GoingToMeet

Preventing lost revenue is a matter of survival for hospitals. In fact, physicians have more to lose than just time. When physicians appropriately document their patients' severity of illness, their profile is more accurate and both the hospital and the physician are correctly paid for their services.

Hospitals currently face more stringent requirements than ever before in order to obtain 100% reimbursement. To get complete reimbursement, doctors must capture more specific medical data including documenting for severity of illnesses under MS-DRG regulations. Doctors and hospital staff across the nation say they are struggling to grasp the new MS-DRG regulations and manage the increasing amounts of documentation required.

In response, hospitals say they are trying to implement process improvement initiatives for documentation and coding compliance that ensures proper reimbursement. When documentation is incomplete or inappropriate, hospital staff wastes time, energy and money to obtain the missing information. Physician queries ensue and claims remain in A/R too long -- or are denied, resulting in lost revenue.