Every year,
hospitals are not reimbursed for billions of dollars in costs
incurred while treating patients. Why – They never
made it to the claim.
Coupled with the pressure to reduce the provider’s cost and
payors reimbursement, financial shortfalls force
Hospital Administrators to face decisions that can
severely affect the quality of care provided to
patients.
There are many technical and procedural reasons for missed
charges. Most frequently, missed revenue is the
result of:
·
- Use of multiple technology solutions across the
patient care continuum
·
- Failed interfaces
between HIS system modules
·
- Breakdowns in manual
processes performed by staff
Most of the hospitals employ nurse-auditors for manual review of
patient claims. Unfortunately, with this approach
hospitals often are able to review only high ticket
items such as implants, supplies and high cost
drugs.
Although significant improvement opportunities exist throughout
most clinical services, ranging from cardiology to
radiology, the emergency room to the laboratory,
hospitals simply don’t have the resources required
to audit each claim. As a result, it is estimated
that hospitals lose an estimated average of 4-5% of
gross charges resulting in approximately 1% of lost
net revenue. |