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Chargemaster

R

rthames052006

True Blue
Local Chapter Officer
Messages
1,904
Location
York, Pa
Hello all,

I wanting to know more about what "Chargemaster" is, from my understanding ( which isn't much) it is done by facilities. Can anyone give me soem ideas of what dealing with chargemaster would be like or a type or not so typical day in the life of a person who handles this.

Thanks in advance
 
Hi Roxanne, I don't know how helpful I can be on this subject but here goes: Usually each facility has a person or persons in charge of the chargemaster. It is a series charge code numbers that directly correlate with the CPT codes used for coding. The CPT codes would be put in 3M, for example, as "soft codes" byt the coders and then the correlating chargemaster (CDM) codes would go into our billing software, Siemens, for example. In our case here (at a VERY small rural hospital), if we are coding an ER chart, for example, and come across a code that is not in our chargemaster list, we would e-mail the person who is in charge of the chargemaster (CDM) and request that a code be built for this CPT code so that we can bill out the chart. Here the person in charge of our CDM has many additional duties as we are very small. But I would imagine that at a larger facility, there would be plenty of work for the person in charge of the CDM - such as additions, deletions, maitaining, etc. Does any of that help or am I just rambling on?
 
LeslieTibbetts said:
Hi Roxanne, I don't know how helpful I can be on this subject but here goes: Usually each facility has a person or persons in charge of the chargemaster. It is a series charge code numbers that directly correlate with the CPT codes used for coding. The CPT codes would be put in 3M, for example, as "soft codes" byt the coders and then the correlating chargemaster (CDM) codes would go into our billing software, Siemens, for example. In our case here (at a VERY small rural hospital), if we are coding an ER chart, for example, and come across a code that is not in our chargemaster list, we would e-mail the person who is in charge of the chargemaster (CDM) and request that a code be built for this CPT code so that we can bill out the chart. Here the person in charge of our CDM has many additional duties as we are very small. But I would imagine that at a larger facility, there would be plenty of work for the person in charge of the CDM - such as additions, deletions, maitaining, etc. Does any of that help or am I just rambling on?
Click to expand...

Thanks Leslie!

You are helping me to understand what this postion entails and some of the duties, I may have an opportunity to venture on this, and just wanted to get any background info that I could. I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
 
Some additional functions that I hold, as I am the "chargemaster" are the pricing projects, making sure your prices are set in comparison with your fees schedules. Chare capture is also a duty, as charges are added, you must ensure that education is provided on their proper usage and proper capture (i.e charge tickets, system interfaces, etc) I will tell you this is a challenging position, but I love it.....No day is ever the same and there's alyways something new to learn. Good luck! :)Jessice, CPC
 
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