Otolaryngology Coding Alert

Electronic options help you in 6 important ways. 

Any coder can have trouble capturing all the services and supplies for a patient, thanks to complicated rules, coding edits, payer-specific billing requirements, and more. Make life easier for yourself and more profitable for your practice by going electronic with your charge capture. Electronic charge capture (ECC) success will help your productivity and bottom line so much you’ll wonder how you managed without it. 

An optimally designed ECC can:

• Quickly and easily record charges for services delivered at the clinic or hospital or anywhere at the site of care, on mobile devices like smart phones, tablets, or web portals through a computer;
• Suggest the diagnoses from an existing drop down menu;
• Provide searchable CPT® and ICD codes;
• Automatically check for coding errors;
• Supply a user-friendly automated workflow for submitting the bills;
• Allow for easy communication through messaging with designated billing staff.

A case study: The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston shifted its charge capture process from paper-based capture to electronic capture. The institute which handles about 842,000 patient statements annually — processing about 1.2 million claims each year — found the electronic charge capture much easier and financially meaningful as compared to the paper-based capture. The institution evidenced a whopping $500,000 increase in average daily cash posting in less than two years after shifting to electronic process.