Practice Manager – Paediatric Hearing & Allied Health

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Our client is an Australian paediatric hearing services business that assesses children's hearing across clinic, school and home-visit settings, and delivers a growing program of hearing screenings in schools across NSW (expanding to 30–40 schools next year). Billing is mostly through Medicare and private patients, with a small but growing number of NDIS-funded families. The business is led by its Practice Owner, who this role reports to directly, supported by a small team of audiologists and casual screeners.

ABOUT THE ROLE

A full-time Practice Manager role — in Australian healthcare, this sits above a medical receptionist, owning the administrative and operational back end of the clinic (patient and referral administration, reporting, scheduling and compliance) rather than front-desk reception duties.

The role is split across two core areas: day-to-day patient and referral administration in the practice's patient management system, and end-to-end coordination of the school hearing screening program — from first enquiry through to the results summary sent back to each school.

This role is trusted with genuinely confidential information — referrals, clinical reports, Medicare and patient details, and student data — so accuracy and discretion matter on every task, not just the obvious ones.

This role is not asked to just follow instructions — it's expected to review its own work, ask questions, and genuinely learn a process once rather than needing it re-taught.

Day to day, this role works independently across several systems (a patient/practice management system, Excel, Outlook, Canva, SharePoint) and will regularly hit things that don't quite fit the standard process — a missing referral, a doctor not yet in the system, a parent's booking details not matching their child's. The right person investigates and resolves what they can before escalating, rather than deferring every question upward.

There's a lighter, ongoing layer of practice support on top of this — scheduling and rostering audiologists and casual screeners, social media content, SOP updates and compliance record-keeping — that adds variety without taking priority over the patient and school-screening workload.

PRIMARY PURPOSE

To independently and accurately manage patient and referral administration, and to coordinate the school hearing screening program end to end — on schedule, with genuine attention to detail and confidentiality — while escalating only genuine exceptions rather than routine questions.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Patient & Referral Administration

• Upload doctor referrals to the correct patient profile, and create new patient records directly from an incoming referral
• Create new doctor contacts in the system, sourcing correct details from the referral or the practice's website
• Send completed clinical reports to doctors and parents once clinicians have finished them, and prepare clinician letters, including uploading the relevant audiogram
• Keep patient profiles accurate and complete — correct formatting, Medicare details and contact information

School Screening Coordination

• Manage enquiries from prospective schools and keep a database of contacted, interested, confirmed and declined schools
• Reach out to returning schools each year to confirm the following year's screening dates, and manage the confirmation, flyer, e-contract and parent-broadcast process for each
• Maintain the school screening schedule and prepare each school's screening list ahead of time, sending reminders at one month, two weeks and one day before the visit
• Support the day of the screening visit remotely, including flagging any new bookings that come through
• Process each school's PASS/REFER results after the visit, prepare the summary report, and update the master database

Staffing, Systems & Practice Support

• Schedule and roster audiologists and casual screeners across clinic, school and home-visit services
• Maintain accuracy across the practice management system, Excel trackers and the practice's master database
• Support updates to SOPs and clinic guides, and help keep the staff compliance register (working with children checks, first aid, insurance, equipment calibration) current
• Coordinate university clinical placement enquiries — sending the clinical handbook and information to new students and organising an introductory call

Marketing & Content Support

• Help produce 2–3 educational social media posts per week aimed at schools and parents, and support content scheduling

Communication & Judgement

• Ask a specific, informed question rather than guessing or defaulting to escalation — investigate first using the available data and SOPs
• Recognise the difference between an inbound referral (confidential, internal use only) and an outbound report (requires parent consent to share) and handle each correctly
• Own a mistake immediately and follow the correct process rather than hoping it goes unnoticed

Working Hours

• Full-time, aligned to Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) business hours, working the same calendar as the Australian-based team

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• Referrals, reports and patient records are accurate, complete and handled confidentially — first time, every time
• A process taught once, through training, SOPs or videos, doesn't need to be retaught
• Small discrepancies — a mismatched count, a missing contact — are caught and resolved independently, with only genuine exceptions brought to the Practice Owner
• School screening visits run to schedule from first outreach through to the results summary, with nothing missed along the way
• The Practice Owner can hand over patient and student information without needing to double-check the work behind it

MUST-HAVE (ESSENTIAL)

• 3+ years' hands-on experience as a Practice Manager or running a clinic's admin — worth more than a formal qualification alone
• Meticulous attention to detail — checks their own work rather than assuming it's right, especially with patient and clinical information
• Learns a new system quickly from training and SOPs, retains it, and follows it independently without needing the same thing re-taught
• Genuine initiative — investigates a discrepancy using the data and SOPs available, and comes back with a specific question rather than deferring everything upward
• Understands, or can quickly learn, the difference between a confidential referral and an outbound report — and handles each correctly
• Comfortable in a patient/practice management system alongside Excel and Outlook — can sort/filter data and spot a broken list
• Discreet and professional handling genuinely confidential patient and student health information
• Strong organisational skills to manage several school screening visits at once against fixed deadlines
• Comfortable asking questions and raising concerns directly rather than waiting to be asked
• Own computer/laptop and a private home office suitable for full-time remote work
• Available full-time on hours aligned to Australian business hours (AEST)

NICE-TO-HAVE (DESIRABLE)

• A formal qualification in practice management or healthcare administration (a bonus, not a substitute for experience)
• Familiarity with a patient/practice management system such as Splose, Cliniko or Halaxy
• Experience with Canva, SharePoint and/or scheduling social media content for a business
• Experience coordinating with schools or in the education sector
• Familiarity with NDIS-funded client coordination (most billing here is Medicare/private)

Required Experience

• 3+ years' hands-on experience as a Practice Manager, or running the administration of a clinic or similar healthcare/allied health setting — this hands-on experience matters more than a formal qualification on its own
• Comfortable handling confidential or sensitive information as a matter of course — healthcare, allied health, education or a similar regulated setting preferred
• Demonstrated ability to learn a new system or process from training or SOPs and follow it independently afterwards, without repeated re-training
• Comfortable working across multiple systems at once (a patient/practice management system, Excel, Outlook) to coordinate multi-step, deadline-driven work
• Able to work full time on hours aligned to Australian business hours (AEST)

Required Skills

• High attention to detail — checks their own work rather than assuming it's correct, particularly with names, dates, contact details and clinical information
• Solid working Excel skills — comfortable sorting and filtering data and spotting when a formula or list looks broken; doesn't need to be formula-building level, but needs to trust and verify what the spreadsheet is showing
• Genuine initiative — investigates a discrepancy or unclear situation before escalating it, and asks a specific question rather than a general one
• Strong written English for professional correspondence with doctors, schools and parents, and comfortable asking questions and raising concerns directly
• Comfortable and discreet handling confidential patient and student information
• Own computer/laptop and a private home office suitable for full-time remote work

Highly Desirable

• experience matters more)
• Experience with Canva, SharePoint and/or scheduling social media content for a business
• Experience coordinating with schools or in the education sector
• Familiarity with a patient/practice management system such as Splose, Cliniko or Halaxy
• Familiarity with NDIS-funded client coordination — most billing here is Medicare and private, but some families use NDIS funding