Ranked among the nation's top two cancer hospitals by U.S. News & World Report’s "America's Best Hospitals" survey, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center is one of the world's most respected centers devoted exclusively to cancer patient care, research, education and prevention.

In early 2004, while seeking to improve its revenue cycle management, the organization identified Electronic Charge Capture as a technology capable of enhancing revenue, as well as driving workflow and compliance improvements. M. D. Anderson was interested in this solution because it could serve as an effective replacement for the institution’s highly-manual paper-based charge capture workflow. This process consisted of clinicians documenting procedures on paper, in both the outpatient and inpatient settings; the collected information was then translated and codified by professional coding staff.

After a multi-disciplinary team representing physicians, administration, information technology, compliance and medical records was assembled, a six-month review system process commenced ultimately selected MedAptus as the vendor of choice. The goal of the project team at M. D. Anderson was to have an initial group of about 50 clinicians using Electronic Charge Capture in both outpatient and inpatient settings by early 2005. Assuming successful adoption within this pilot group, along with the realization of positive revenue and productivity results, the technology would then be rolled-out to the remaining 400 clinicians over a two-year period.

Approximately one year after initially implementing MedAptus, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center undertook an analysis of system usage and results across a pilot group of clinical users. For providers that started to use Electronic Charge Capture in 2005, total paper-based gross charges over a five-month period, September 2004 – February 2005, were determined. These data were then compared to the same indicators for a five-month period post-system implementation, September 2005 – February 2006.

The study revealed that, after taking into consideration patient volume changes and rate increases, for physician-users of MedAptus, gross charges increased by more than $1 million, when compared to the group’s 2005 baseline. When annualized, this experienced gross charge improvement equates to over $2 million, or approximately $50,000 per provider, on average.

In addition the study found that charge lag decreased by approximately 75 percent while administrative productivity increased dramatically.

Given the overall positive findings of the internal study, further roll-out of the solution is currently underway.

Read a case study on the implementation of MedAptus at M. D. Anderson Health Data Management magazine features M. D. Anderson