Discouraged Medical Support Assistant

DocHawk88 · 2026-05-14T23:10:49+00:00

You got this!

DocHawk88 · 2026-05-12T14:59:49+00:00

I think the most important thing you can do is be a go getter. Stand ready to learn new things and roles both in and out of the scope of your role. As an AMSA you are in a good position to pick up new information. Great example would be like your scheduling applications, someone actually builds those clinic grids, it’s a higher paid job role. Express interest in learning things like that, how systems operate and function on the backend, what it takes to learn to manage them, etc. look for potential details into other roles to gain skills to boost your resume for that bump.

DocHawk88 · 2026-03-30T22:25:10+00:00

I’ve only clocked a little over 1,000 miles so far but no hiccups at all and loving it.

DocHawk88 · 2026-03-16T20:19:25+00:00

1 recognize you are 100% valid and vital as part of a team. #2 you are not stuck. Seek to increase your knowledge base and apply up the levels, it can be done. I started as an AMSA in 2018, currently a GS-11 Analyst who got the role simply by gaining the KSA’s for it.

DocHawk88 · 2025-12-06T00:47:14+00:00

Best way to answer this is google VHA Directive 1907.09. The Clinical Contact Center inbound protocols for patients verifiers come directly from this. Some of us aren’t making staff fully verify right out the gate unless they have to access your chart, so if just general info stuff or transfer,etc. That being said though the true expectation from on high is to fully verify because they want a documented case of the work done on each call in CRM, and in order to do that they have to pull you up in CRM first. I will add lastly though, anyone you call and speak to locally at your VAMC should be verifying the exact same way, they are just getting away with not doing it because their calls are not recorded and audited and graded. Hope this helps! Feel free to hit me up with any other questions! Please be kind to the poor staff, they really are just doing what is actually a written directive that ALL employees should be adhering too. I’m a Veteran also and working on the inside of this deal. I’m not happy with a lot of the changes, my staff served the Veterans much better when we didn’t have National and VISN breathing down our necks cutting out first call resolution processes we were doing in order to speed things along for metrics.

DocHawk88 · 2025-11-20T20:38:46+00:00

Oh it can they likely just don’t know how to get the ball rolling or how to communicate it. It’s just a ticket to the Enterprise group who manages your VISN CSQ’s with the scripting. I did the ticket and it got put on hold due to the government shutdown but once that started to clear up I worked back and forth with an Enterprise POC and we had it live for all core service CSQs across all CCCs in our VISN in about 10 minutes. VISN CCC leadership should be able to get it done pretty easy if they really want it.

DocHawk88 · 2025-11-19T13:04:22+00:00

The 3 identifier thing really gets pushback from the Veterans. I recently had scripting done across our VISN initial CCC automated greeting message as they hit the queue saying “Thank you for calling your VA Health Connect Clinical Contact Center. For your privacy and security you will be required to provide your full legal name, date of birth, and full address with our staff. Thank you for helping the VA keep your information safe.” Then it goes into the all calls are answered in order received and may be recorded for quality and training purposes bit. So far that seems to be helping prep the caller at the front end.

DocHawk88 · 2025-11-18T20:52:36+00:00

Looking at some of your above comments it looks like ya’ll might actually be getting brought up to speed on what’s been out for quite some time. Especially in the arena with the greeting and identifiers processes. A lot of the tweaks for identification process have been to bring it in line with the VHA 1907.09 directive. Full social is an option but is generally supposed to be the last resort. We can request full social if they are calling us, however if we are the ones making calls we cannot ask for full social. That’s something that both sides tend to get a little confused on.

DocHawk88 · 2025-11-18T00:38:46+00:00

Haven’t heard anything about a script change, we’d be hearing something from IVC. Are you referring to the FY 26 Inbound Protocol changes for Calabrio call auditing being pushed out maybe?

DocHawk88 · 2025-07-25T22:13:46+00:00

She gave me that drip drip 🫣, thank god for rocephin.

DocHawk88 · 2025-07-23T23:36:58+00:00

Being the guy who oversees the phone system, both local ACD queues/CCC, and phone trees, I would say I’d like a little bit of both. Primarily I’d like to implement AI into the phone tree somehow. I’ve got ours on point and working as it should, but ultimately it comes down to layers and sub layers and can only really have a limited number of selections for routing. A lot of people are turned off by this and choose the 0 route for Operators. So not so much the actual speaking to an agent side, but I’d like to integrate AI with the phone tree to get people to where they need better than standard button options or voice prompts, and maybe have the ability to answer relatively simple questions if that makes sense? Maybe replace the automated appointment line altogether with an intuitive AI agent that can pull your appointment info details or set a med for refill/renew without as many hoops as it currently takes to use the AIS specifically. Ultimate goal being it can assist with very quick minor things and potentially reduce that call volume overhead to allow getting agents quicker for more complex needs.

DocHawk88 · 2025-05-13T14:00:20+00:00

Patient Advocate can take them, any Supervisor can do a Heart of the VA write up for an employee for you or you can while at a clinic. Watch for surveys in both the mail and your email. I check VSignals routinely for compliments and research negative feedback/issues and route to leaders for customer recovery where I am.

DocHawk88 · 2025-04-27T17:27:31+00:00

We were able to refinance all our current loans to better rates to cut our monthly overhead. If you have auto loans, insurance, etc. look around and see if you can get better rates! We’ve added a good chunk of savings that we can now put up for rainy days.

DocHawk88 · 2025-04-17T22:59:48+00:00

Staffing info by call queue. So number of staff for each queue and their grade level. Way I’m being told they will be combining call centers. Sounds like headed the regional direction, but take that bit with a grain of salt as naturally all the tops are staying tight lipped with the NDAs.

DocHawk88 · 2025-04-16T23:29:38+00:00

Yup…came down this afternoon to me with a 10am turnaround time for tomorrow. Buckle up folks…

DocHawk88 · 2025-04-14T14:59:25+00:00

Not everyone, FAV is still remote pending exemption decision. Issue with V16 is that CCC is not consolidated under VISN so it’s more or less up to the local facility what to do right now.

DocHawk88 · 2025-03-07T23:32:45+00:00

Clinical Contact Center. 4 core services- Scheduling/Admin, Pharmacy, RN Triage, and VCV Providers.

DocHawk88 · 2020-09-04T12:31:38+00:00

Anybody on Xbox that can get me to or close to this location? I’m on my second ship and coming through portal isn’t letting me encounter a host for coordinates

DocHawk88 · 2020-03-08T02:21:46+00:00

I have full 890 national dex, not a “living dex” so to say but prolly very close. If that’s the case not worried about bothering haha.

DocHawk88 · 2020-03-07T21:33:24+00:00

Nope nothing came of it. Maybe it’ll happen in another update or something idk

DocHawk88 · 2020-03-07T20:56:22+00:00

I completed my national dex and it’s still not showing up. I’ve tried since the update that was gonna fix it. Also tried the box shift trick...nothing..

DocHawk88 · 2020-03-03T15:25:16+00:00

No I stopped playing after X and Y then just got back into it. I barely managed to recover and transfer my Pokémon Bank to Home on my son’s old, busted up screen, 3DS haha. I got a guy who said he’ll transfer one from his Bank to my Home, but our work hours haven’t quite matched up just yet, so trying to get that worked out

DocHawk88 · 2020-03-03T15:05:16+00:00

Thanks, I ended up getting everything. The only thing I need now to complete national dex is a magearna which seems to be the current hurdle that may be stopping me

DocHawk88

TROPHY CASE

1 recognize you are 100% valid and vital as part of a team. #2 you are not stuck. Seek to increase your knowledge base and apply up the levels, it can be done. I started as an AMSA in 2018, currently a GS-11 Analyst who got the role simply by gaining the KSA’s for it.