Four Tips to Better Chargemaster Management
Every hospital in the country relies heavily on its chargemaster – without it, you wouldn’t be able to properly track and bill the necessary services you’re providing. By acting as the centralized data hub for your medical staff, particularly CNOs and Revenue Directors, the chargemaster tracks and analyzes the cost of all services provided by the hospital. But are there ways to better manage this essential but complex program? Let’s go over some essentials and learn several valuable tips on how to better manage your chargemaster.
Chargemaster Basics
At the most basic definition, a chargemaster is a hospital’s comprehensive list of its equipment and services that are billable to its patients or patients’ insurance providers. It includes everything from medication supplies to diagnostic tests.
For each service provided by a facility, the chargemaster?generally?includes the following?components for each line item:
With all that information, it’s fairly straightforward to see how a manually updated chargemaster can become inaccurate. Regardless of how a chargemaster is updated, it will still need to be audited and updated with new best practices to ensure that a hospital’s revenue cycle is operating at full efficiency. A chargemaster will only work well if the staff using it are updated on the basics (codes, changes, etc.) and know how to update those changes within your chargemaster. A chargemaster that has been properly maintained can be the difference in whether a hospital remains in compliance with the?2021 Price Transparency Mandate?and receives full reimbursement for its procedures or not.
Four Tips for Better Chargemaster Management
1. Assign a Superuser for Chargemaster Management
One of the more prevalent issues with chargemaster technology is staff not fully understanding and executing proper chargemaster maintenance, which exists to prevent mistaken charges and billing errors. Even if most of your staff won’t be using a chargemaster as extensively as a superuser, they’ll still need to be proficient in the basics to avoid system mismanagement. Whether it’s through a?chargemaster boot camp?or?ongoing education webinars, there are numerous ways to continue educating your staff.
Superusers will want to start training staff early on and continue to train as system updates and new code sets are implemented, to make sure that everyone is familiar with how the technology works and to address any questions as needed.
2. Consistently Train Staff
It can be difficult to pinpoint the exact root causes that are causing issues in your charge capture process. A system audit can be helpful in that it allows a dedicated team to directly focus on locating the origin of discrepancies.
Some of the benefits of a healthcare audit can include identifying improper billing practices and locating coding errors, which translates to accurate patient billing. This ends up improving patient satisfaction in the long run! Investing in an audit means you’re protecting your hospital system from unnecessary charges, unbilled encounters, or missed charges.
3. Invest in an Automated Workflow
A thoroughly automated workflow can make a hospital’s chargemaster management more efficient and secure. When services are incorrectly billed, or supplies are lost in the shuffle, your hospital’s revenue integrity will suffer. By automating your chargemaster, it will be easier to bill for the correct code, maintain complete code sets, and remain compliant with standards and rules. All this will help your hospital save copious amounts of time and money.
Using automation for chargemaster maintenance has allowed organizations to monitor and process large amounts of data at once. This creates an accurate system that will identify discrepancies and revenue cycle issues, allowing healthcare organizations to rectify any errors immediately.
4. Maintain an Audit Trail
Maintaining an audit trail is the process of a healthcare organization keeping track of any updates made within a chargemaster. Even with the best-automated software, errors can and often do happen. Persistent documentation must be made that notes reasonings for additions, deletions, and modifications. Creating this record trail will also give your hospital the capability to track changes on a department-level scale and discern who created approvals, thereby making the process of fixing an error that much easier to correct. By maintaining audit practices, hospitals can sustain control of their systems and plan ahead.
Learn more about the benefits of a healthcare audit?here.
Chargemaster Management Results
With recent federal updates like the?2022 No Surprises Act, it is now more important than ever to improve your chargemaster management. By assigning dedicated superusers, training staff, implementing automation, and maintaining an audit trail, your chargemaster maintenance will help your hospital remain compliant, retain revenue, and provide better and more accurate care for your patients.