Poster Presentation at ASTRO Reveals Effective Way to Mitigate Charge Capture Errors

At ASTRO 2024 in Washington, D.C. Fuse Oncology presented a poster for both live and virtual attendees examining the prevalence of charge capture errors in radiation oncology, and how our automated review software system improves workflow standardization and charge capture accuracy over time. 

“Enhancing Charge Capture Accuracy in Radiation Oncology: A Comprehensive Software Analysis,” by authors Matthew Terry; Christel Smith, PhD; B.J. Sintay, PhD; and David Wiant, PhD, demonstrated the value of ensuring accurate charge capture procedures and documentation.  

As part of an automated charge capture review via our software from October through December 2023 across seven departments, Fuse consultants established workflow rules and processes for each billable charge using coding best practices. The rules-based engine predicted charges based off OIS/EMR activities and patient documentation, which were compared to actual charges captured in the OIS to identify and fix inconsistencies. 

The poster showcased the study’s results:*  

10.9% of 65,633 billable events exhibited charge capture errors in the analysis. 

Activity standardization—charges captured and documentation present in the patient record that followed the workflow rules—was 83%. 

Over three months, there was an increase of 3.6% in activity standardization, concomitant with a decline of 1.4% in the charge capture error rate. 

A case study examination showed that an end user would manually review 99 charges per day in month one. Using the software, 81% of charges coming through the system were found to follow the workflow rules, and the end user only needed to review 19 charges per day that did not follow the defined workflow. 

After four months, workflow improvements and staff education resulted in 93.4% activity standardization; the end user only manually reviewed about 6 charges per day. 

The poster presentation demonstrated that the implementation of automated daily comprehensive charge capture review can play an important role in efficiently mitigating billing and documentation errors. The authors note that codifying workflow rules within a rules- based engine software system enables a practical methodology for implementing standardized processes while allowing users to monitor adherence to standardized processes.     

Click here to view the full eposter

*Reference 

Addressing Billing Errors: Results of a Prospective Quality Assurance Initiative to Optimize the Accuracy of Radiation Oncology Patient Charges. International Journal of Radiation Oncology 2017; VOLUME 102, ISSUE 3, SUPPLEMENT, S214-S215