Mobile charge capture
Caregivers work at a frenetic pace and on an interrupt basis. It's easy to understand that a physician or clinician can simply forget to submit the charge code for every performed medical service, procedure, and encounter. Often the caregiver fills out the encounter forms at the end of day, relying on memory recall of the day's events; this of course promotes errors. And then the completed paper encounter form might be lost entirely! Hospitals lose millions of dollars every year as a result of medical service charges simply not being recorded or entered with inappropriate service codes.

There's a more complex story to tell as well. Until the advent of mobile devices, charge capture was a manual, paper-based process. The claims department's first challenge is to receive the charges from the caregivers. These charges are transformed into a claim, which is filed with the payer (i.e. health insurance firm) for reimbursement. If the submitted claim has errors or missing information, it's rejected for payment and returned to the hospital for correction and resubmission.

Hospitals continually combat the problem of lag time between the medical service being performed by the caregiver, and their claims department receiving appropriate posting of the charge. Hospitals have a finite time window to submit/receive claims for reimbursement, and the clock begins ticking at the date the service is performed.

If an accurate, "clean", claim for the service isn't received by the payer (i.e., health insurance firm) within this window, reimbursement is denied. This adds up to a lot of lost revenue every year that the hospital must write off! In addition, receipt of reimbursement charges are delayed in posting to accounts receivable due to tie-ups in data correction and validation.

A key objective of hospitals today is to capture every charge, receive reimbursement on every charge, and receive reimbursement quickly. Sounds simple, but it's not.

In order to make this truly a reality, the charges need to be captured at the point and time of care. Charge data input must be guided and validated to ensure accuracy and prompt appropriately for on-the-fly correction. Once captured, the data must be sent immediately to the claims department so a reimbursement can be filed. This is where mobile devices come in, and indeed they're a perfect fit.

Finally, there's the administrative burden of the processing and re-processing erroneous claims. If caregiver charges and payer claims are completed accurately the first time, there's less administrative work and a net cost savings in administrative staff overall.

In conclusion
Mobile devices are a perfect shoe-fit for helping healthcare providers meet their cost savings and quality of care goals. Since most hospital infrastructures rely upon a centralized data repository that's fed from every department, it's easy to add a layer of mobile computing to caregivers. Doing so will enable them to have a more informed view of their patients, and encourage prompt and accurate recording of service charges. The bottom line is more generated revenue, less lost revenue, and lower operational costs for claims processing.