Orthopedic Surgery Scheduler job description.

Orthopedic Surgery Scheduler · [Practice Name] · [Location] · [Full-time]

About the practice: [2 sentences: specialty focus, locations, providers, what makes the team worth joining.]

The role: Owns the path from surgical decision to operating room: authorization, facility coordination, patient preparation, and the surgeon's block utilization.

Responsibilities:

• Schedule surgical cases across hospital and ASC sites against surgeon block time
• Obtain and track prior authorizations for procedures and pre-surgical imaging; escalate stalled auths before they threaten case dates
• Coordinate pre-admission testing, clearances, and vendor/rep needs for each case
• Prepare and communicate patient instructions: arrival, NPO, medication holds per the practice's protocols
• Maintain the surgical pipeline in the EMR with accurate case detail (procedure, laterality, implants, facility)
• Fill block-time gaps from the pending-case list when cancellations occur
• Track authorization expirations and global-period follow-up scheduling

Required:

• 2+ years scheduling surgery or equivalent complex medical scheduling
• Working knowledge of prior authorization processes across major payers
• High accuracy under volume; a wrong-side or wrong-facility error is not recoverable

Preferred:

• Orthopedic or spine surgical scheduling background
• Familiarity with CPT coding for orthopedic procedures
• Experience coordinating between hospital OR desks and ASCs

Compensation: [Set from local data; commonly listed ranges run $21 to $28 per hour on national job boards, with experienced schedulers in high-volume practices above that.] Benefits: [health, PTO, retirement, CME as applicable]

• A payer has not approved an auth and the case is 5 days out. Walk me through your escalation.
• A patient cancels a Thursday total knee on Monday. What happens next in your world?
• How do you verify laterality and procedure detail before a case is posted?
• What is your system for tracking 30 open authorizations at once?
• Tell me about a scheduling error you caught before it became a problem.