Stroudwater Associates, the nation’s leading source of strategic, operational, and financial performance improvement for rural, community, and county-district-owned hospitals released a new online web-based application for Rural and Critical Access Hospitals to help with keeping its chargemaster current and compliant with policies and procedures.
“Rural and Critical Access Hospitals are struggling to keep their chargemasters modernized even though it’s the foundation of their revenue cycle,” said Jeff Sommer, Managing Director of Stroudwater Associates. “The enhanced Pricing Tool helps hospital leaders take control of their chargemasters and establish market-based pricing strategies while improving pricing integrity.”
Stroudwater’s updated Pricing Tool automatically reveals pricing issues including: Charges prices below Medicare fee; Multiple prices for the same CPT code; Charge codes missing CPT codes, and; Charge codes assigned to invalid CPT codes. In the web-based application, users are able to break down data according to departments and revenue codes, identify impacted areas, and sort by key filters including CPT and Revenue Codes to identify where potential reimbursement might be being left on the table.
“The Pricing Tool allows hospitals to perform comparative rate modeling that analyzes several factors including price harmony, CMS factors and volume, and pricing changes,” said Amy Graham, Senior Consultant at Stroudwater Associates. “Our team of Revenue Cycle Advisors then reviews the results with the hospital leaders and forms a durable, defensible pricing strategy collaboratively.”
The process centers on a peer-to-peer approach and supports the advisory services Stroudwater can bring to the hospital, and the technology provides the tools and analytics to inform that process.
To learn more about Stroudwater’s Pricing Tool, click here.