The simple truth is, you are missing charges.
What is charge capture in healthcare?
Charge capture in healthcare describes the various processes used by healthcare providers to collect the money that is owed to them for the services that they have rendered to past and current patients. While medical professionals provide excellent care for their patients, most of them struggle with their charge capture and collecting all the actual money owed to them. Medical practices struggle with it so much that it is an industry standard for a typical hospital’s charge capturing procedures to fail about 10 percent of the time. This means that if you own a medical practice that collected a revenue of a million dollars last year, you are likely to still have roughly $100,000 still owed to you.
But why are charge capture issues so common? And if you are an owner of a medical practice, what can you do about it?
- Adopt an automated charge capture system
- Charge your patients at their bedside
- Never miss another charge
Healthcare providers who spend any time at all in the hospital know how hard it is to juggle clinical care with clerical responsibilities. Long days of running around the hospital necessitate prioritization, and clerical work typically drifts to the bottom of the pile. The result is that billing, or charge capture, or whatever modern term you wish to use for letting your billing staff know what you did that day – becomes an end-of-the-day activity. I have seen physicians procrastinate turning in charges for weeks, only to receive harassing messages from the billing department and administrative staff. This is the last thing you need when you are trying to keep up with the endless conveyor belt of patient care, which never seems to take a break.
Most charge capture procedures are based on following a vast ocean of paperwork documenting past medical services performed. If any of this vital paperwork gets lost or doesn’t get filled out properly in the first place, many charges will never have the ability to be captured at all. With everything else in healthcare turning to an electronic method, your charge capture should too.
An automated charge capture system may be the most profitable investment that you can make within your practice today. You can almost instantly boost your revenue by the 10 percent that you were already losing by using a modern, high-tech and easy-to-implement charge capture system such as ours. If you are interested in taking your medical practice to the next level and want to employ the best hospital charge capture practice available in the industry, come visit our website at www.hybridchart.com or call us at 1.877.977.5544 for a demo today!
- More About Dr. Sanders
Dr. Gregory Sanders is a Harvard-trained, practicing cardiologist and founder and CEO of HybridChart. He has been coding since the 1980s and has spent his medical career focusing on improving processes. His patient care skills earned him recognition as one of Phoenix Magazine’s TOP DOCs. He lives in Scottsdale with his family.