A care coordinator job description for a medical practice has to do something an ordinary HR template never does. It has to line up with the Medicare rules that decide whether the person’s time can be billed at all. Get the employment status, the supervision line, or the credential requirement wrong, and you can hire a genuinely good coordinator whose work you cannot bill.
Here is the short answer. For chronic care management, CMS says clinical staff may be employees or people working under contract with the billing practitioner, and their time counts under general supervision, which does not require the billing practitioner to be in the building. For remote monitoring, CMS has proposed to change that in 2027 so that only directly employed clinical staff would count. Those two facts pull in opposite directions, so a care coordinator job description has to name which code sets the role supports before it names anything else.
This guide covers the duties that actually generate billable minutes, the credential question, how to size a caseload before you post the role, and a care coordinator job description template you can adapt. It is written for the practice owner or administrator doing the hiring, not for the candidate.
What does a care coordinator do in a medical practice?
In a practice that bills Medicare care management, the care coordinator is the person who produces the documented time the program is paid for. That is the honest way to describe the job, and most postings dance around it.
The day splits into two kinds of work, and only one of them is billable. The billable half is patient facing and care plan facing: outreach calls, medication reconciliation, following up after a discharge or a specialist visit, updating the electronic care plan, chasing test results, and answering the patient who calls back. The other half is real work that no code pays for directly: enrollment and consent conversations, building the monthly close file, fixing documentation, and sitting in huddles. A care coordinator job description that lists both without distinguishing them sets the new hire up to spend a month on unbillable administration and wonder why the program looks unprofitable.
Why a care coordinator job description is really a billing document
Three lines in a care coordinator job description map directly onto Medicare requirements, and each one has a wrong answer that costs money.
- Employment status. Decides whether the time counts for the codes you bill. This is the line the 2027 proposal would change.
- Licensure and scope. Decides what the person may do at all, and it is set by your state, not by Medicare.
- Reporting relationship. Decides whether the supervision requirement is satisfied.
Everything else in a care coordinator job description is ordinary hiring copy. These three are compliance copy wearing an HR costume.
Employee or contractor? It depends on which codes you bill
This is the part that has changed, and it is the reason to revisit a care coordinator job description you wrote two years ago.
For chronic care management, CMS is explicit. Its Chronic Care Management Services booklet (MLN909188, June 2025) says clinical staff may provide CCM under the billing practitioner’s direction on an incident to basis, subject to state law, licensure and scope of practice, and that “Clinical staff are employees or people working under contract with the billing practitioner.” Contracted staffing is permitted today for CCM. The same is true for principal care management.
Remote monitoring is where the ground is moving. In the CY 2027 Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule (CMS-1848-P, 91 FR 43842, published July 16, 2026), CMS proposed to pay for RPM and RTM only when the work is performed by clinical staff directly employed by the practice, with contractors excluded. It is a proposal. The comment period closes September 14, 2026, and nothing is final until CMS publishes a final rule, which in this series has typically arrived in the autumn.
Two practical consequences. If your program is CCM or PCM only, a contracted coordinator remains permitted and the proposal does not reach you. If you bill any of the RPM codes or the RTM code set, write the care coordinator job description as a W-2 employee role now, so that a final rule does not force you to re-hire the position in January. We walk through the exposure in our explainer on the proposed employee only staffing requirement, and the 2027 transition checklist turns it into a working document.
One thing to say plainly, because the headlines got it wrong: the proposal covers RPM and RTM. Medicare has not banned or restricted outsourced chronic care management or principal care management, and nothing in this proposed rule does that.
What credentials does the role actually require?
Practices routinely write “RN required” into a care coordinator job description and then cannot fill it. Medicare does not name a license. CMS ties clinical staff to “applicable state law, licensure, and scope of practice”, which pushes the question to your state’s practice acts and to what you are actually asking the person to do.
So work backwards from the tasks. Medication reconciliation, clinical assessment and any triage judgment need a licensed clinician. Outreach, scheduling, benefit checks, documentation and care plan upkeep frequently do not. Many workable programs pair one licensed clinician with an unlicensed coordinator who carries the volume, which widens the candidate pool without touching scope of practice. Write the credential line last, after the task list, rather than first.
Supervision, and whether the role can be remote
CMS assigns the CCM clinical staff codes to general supervision, which it defines as the service being furnished under the billing practitioner’s overall direction and control without requiring that practitioner to be physically present. That single sentence is why a care coordinator job description can legitimately offer remote or hybrid work, and why the reporting line in the posting matters more than the desk location.
Note the distinction that trips people up. Employment status and supervision are separate tests. Under the 2027 proposal, a remote employee would still count for RPM and RTM; a contractor sitting in your own office would not, however closely you supervised them. Our guide to the incident to rules covers the supervision half in more detail.
How to size the caseload before you post the role
A care coordinator job description that promises “manage a panel of patients” without a number is how practices end up with an overloaded coordinator and a program that misses its minutes. The code structure gives you a hard ceiling to plan against.
For non complex CCM, 99490 covers the first 20 minutes of clinical staff time in a calendar month, and 99439 covers each additional 20 minutes. The CMS medically unlikely edit table for practitioners effective July 1, 2026 caps 99439 at two units. So the most clinical staff time Medicare will pay for on one patient in one month is 60 minutes, and the most it pays is $167.01 at 2026 national non facility amounts, not adjusted for your locality. Past minute 61 you are either working for free or you should be evaluating whether the patient meets complex CCM criteria instead.
Turn that into a staffing number with arithmetic rather than a benchmark. Take the coordinator’s realistic monthly hours, subtract the unbillable half of the job, convert to minutes, and divide by the average documented minutes your own patients consume. We do not publish a panel size, because the honest answer depends on your patient mix and nobody else’s number transfers. What we do insist on is that the number exists before the posting goes up, and that the posting states it.
A care coordinator job description template
Adapt the following care coordinator job description template. The bracketed fields are the ones that must be answered from your own program, not copied.
Position: Care Coordinator, [practice name]
Status: [W-2 employee, full time. Required if the role supports RPM or RTM under the proposed CY 2027 rule.]
Reports to: [named billing practitioner or clinical supervisor], under general supervision
Location: [on site, hybrid, or remote. General supervision does not require physical presence for CCM.]
Licensure: [set from the task list and your state practice act]
Core responsibilities. Enroll eligible patients and obtain and document consent. Maintain the electronic care plan and share it with the patient. Conduct scheduled outreach between visits. Perform medication reconciliation [if licensure permits]. Coordinate transitions after discharges, referrals and specialist visits. Record time contemporaneously against each patient and each service. Prepare the monthly close file for the billing team. Escalate clinical concerns to the supervising practitioner.
Performance expectations. Maintain a panel of [number] enrolled patients. Document a minimum of [number] minutes per enrolled patient per month. Close the month by [date] with a reconciled time log. Note that these are process expectations. Do not tie a care coordinator’s compensation to enrollment counts or to collections; that is a compliance problem, not an incentive plan.
Requirements. [License, if required]. Experience with your EHR. Comfort with sustained telephone outreach. Documentation discipline. Familiarity with Medicare care management is welcome but teachable; documentation discipline is not.
Five mistakes we see in care coordinator job descriptions
- No employment status named. The single line most likely to become a problem in January if the 2027 proposal is finalized as written.
- A credential requirement copied from another practice. It narrows the pool for no regulatory reason and is the most common cause of an unfilled seat.
- Billable and unbillable duties in one undifferentiated list. The new hire cannot prioritize, and the time log shows it.
- No named supervising practitioner. Supervision is a requirement, so leaving it implied leaves the requirement unevidenced.
- Pay tied to enrollment or collections. Attractive, and a compliance exposure you do not want attached to a Medicare program.
One more that is less a mistake than a missed opportunity. A single coordinator can often support CCM, PCM and remote monitoring together, because the underlying work is the same. If you are hiring anyway, scope the care coordinator job description to the program you intend to have in a year, not only the one code you bill today. Our comparison of in house versus vendor care management is the right place to start if you have not settled that question, and how to bill for chronic care management covers what happens to the minutes after the coordinator records them.
What we learned writing this role for our own clinic
Our team designed, built and supports the care management program at the musculoskeletal and regenerative medicine clinic our group operates. The clinic’s own staff runs it day to day, which is the same split we implement for clients.
That program bills RTM and PCM rather than CCM, which is exactly why the employment question came first when we wrote the role. Because RTM is in scope of the proposed staffing change, an outsourced coordinator was never on the table for us. Two other things we would tell anyone writing this posting. Contemporaneous time capture has to be in the job description as a duty, not assumed as a habit, because reconstructing minutes at month end is where programs lose revenue and audit defensibility at the same time. And the first artifact worth building is not the posting, it is the monthly close checklist with a named owner, because it tells you what the role has to produce.
Frequently asked questions
Does a care coordinator have to be an RN?
Not as a Medicare requirement. CMS ties clinical staff to applicable state law, licensure and scope of practice, so the answer comes from your state practice act and from the tasks you assign. Clinical assessment and medication reconciliation generally require a licensed clinician; outreach, scheduling and care plan upkeep frequently do not.
Can a care coordinator work remotely?
Yes for chronic care management. CMS assigns the CCM clinical staff codes to general supervision and states that the billing practitioner does not need to be physically present. Under the proposed CY 2027 rule a remote worker would still need to be a direct employee of the practice to support RPM or RTM. State the arrangement explicitly in the care coordinator job description rather than leaving it implied.
Can we use a contracted care coordinator instead of hiring one?
Today, yes for CCM and PCM. CMS states that clinical staff are employees or people working under contract with the billing practitioner. CMS has proposed to end that option for RPM and RTM effective January 1, 2027, but that rule is not final and the comment period closes September 14, 2026.
How many patients should one care coordinator manage?
Calculate it rather than copying a benchmark. Medicare pays for at most 60 minutes of clinical staff time per patient per month for non complex CCM, because the add on code is capped at two units. Divide your coordinator’s realistic billable minutes by the average minutes your patients consume, and put the resulting number in the posting.
What should never go in a care coordinator job description?
Compensation tied to enrollment counts or to a percentage of collections, a credential requirement you cannot trace to your state practice act or the task list, and a duty list that mixes billable and unbillable work without distinguishing them.
Getting the care coordinator job description right the first time
A care coordinator job description is cheap to get right and expensive to get wrong, because the errors surface as unbillable minutes months after the person starts. Name the employment status, derive the credential from the task list, name the supervising practitioner, separate billable from unbillable duties, and put a real caseload number in the posting.
Practice Management Consultancy designs, builds and supports in house care management programs for medical practices. Your own staff runs the program; we advise on the billing mechanics and build the workflows behind it. If you want a second set of eyes on the role before you post it, start with a care management assessment, or get in touch at contact@practicemanagementconsultancy.com.
Sources
- CMS, Chronic Care Management Services, MLN909188, June 2025.
- CY 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule, CMS-1848-P, 91 FR 43842 (July 16, 2026). Comments close September 14, 2026.
- CMS Physician Fee Schedule relative value file RVU26C (July 2026 release) and the CMS NCCI practitioner medically unlikely edit table effective July 1, 2026.
This article describes a proposed regulation as of August 2026 and general Medicare billing requirements. It is not legal, billing, or employment law advice. Verify against the final rule text and your own state practice act before acting. CPT is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association; code descriptions here are plain language paraphrases, not official descriptors. Dollar amounts are 2026 national non facility amounts and are not adjusted for your locality.
Disclosure: our team operates and manages the medical practice referenced in first-person examples on this site.
