Hendrick Medical Center Accomplishes Charge Capture-Centric Revenue Integrity Program; Achieves Improvements in Efficiency, Compliance, Revenue

ATLANTA, Oct. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- (Booth #613, AAHAM ANI) – Amid a fluctuating economic landscape, many healthcare organizations are reviewing their financial processes in an effort to obtain all revenue earned, meet compliance and remain competitive. With the average hospital losing one percent of its earned revenue due to errors in chargemaster or charge capture processes, it is critical that healthcare organizations embed best practices and automated tools to ensure operational efficiency, accurate charging and coding while managing compliance risks.

Today, Craneware, Inc., the market leader in automated revenue integrity solutions, announced that Kelley Blair, its senior vice president of professional services and sales support, has been selected to speak alongside Mike Reppart, director of business services at Hendrick Medical Center of Abilene, Texas, (Hendrick) at the American Association of Healthcare Administrative Management's (AAHAM) 2012 Annual National Institute. This presentation will offer healthcare organizations of all sizes practical strategies for achieving revenue integrity.

Blair and Reppart will be presenting a case study, "How Hendrick Medical Center of Abilene Made Charge Capture Centerpiece of Revenue Integrity Program," on Thursday, October 18, from 11:00-12:30 p.m. This presentation will outline how Hendrick, a 511-bed medical center, serving 22 counties in midwest Texas, implemented a revenue integrity program to improve the accuracy and efficiency of charge processes, identify and resolve areas of revenue leakage, strengthen compliance and improve data collection. Additionally, the executives will describe how the implementation of revenue integrity tools helped create a sustainable monitoring and process improvement culture which resulted in an increase in gross revenue by $1.5 million per month.

"Our main priority at Hendrick is to provide high-quality yet cost-effective care to our community, but without solid financial performance, those goals are impossible to achieve," said Reppart. "Through effective collaboration and automation, our revenue team has been able to heighten compliance and improve charge capture to meet our revenue integrity goals. It is my hope that by sharing both the challenges my organization faced, and the strategies we embraced to overcome them, my peers at AAHAM may be able to adapt some of the best practices we used and achieve similar successes."

"At Craneware, it is our mission to stop revenue leakage by helping to establish a culture of revenue integrity in healthcare organizations, and Hendrick Medical Center is a great example of the financial benefits that our revenue integrity methodology enables," said Blair. "It is gratifying to present alongside our client, Hendrick, best practices for achieving revenue integrity at AAHAM ANI 2012. We are pleased our software has fulfilled our clients' needs and hope their story will encourage other healthcare leaders to make similar strides in achieving revenue integrity."

KLAS, the leading source of healthcare information technology vendor performance metrics, ranked Craneware's Chargemaster Toolkit^® #1 in the Revenue Cycle - Chargemaster Management market category in the "2011 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services" report, published December 2011, Data ^© 2011 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved. This is the sixth consecutive year Chargemaster Toolkit has received this top ranking.

To learn more about this case study or Craneware Revenue Integrity Solutions^®, visit the company's booth, #613, at the AAHAM Annual National Institution at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point in Bonita Springs, Florida from October 17-19.

About Hendrick Medical Center
Hendrick Medical Center was founded in 1924 in Abilene, Texas as a not-for-profit, faith-based medical center. Today, Hendrick employs more than 2,700 healthcare professionals and support staff to serve 22 counties in the Texas Midwest region with a 511-bed medical center and a Level 3 trauma center. Its campus also includes a women's center, rehabilitation hospital, and cancer center.

About Craneware
Craneware (AIM: CRW.L) is the leader in automated revenue integrity solutions that improve financial performance for healthcare organizations. Craneware's market-driven, SaaS solutions help hospitals and other healthcare providers more effectively price, charge, code and retain earned revenue for patient care services and supplies. This optimizes reimbursement, increases operational efficiency and minimizes compliance risk. By partnering with Craneware, clients achieve the visibility required to identify, address and prevent revenue leakage. To learn more, visit craneware.com and stoptheleakage.com.                              

SOURCE Craneware, Inc.