She immediately suspected the cause. Her hospital – part of a major, highly regarded system – was not adequately linking the purchase of codable patient supplies with its billing system. So, this director of revenue integrity audited six weeks of surgeries. She was aghast at the findings: Her hospital had lost charges on $800,000 of surgical implants, which they had purchased and implanted in patients. But they'd never billed for them.

Many financial and materials managers have similar stories. They instinctively know that they could control the leakage if they could link the supplies item master and the chargemaster. The problem? Trying to link these two large, complex and constantly changing systems is a massive manual undertaking and almost impossible without a powerful software solution.

To solve these problems Craneware has developed Supplies ChargeLink^®. By linking your item master (purchased supplies) with your chargemaster (patient billing) the software performs an automatic charge capture review to find revenue leakage – gaps in the system where items have been bought for supply to patients but don't appear in the chargemaster (or maybe they appear with quantity discrepancy, or at the wrong price, or with coding compliance problems). Supplies ChargeLink will identify these issues and provide reference data needed to fix the problems and improve charge capture.

Supplies ChargeLink will optimize your hospital materials management and codable patient supplies reimbursement with its ability to:

• Identify purchased supplies that are missing from the chargemaster.
• Identify patient supplies where reimbursement is less than cost price.
• Identify lost charges where the items are in the chargemaster with lower quantities than purchased.
  
  

By repairing the missing or incorrect links that invariably exist between a hospital supplies item master and its chargemaster, Supplies ChargeLink helps ensure accurate pricing, coding and billing of chargeable patient supplies.

Some of the primary components of every Supplies ChargeLink screen include:
(A) filters; (B) list of all problem items that each filter identifies; (C) data needed to correct each error; and (D) reference data.

Supplies ChargeLink^® Implementation

The Craneware Business Solutions Group provides a companion Implementation Service for Supplies ChargeLink. This engagement ensures a successful implementation, providing near-immediate returns on investment. It also establishes an effective business process designed around achieving ongoing benefits from effective utilization of this powerful software.

Download fact sheet | Arrange a demonstration | Contact me

Information Resources

"Connecting, signing on the dotted line: Revenue cycle, supply chain links straddle the data divide"
Healthcare Purchasing News, June 2009
By Rick Dana Barlow, Senior Editor.

The publication's description of the article: One of the buzzworthy phrases making the rounds in healthcare information technology circles is "closed loop solutions." But in the cloudy realms of revenue cycle and supply chain management connections,closed loop is more conceptual than commonplace.

"Link between Supply Chain and Revenue"
Strategic Marketplace Initiative

A non-profit consortium of executives representing healthcare providers, the Strategic Marketplace Initiative launched "The Link Between Supply Chain and Revenue Initiative" to promote successful practices that link traditional supply management processes to revenue optimization, expanding on supply chain's strategic influence.

"Implementing a CDM Audit Process Can Lead to an Improved Bottom Line"
AHRMM's Supply Chain Strategies & Solutions newsletter, November-December 2009
By Bev Slate, FAHRMM

[This newsletter is available only to AHRMM members. The link above will take you to AHRMM's member login page.] "A common challenge for supply chain professionals is maintaining the supply portion of the hospital charge description master." This article provides a brief overview of the strategy and execution needed to address that challenge.