Medical Office
Services Provided
Medical office specialists work in physicians' offices, hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and other health care settings. Their responsibilities range from greeting patients and visitors to assisting technicians with laboratory work.
Job Duties
- Greet patients and visitors
- Schedule patient appointments
- Keep patients' records accurately filed, updated, and organized
- Complete and submit insurance forms
- Phone in prescription orders and refills to pharmacies
- Process billing
- Transcribe dictation and other recordings
- Handle phone calls, mail, and e-mail
- Communicate with patients about labs and other test results
- Help lab technicians and assist in patient treatment as needed
In order to work as a medical office assistant, you’ll need to have completed a MOA certificate program, which generally takes about eight months, followed by work experience. This provides you with specialized medical administration skills and a range of clerical and administrative skills.
Medical assistants earned an average wage of $14.51 per hour as of 2011, which works out to an average salary of about $30,170 per year. The middle-earning 50 percent of medical assistants received hourly wages of between $11.86and $16.87 an hour.