Patient Advocate Specialist (Hybrid) - Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
Patient Funding Alternatives
About the role
The Patient Advocate Specialist identifies, educates, and enrolls eligible hospital patients into the Health Insurance Premium Payment (HIPP) program. HIPP lets medically complex Medicaid beneficiaries access employer-sponsored coverage alongside their Medicaid benefits, which opens up broader networks and more comprehensive care.
This is a full-time hybrid role, covering on-site as needed, based at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. You are PFA's face inside those buildings.
Read this part carefully, because it is the part people misjudge. The day-to-day of this job looks a lot like a sales role. You work a referral list. You approach patients and families who did not ask to speak with you, often on a difficult day. You explain something unfamiliar in 3 minutes, answer the same 5 objections you heard yesterday, and follow up 4 or 5 times to get one form back. You are measured every week on activity and results. Nothing is being sold and there is no commission pitch, but the skills that make someone good at sales are the same skills that make someone good at this: persistence, comfort with rejection, reading a room, and running your own day without someone assigning your next task.
The people who do this best pair those skills with a real belief in what the program does for patients. One without the other does not hold up.
What you'll do
Patient engagement and advocacy
- Identify and approach eligible patients and families from hospital referrals and daily census review.
- Explain HIPP clearly and compassionately, adapting how you communicate to each family's situation.
- Work through hesitation, confusion, and mistrust without pressuring anyone.
- Gather the authorizations and documentation needed to move an application forward.
- Build trust with patients while holding professional boundaries.
Enrollment and case management
- Collect complete, accurate application data: employer details, plan information, premium costs, dependent information.
- Solve problems before they stall a case, including unresponsive employers, missing paperwork, and eligibility questions.
- Hand off cleanly to PFA's State Operations and Benefit & Advocacy teams so applications get submitted, approved, and supported after enrollment.
- Own your caseload from first contact to enrollment.
Program maintenance and benefit coordination
- Explain how employer coverage and Medicaid work together.
- Verify and update ongoing eligibility so families do not lose coverage.
- Help patients resolve insurance issues as they come up.
Documentation and systems
- Manage referrals and patient records in PFA's CRM.
- Upload, scan, and transmit documentation securely.
- Document every patient interaction in line with HIPAA and internal compliance standards.
- Work comfortably on an iPad and iPhone throughout the day.
Hospital relationships
- Represent PFA on-site as the primary contact for hospital staff.
- Build working relationships with case managers, social workers, financial counselors, state agency contacts, and community partners.
- Protect PFA's reputation inside the health system through how you handle every interaction.
How success is measured
This role sits in a metrics-driven environment, and we are direct about that from the first interview. You will have weekly and monthly targets, review them with your manager regularly, and see your own numbers.
The measures include:
- Patients contacted and screened
- Applications started and completed
- Referral-to-enrollment conversion rate
- Time from first contact to submitted application
- Documentation accuracy and compliance
- Ongoing eligibility renewals maintained
People who like knowing where they stand tend to enjoy this. People who prefer work that is not counted usually do not stay.