice medical office environment
• To prepare students with the complete skill set to assist a health care provider in all medical office, administration and support needs

Certificate Outcomes

• Apply customer service skills to interact professionally among clients, colleagues, and other health care professionals
• Utilize both oral and written skills to effectively communicate and interact with health care professionals, colleagues, administration and customers to enhance satisfaction
• Apply skills to find, build, research, manage and report both electronic and paper data efficiently
• Apply coding manual data to the billing process accurately
• Utilize knowledge and skills of medical terminology, code sets, reimbursement methodologies and regulations to accurately and thoroughly assign respective code sets
• Be able to compose well written medical correspondence
• Be able to maintain provider appointment schedules
• Understand all relevant medical terminology
• Establish and maintain accurate patient charts and electronic medical records with confidentiality
• Prepare insurance claims, referrals and prior authorizations accurately
• Perform medical billing, analyzing patient accounts and apply collection procedures
• Practice confidentiality, as well as legal and ethical standards

Admission Requirements

Students are required to do the following:

• Fulfill all WCCCD admission requirements
• Fulfill course placement requirements based on the ACCUPLACER^® assessment
• Complete a WCCCD Program Application and submit to the Campus Academic Officer