I spoke to Mr. Young at the Healthcare Financial Management Institute’s Annual National Institute last week in Las Vegas. At the conference, Mr. Young and Craneware’s Vice President of Professional Services Michael Najera, presented key learnings from Centura’s experience working to standardize charging across diverse facilities and create a sustainable charge capture workflow.
Several years ago, Centura began its journey to standardize it chargemaster, with hopes to move from, at the time, 11 individual chargemasters, to a single corporate chargemaster. With more than 126,000 line items, the system “began the process to gain some efficiencies across the system,” said Mr. Young. Today, the system has reduced its line items to around 40,000 — which has greatly improved efficiency and consistency around charges.
While the chargemaster is now fairly consistent across all facilities, the system hasn’t yet implemented consistent pricing across all facilities. However, Mr. Young says more consistent pricing across the system is planned for the future; Centura has developed an active task force dedicated to researching and implementing pricing standardization and transparency initiatives. “We are moving more toward consistency and transparency in our pricing,” he explained, adding that such a move would help provide patients with a more consistent experience across the system — and a more consistent overall brand.
As health systems consolidate, consistency in charges and pricing will continue to be a challenge. But, it seems the most sophisticated systems realize that working toward consistency will be key, especially as health services purchasing becomes more consumer-driven.
