The U.S. healthcare industry loses billions of dollars annually due to billing and payment errors largely stemming from the fact most providers still capture information about individual patient encounters on paper -- paper that is easily misplaced, with writing that is easily misinterpreted.

In addition to driving financial losses, this paper-based process:

• Is burdensome to clinicians;
• Drives many inefficiencies due to numerous staff handoffs;
• Challenges staff to stay current with a complex coding process hallmarked by about 12,000 procedure codes and close to 15,000 diagnosis codes, a multitude of compliance rules, and frequent updates to both.

These realities are what led MedAptus to develop its practice-proven Professional Charge Capture solution. Moving this process to the point-of-care, from the back office, streamlines billing and coding operations while embedded logic within the application ensures that charges are appropriate based on current, local and even governmental billing practices and policies.

In addition, because the system’s real-time charge transmission eliminates a multitude of error-prone handoffs, cash flow is immediately improved, and overhead dramatically reduced. In fact, adoption of the MedAptus solution has been demonstrated – repeatedly – by independent parties to result in sustained annual revenue improvements ranging from $10,000 - $20,000 per physician-user, at minimum.

The experienced increase in net cash collections has served as an effective means for some MedAptus customers to fund the installation of electronic medical records or clinical information technologies, independent of external funding. However, for groups that already have EMR technology in place, MedAptus can be integrated with virtually any system, either via an interface or in a fully interoperable manner, ensuring that the group’s financial health stays on par with its advanced clinical documentation abilities.

Today’s eighth-generation version of Professional Charge Capture is available on a multitude of Windows Mobile handheld devices and cellular PDA phones, as well as Tablet PCs and computer workstations. The system has been adopted by small and large groups alike, including a number of prestigious academic institutions: NYU Medical Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to name but a few.

The MedAptus Professional Charge Capture system includes a companion Web application, Workflow Manager, for administrative staff to review, edit and reconcile both outpatient and inpatient charges, as well as a console for system administration tasks. A Decision Support module is also available to customers interested in analyzing practice characteristics and trends. Additionally, a number of complementary clinical modules are available for groups interested in applications such as electronic prescribing or results viewing, but are unable to make the investment into a full-blown electronic medical records system.