Hospitalist billing is a vital piece of the puzzle for rounding physicians who see patients in hospitals. It is the gateway and process to getting paid for patients seen and treated.

Good hospitalist billing gets you paid, great hospitalist billing automates and streamlines the processes so that you not only get paid in full but spend less time on the necessary workflows to make this happen. 

AI-enhanced billing for hospitalists uses algorithms, customizable rules engines, and machine learning over time to improve efficiency and make your billing less error-prone while also ensuring the rounding process is more streamlined with intelligent census syncs and real-time reporting features. 

These software systems have a trickle-down effect on patient care as more organized doctors with up-to-date information available at their fingertips are able to spend more time with patients, make fewer mistakes, experience less burnout, have better work-life balance, and generate higher care quality scores and patient satisfaction scores.

Here are five benefits of using hospital billing and scheduling software:

1. AI Charge Capture

One of the most important components of modern hospitalist billing is the intelligent charge capture software. This mobile smart feature allows you to capture all the necessary charges associated with patient care, including those from intakes, consults, diagnostics, procedures, and discharges. Doing this digitally on a computer or mobile device helps you ensure that you are being paid for all your services and eliminates the need for manual entry of charges through paper submissions to a biller.

In addition, intelligent charge capture can help you to avoid missing charges and billing errors that come from handwriting or missing pages. And the artificial intelligence aspect helps proactively analyze the submissions for issues and errors that will prevent claim payments or clean claim approvals. The smart system will automatically check for optimal coding compliance and make suggestions as needed. This can save you significant time and money in billing corrections. 

Charge capture is an essential part of hospitalist revenue cycle management. By automating and improving the technological aspect of this process, you can improve your bottom line.

Intelligent charge capture also makes it easier to:

• Determine gaps or problems in your billing patterns
• Generate real-time financial reports on key aspects or metrics
• Establish comparisons with others in your specialty by region
• Integrate with your EHR to streamline documentation
• Facilitate higher per encounter reimbursement and lower denials

2. Improved Practice Management

Another significant benefit of using hospital scheduling and billing software is improved practice management. Managers and owners of practice have different sets of workflows and processes that overlap with what a provider is doing.

They need to manage compensation and any custom formulas used by the practice. They need to coordinate care across multiple facilities. And they need to ensure that all the patients were seen, all the charges submitted, and all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. 

Practice management also is the gateway to billing as good PM systems have billing and claim processes built in so that the mobile app syncs to the desktop system and is able to share information and process all the claims associated with patient care. 

Powerful hospitalist billing can help your practice streamline your financial and daily operations whether you are a single doctor practice or running a practice with several hundred providers and mid-levels.

Here’s how to further improve your practice management:

• Integrate your RCM with your PM and charge capture so that you have a single end-to-end solution for all your software and service needs
• Integrate your practice management software with any associated EHRs used at the facilities or hospitals your doctors round at

3. Organized Central Census

A smart central census is a key to organized rounding. When it is integrated with your rounding hospitals and facilities you will get real-time updates on new patient admissions, lists of the daily census right on your phone, updated room numbers, and rounding charts so you can determine which hospitals to visit in what order and which patients to see in which order, coverage lists so you can see who is covering where, and changes to patient treatment plans, prescriptions, tests, and evaluations so you can treat them with the most up to date medical information.

A smart census also lets you skip visits on days a patient doesn’t need to be seen, bill SALT or the same as the last time if no changes have been made since the prior visit, and schedule future visits as needed if there is going to be a gap or change in the normal routine. 

If you operate out of a medical office as well as rounding, you can also connect with your front desk software to schedule visits to the office or discharge follow-ups.

A smart integrated census that stays up to date in real-time and syncs with all the other associated systems can save you significant time, which can be better spent on other tasks. In addition, streamlined scheduling can lead to increased revenue generation.

4. Real-time Reporting

Transparency is critical and real-time reporting combined with transparency gives you the best view of your provider or practice-level information. 

With so much data to track, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of your financial performance as well as rounding and billing processes. There is a lot of information to keep track of. The best hospitalist billing will track key both common and uncommon metrics as well as provide periodical intelligent assessments of your process to improve business decision making.

Not just more data, but better data in easily understandable formats with the right areas highlighted can be used to improve operations, time management, and key decisions. In addition, real-time reporting allows you to quickly identify and resolve problems as they arise. This can help you avoid potential disasters, keep your practice running smoothly despite any unexpected hiccups, and make informed decisions about where to allocate resources and how to improve your bottom line. 

Here’s how to get the most out of real-time reporting:

• Identify key metrics to track
• Monitor data closely to identify trends and problems
• Resolve issues quickly to avoid potential disasters
• Use data to improve your hospital’s overall operations

5. Improved Workflow and Productivity

Whether you’re running a single-doctor practice or a large national hospitalist organization, efficiency is key to success. Hospital billing choices will make you or break you in many core ways. One of the most important ways strong mobile billing software can help physicians is to improve your provider workflows and productivity at the point of care.

One of the most important ways it can help managers and owners is by improving organizational workflows and productivity prior to a provider reaching the point of care which includes updating the census, syncing relevant data, coordinating care, scheduling, managing compensation, tracking KPIs, and more.

A great system can automate and improve every critical workflow in a variety of ways, saving time and generating strong tangible improvements at every phase of the process for both sides.

One of the weakest points in any hospital’s workflow is the lack of communication. Notifications, messaging, and strong secure compliant communications built in can resolve this, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal.

Invest in Better Hospitalist Billing Software, Services, & Solutions

When investing in anything you measure the current value against the potential value. If the ROI is positive after factoring in any costs associated with the change, you go for it.

In the case of top-tier hospitalist billing, the ROI can be 10-20x your current process, and the improvements in 2021-2022 alone make any system implemented prior to that outdated in core ways that impact time cost and revenue generation, the two biggest variables in a hospitalist practice.

The right system will also improve department communication and increase organizational transparency. When choosing a system, be sure to select a hospitalist-based solution designed specifically for your provider and practice needs verse one that includes hospital physician needs in the same category as office-based physician needs.

The best hospital scheduling and billing software should feature a user-friendly interface, be easily customizable, integrate seamlessly, and make your life substantially easier.