Report Helps Hospital Eliminate Coding Errors

Success Snapshot: Data & Reporting

Customer: Community hospital with more than 7,800 annual discharges

Challenge: Discharge planners and social workers were entering the wrong discharge status codes for Medicare reimbursement. By submitting incorrect codes in a patient's Medicare claim, the hospital was in danger of incurring financial and legal penalties.

Curaspan Application: DischargeCentral^®

Solution: Using the discharge-disposition discrepancies report, one of almost 30 in the DischargeCentral portfolio of reports, the hospital says its coding is now 100 percent accurant and, as a result, all Medicare claims are processed quickly and without further review. The weekly report is also used as a performance-improvement tool to ensure documentation accuracy.

Impact: "With Curaspan and its reporting capabilities, we're able to flag discharge coding discrepancies right away, identify who made the error and make sure that person is educated so we reduce the chances of it happening again. One error is too many. These reports have been a godsend."