Patient Relations Assistant

Patient Relations Assistant

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): West Palm Beach, Florida

Salary Range: $43384 - $56399 Per Year

Job Summary: The incumbent serves as a Program Support Assistant Guest Relations for Patient Advocacy with primary duties and responsibilities supporting the Veteran Experience Officer. The position is in Patient Advocate Section under the Veteran Experience Officer. The incumbent is physically located at or near a main entrance of the campus and/or supporting the Information Desk. This position has the direct support for Guest Relations Information, Escort Services and wheelchair management.

Major Duties:

• Duties include but are not limited to: Provides Veterans, their families, and visitors with staff who can quickly respond to inquiries, identify problems, and aid to improve the experience of those visiting the campus. Responds to customer immediate needs including navigation, direction, and information assistance. Serves as the initial, as well as the final point of contact for guests entering and leaving the facility; is a key influence toward patient/public perception. Receives, greets and direct callers over the telephone and in person with precise clear instructions. Provides information about the organization, its functions, and activities. Provides assistance requested to ease the experience of the customer. Directs Veterans, visitors and callers to appropriate staff member and/or department based on specific request or by determining the nature of the need and initiates service recovery when needed. Takes accurate messages and ensures their delivery to support a responsive culture to the customer. Provides personal wayfinding assistance and often takes Veterans and visitors to locations when they have difficulties with instructions provided. Provides excellent customer service via the telephone and face-to-face simultaneously; ensures customers are greeted with respect and dignity. Addresses customers by answering questions concerning the location of outpatient clinics, inpatient area pharmacy, radiology and lab services and other areas of the medical center. Meets the demands of a busy facility providing simply understandable instructions and or directions. Responsible for communicating effectively with individuals from varied backgrounds as well as those with mental and/or physical health problems. Operates computer and photocopy machine to make copies of forms, letters, etc. from the original, assembles and staples copied materials, and distributes completed photocopy work. Responsible for all administrative functions of the program; will be actively involved in identifying problem areas and in the development of methods to improve the functions of the program. May work with Volunteers who support guest relations. Responsible for delivering ongoing customer service training to VA staff via face-to-face or computer-based mediums. Back-up for other Patient Advocate activities; will have frequent verbal interaction with customers to include determining and documenting their level of satisfaction with their experience Work Schedule: Rotating Shifts to include weekends Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Patient Relations Assistant/PD02986A Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not Approved Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized

Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 05/04/2026. Time-In-Grade Requirement: Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For a GS-05 position, you may be advanced without time restrictions to positions up to GS-05, if the position to be filled is no more than two grades above the lowest grade the employee held within the preceding 52 weeks under his/her latest non-temporary competitive appointment. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials. If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade. Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement as well as current employees applying for Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA) appointment. You may qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-04 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: answering phones and log calls; provides directions and assistance to patients and guests; provides friendly, excellent customer service; greeting patients and offering assistance for appointments; locates appointments in computer system; reports safety concerns. OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have successfully completed four (4) years above high school. OR, Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. You must have an combination of specialized experience and education beyond the first 60 semester hours is creditable toward meeting the specialized experience requirement. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/. ***PREFERRED EXPERIENCE: The best qualified applicant will have previous Customer Service experience in a federal agency. The highly qualified applicant will have previous Patient Relations Assistant experience in a federal agency and fully meet the specialized experience skills as stated above. Will have documented experience related to customer service, quality improvement process, and problem solving.****

How to Apply: Please read the entire announcement and all the instructions before you begin an application. To apply for this position, you must complete the initial online application, to include the initial online questionnaire and submission of the required documentation specified in the How to Apply and Required Documents section. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on the closing date of the announcement to receive consideration. To preview the application questionnaire, click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12938080. The application process is as follows: To begin, click Apply Online to create a USA JOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USA JOBS resume and/or other supporting documents. Answer the questions presented in the application and attach all necessary supporting documentation. Click the Submit Application button prior to 11:59 PM (ET) on the announcement closing date, 05/04/2026. If you are required to complete any USA Hire Assessments, you will be notified after submitting your application. The notification will be provided in your application submission screen and via email. The notification will include your unique assessment access link to the USA Hire system and the completion deadline. Additionally, in USAJOBS you can click "Track this application" to return to your assessment completion notice. Access USA Hire using your unique assessment link. Access is granted through your USAJOBS login credentials. Review all instructions prior to beginning your assessments. You will have the opportunity to request a testing accommodation before beginning the assessments should you have a disability covered under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended. Set aside at least 3 hours to take the USA Hire Assessments; however, most applicants complete the assessments in less time. If you need to stop the assessments and continue later, you can re-use your unique assessment link. NOTE: Your responses to the USA Hire Assessments will be reused for one year (in most cases) from the date you complete an assessment. If future applications you submit require completion of the same assessments, your responses will be automatically reused. Visit the USA Hire Applicant Resource Center for practice assessments and assessment preparation resources at https://support-usahire.opm.gov/hc/en-us. To update your application, including supporting documentation: During the announcement open period, return to your USAJOBS account, find your application record, and click Edit my application. This option will no longer be available once the announcement has closed. To view the announcement status or your application status: https://help.usajobs.gov/how-to. Your application status page is where you can view your application status, USA Hire assessment completion status, and review your notifications sent by the hiring agency regarding your application. Beginning September 27, 2025, Federal agencies will only accept resumes up to two pages in length to comply with the Merit Hiring Plan. Resumes longer than two pages will result in ineligibility for further consideration for the position. USAJOBS will not allow you to upload or build resumes longer than two pages, and you will need to update the resumes in your profile before applying for a job. Resumes should include information relevant to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of the position to which you are applying. VA is unable to make assumptions about qualifications if not clearly listed. Resumes must be legible so they can be reviewed for eligibility, minimum qualifications and other position requirements listed in the job announcement. Your resume must be 5MB or less. We recommend saving and uploading your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and number of pages. We also accept GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, TXT, PDF, ODT or Word (DOC or DOCX). We do not accept PDF portfolio files. We recommend using a sans-serif font size like Lato, if available. Other widely available options are Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Open San Source Sans Pro, Roboto or Noro Sans. Make your page margins 0.5 inches. Consider using 14-point size font for titles and 10-point for the main text in your resume. The resume builder can help you create a resume using these recommendations and uses the information in your USAJOBS profile to help you get started. Helpful Hints for Creating a Two-Page Resume: Prioritize most relevant and recent experience Use concise, results focused language Align language from the job announcement Focus on demonstrating skills and competencies Remove outdated or unrelated experience Use the USAJOBS resume builder Additional guidance on this new requirement and resume building tools can be found at https://help.usajobs.gov/faq/application/documents/resume/page-limit

Application Deadline: 2026-05-04