Picture this: you have a patient who comes in for an annual physical. During the visit, the patient also has a blood test and a urinalysis performed. You get caught up in other work and don’t get a chance to jot down your notes until the end of the day, when you accidentally record the blood test inaccurately. As a result, you never bill for it, and your practice loses the revenue it should have made easily.
Simple billing mistakes like this add up the American Medical Association estimates they cost the healthcare industry over $21 billion each year. If your charge capture solution doesn’t make it easy to record billing codes quickly and accurately, your practice could be one of many that is losing money!
Digital charge capture software can help you avoid these losses by automating the billing process and ensuring you accurately record every billable service, procedure, and product. The right software lets you enter notes through your phone or tablet, making it far easier to record billing codes at the point of care. By integrating directly with your EHR system, your charge capture software will help your practice save time and add to its bottom line, while freeing up your staff to focus on other tasks.
Is your practice losing money?
Chances are that the answer to this question is “unfortunately, yes.” Billing errors and charge capture leakage are a major problem in the healthcare industry, affecting practices of all sizes. It’s a widely accepted industry statistic that 3-5% of revenue could be lost to poor charge capture strategies, and studies have shown that the average practice is leaking at least 1% of its total revenue to charge capture errors.
While those percentages are small, the corresponding dollar amounts are not. The average net revenue per full-time equivalent physician was $695,088 in 2021, meaning that a 1% loss would still be worth nearly $7,000. And remember, that’s for a single provider larger hospitals could easily be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential revenue each year.
It’s hard to put a number on exactly how much revenue your practice could be losing, as the very nature of charge capture errors means there’s not a reliable record to track them against. However, there are a few easy indications that your practice may be leaking revenue, starting with the biggest red flag: you’re still using a manual charge capture process.
The majority of healthcare practices have already adopted charge capture software, but a surprising amount still do things by hand. This is especially true of specialty practices, where nearly one out of three physicians still rely on a manual charge capture process. Manual practices can be wrought with error and inefficiencies; if your practice still records charges this way, you’re all but guaranteed to be losing money because of it.
Even if you have a software solution for charge capture, there’s still a strong chance that you’re losing money to errors in your billing process.
Here are red flags to look for when evaluating your charge capture software:
- Your charge capture software doesn’t integrate fully into your workflow and requires you to still manually enter information or to supplement your digital files with handwritten data.
- There is a lack of consistency in receiving encounter information, or inconsistencies in the way that charges are created. Such inconsistencies make it harder to assure the quality of your work.
- Your billing staff isn’t comfortable using your software solution. This could indicate that the software is overly complicated, which invites human error.
- It’s difficult to view billing statuses, or it takes excessively long to chase down encounter information. Having good visibility into your billing process is vital to ensuring a quick billing cycle and closing leaks in your charge capture process.
- There’s not an automated clearinghouse component to review claims for errors internally. Encounter information can be wrong due to human error, but billing software that reviews the claim before it goes to the payer can detect these errors and improve your chances of submitting a clean claim.
- There’s no system for flagging inefficiencies in rounding on patients that can cause misbilling/duplicate billings/or lost billings. If you’re part of a larger healthcare provider where multiple caregivers are working with each patient, you’ll want to make sure your charge capture software is up to the task and can automatically detect duplicate billings and other errors.
- There’s no mobile component for capturing charges at the point of care. Even the most sophisticated solution won’t do you any good if you’re not able to easily and accurately record information at the point of care.
Put Your Money Back in Your Practice’s Pocket
Remember money lost to charge capture errors and inefficiencies is money your practice earned but never received! If you’re ready to start keeping every dollar you earn, it’s time to consider Charge Capture powered by MDTech.
This industry-leading solution gives you the tools you need to optimize your revenue streams and stop losing money:
- Consistency and flexibility – Charge Capture powered by MDTech delivers information to the provider and back office in a consistent way while including many options for configuring the reporting to suit the unique workflow of your practice or specialty.
- Accurate and updated information – going digital removes manual error, while patient information from all facilities is kept up to date and in one place.
- Point-of-care rounding – entering charges at the point of care using our mobile application reduces the possibility of misbilling, incorrect duplications, or lost charges.
Want to see just how much revenue you might be able to recoup by switching to Charge Capture powered by MDTech? Try our handy revenue calculator or set up some time to chat with an expert
