Improving outpatient charge capture.

Hospitals can identify opportunities to enhance revenue collection by closely analyzing outpatient charge-capture data. A hospital can bolster its charge-capture analysis by performing a charge-capture process walk-through and scrutinizing subsystem links, third-party payer contracts, and electronic health record structures. The hospital then can integrate charge-integrity functions into clinical departments as needed by developing charge-reconciliation tools and reports and monitoring their utilization, and incorporating charge-reconciliation responsibilities into clinical department managers' job descriptions and goals.