Dental Insurance Verification + Evening Phone Coordinator (Open Dental) - 6AM-3PM PH, Tue-Sat

Evening Surgical Coordinator (Phones, Insurance Verification, Medical Clearances) - 6AM to 3PM Manila, Tue to Sat

READ THE SHIFT FIRST. If it does not work for you, please do not apply.

6:00 AM to 3:00 PM Manila time, Tuesday through Saturday. This is a normal daytime shift in the Philippines. It is not a graveyard shift. It covers the late afternoon and evening in California, which is where our patients are.

From early November to mid-March the shift moves to 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM Manila time, because the United States changes its clocks and the Philippines does not. Same work, same pay, one hour later.

Saturday in Manila is Friday in California, which is why Saturday is a work day and Sunday and Monday are your days off.

ABOUT THE WORK

We are a US dental and oral and maxillofacial surgery practice in Southern California. Oral surgery means wisdom teeth, dental implants, bone grafting, and jaw surgery. Dental means fillings, crowns, cleanings, exams. Patients are often nervous, sometimes in pain, and occasionally frightened. How you speak to them matters more than anything else on this list.

You will be the only person covering our phones in the evening. You will also do the quiet work that has to be finished before the office opens the next morning.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Phones, during your whole shift:

- Answer the practice line. Book, reschedule, cancel, and confirm appointments.
- Sort every call using a written procedure we will train you on, and route the ones that need our dentist or surgeon straight to him.
- Answer questions about hours, location, and what to bring, from a written office profile.
- Take clear messages for the morning team.
- Log every single call, including short ones.

Insurance, nightly:

- Log in to insurance company portals and pull benefit breakdowns for the next day's patients.
- Enter what you find into our practice management system.
- Flag any patient whose coverage will not cover their planned treatment.
- Call the insurance company when the portal does not have the answer.

Surgical coordination, daily and weekly:

- Send medical clearance requests to patients' doctors and cardiologists, using a packet our surgeon has already approved.
- Chase an outstanding clearance on day 3, day 7, and day 10 until it arrives.
- File each returned clearance and flag it for the surgeon to read.
- Confirm anesthesiologist availability against the surgical calendar and send the confirmed case list.
- Confirm with patients that they have followed their fasting instructions and have a ride home.

THE TWO SENTENCES THIS JOB IS BUILT AROUND

You will learn a written procedure, and almost all of it comes down to knowing which of these two things to say.

When a patient describes trouble breathing, swelling in the neck or tongue, or bleeding that will not stop:

"Hang up now and call 911, or go straight to the nearest emergency room. I am telling the doctor right now."

Then you hang up so their line is clear, and you contact the surgeon immediately. You do not stay on the phone talking. You do not take a message. Getting that person to emergency services in the next thirty seconds is the whole job in that moment.

When a patient has any other medical question, and most of them will:

"I am not able to answer that, and I do not want to guess. Let me get the doctor for you."

Pain that is not controlled, swelling on day three, a stitch that came out, a question about medication. None of that is a 911 call, and sending those patients to an emergency room would be its own kind of harm. Those calls go to the surgeon.

WHAT YOU WILL NEVER DO

- You will never give medical advice, of any kind, to anyone.
- You will never tell a patient that a symptom is normal, or that it is serious.
- You will never say anything about medication, dosage, or timing.
- You will never read a medical clearance and d ---------- whether surgery can go ahead.
- You will never d ---------- , on your own, that a call is not worth passing on.

If you are unsure which of the two sentences a call needs, you use the first one. Nobody here will ever criticise you for sending someone to an emergency room, or for waking the surgeon.

We are hiring someone who can say both of those sentences calmly, at 11pm, for the fourth time that night, without feeling bad about either one.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

This is a dental role. We are not hiring a general virtual assistant and training them on dentistry.

Required:

- At least 2 years working with US dental insurance. Verifying benefits, calling carriers, reading a breakdown, understanding annual maximums, deductibles, waiting periods, and downgrades. This is the part of the job we cannot teach you quickly, so it is the part we will test hardest.
- Hands-on experience in a dental practice management system, working a live schedule: booking, moving, and cancelling real patients without breaking the day.
- Excellent spoken English. Clear, calm, easy to understand on a phone line. We will screen this by phone, so please do not apply if writing is your strength and speaking is not.
- At least 2 years in a role where you spoke to customers or patients by phone in English.
- Comfortable being the only person on duty, making decisions from a written procedure without anyone to ask.
- Persistent. A large part of this job is getting an answer from an office that has not called you back three times.
- Careful with details. Wrong insurance information causes a real problem for a real person.

Strongly preferred:

- Open Dental specifically. That is what we run, in both of our offices. If you have used Dentrix or Eaglesoft instead, still apply. Insurance knowledge is what we are screening for, and we will train you on our system.
- General dentistry, Oral surgery, periodontics, or another surgical specialty.

Not required:

- A clinical or nursing background. This is not a clinical role and we are not asking you to be one.

EQUIPMENT AND CONNECTION

You are the only person answering the phone. If your connection drops, nobody answers.

- Reliable wired internet, 20 Mbps or better, with a second connection you can switch to.
- Backup power that keeps your computer and internet running for at least 3 hours.
- A quiet room with a door. Not a shared space, not a cafe.
- A noise-cancelling USB headset.
- A working computer, plus a phone you can use as a backup for calls.

Tell us in your application what your backup plan is when the power goes out. We ask everyone.

PAY AND TERMS

- $1,900 per month, for 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month.
- Independent contractor. You work from the Philippines.
- Paid every week for the first month, then twice a month. Fixed dates. We have never missed one and we do not intend to.
- Paid through Wise. We pay the transfer fee, so the amount above is what lands in your account.
- A retention bonus each December, equal to one month's fee. In the Philippines this is what 13th month pay does. As a foreign client hiring a contractor we are not covered by that law, so we pay it as a bonus instead, and we intend to pay it every year you are with us.
- Paid trial task before any offer, described below.
- Long term. We are hiring one person to grow with this practice, not filling a gap.

Because you will handle US patient information, before you start you will sign a confidentiality agreement and a US healthcare privacy agreement, complete a short HIPAA training we provide, and give us a current NBI clearance issued within the last six months. We reimburse the fee. You will get your own named logins, and we do not share accounts with anyone.

HOW WE HIRE

1. We read your application. Most are rejected here, because most do not follow the instructions below.
2. A phone interview, in English, scheduled during your proposed shift hours.
3. A paid trial: a set of recorded practice calls where you handle scenarios from our written procedure. No real patient information is used. We pay you $50 for the trial whether or not we hire you, in the same week you complete it.
4. Offer in writing, with the scope, shift, rate, and payment dates all stated.

About the NBI clearance. If we move forward after the phone interview, we will ask you to start your NBI clearance then rather than after an offer, so that a name match does not push back your start date. Most clearances are released the same day, within about half an hour of biometrics. A name match sent for manual review can take 5 to 15 working days, which is why we ask early. If yours is already current and issued within the last six months, send it and skip this. We reimburse the fee either way, including if we do not end up hiring you.

HOW TO APPLY

Applications that skip any step are not read. This is the first test.

SUBJECT LINE: `EVENING COORDINATOR - [your city] - [your internet speed]`

In your message, answer these five, briefly:

1. Describe a time you needed information from someone who kept not responding to you. What did you actually do, step by step, and how did it end?
2. A patient calls you at 10:00 PM. She had surgery this morning. She says her face is swelling and she is having trouble breathing. What do you do, in order?
3. Which dental practice management systems have you worked in, and for how long in each?
4. A patient's plan has a $1,500 annual maximum with $400 already used this year, and a $50 deductible not yet met. The planned treatment is $1,200, covered at 80%. What does the plan pay, and what does the patient owe?
5. What is your backup plan when your power or internet goes out during a shift?

ATTACH A VOICE RECORDING, 90 seconds maximum. Any format. In it:

- Say your name and where you live.
- Read both of these aloud, as if you were saying them to a real patient on the phone:
(a) "Hang up now and call 911, or go straight to the nearest emergency room. I am telling the doctor right now."
(b) "I am not able to answer that, and I do not want to guess. Let me get the doctor for you."
- Then answer, in your own words: why do you want a job where you are told not to help with the hardest question a caller will ask you?

We reply to every applicant who completes all of the above.