Steward Health Care System Implements Craneware® Solutions to Automate Chargemaster and Audit Processes Across Ten Hospitals

ATLANTA, Nov. 13, 2012  /PRNewswire/ -- Craneware, Inc., the market leader in automated revenue integrity solutions, today announced that Steward Health Care System LLC (Steward), New England's largest community-based accountable care organization (ACO) serving more than one million patients annually, has expanded its use of Craneware's Chargemaster Corporate Toolkit^® and InSight Audit^® across four additional hospitals in an effort to achieve enterprise-wide revenue integrity and manage audit requests. Steward had previously implemented both solutions in six of its facilities.

As an ACO spanning 85 communities, Steward has a unique and complex need to gain visibility into the business processes that help ensure billing accuracy. "We have been using Craneware's chargemaster and audit solutions at our hospitals for over five years to achieve revenue integrity across our hospitals via process improvements and efficiency gains. As these solutions have been so beneficial to the facilities where they are implemented, we decided to expand the use of them at four additional hospitals in our health system," said David Fielding, Vice President of Finance, Steward. "As a multi-site health care system that includes hospitals of varying sizes, it is critical that we have the tools and best practices in place that enable efficiency while ensuring billing accuracy and compliance, and we have found that Craneware's solutions address all of these needs across our growing organization."

Chargemaster Corporate Toolkit automates the creation and maintenance of a corporate standard chargemaster, enabling effective workflow for the continual analysis of charge data and automated management of updates across the organization to help optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency and support compliance. By using sophisticated matching algorithms to analyze, match and make links between the charge items in multiple CDM files, users can define a "master" chargemaster file and have it link directly to each of the individual CDM files. Once linked, the software is flexible enough to allow chargemaster management at corporate, facility, department or charge item levels.

Craneware's InSight Audit is a fully hosted, Web-based solution that provides healthcare organizations with one central location for managing all medical claims audits. The solution offers a full set of features for submitting, tracking and appealing claims in response to a range of audits, including Medicare Recovery Audits, MAC audits, and commercial payor audits. InSight Audit now also supports the electronic exchange of medical documentation to allow hospitals to respond to documentation requests with greater efficiency and less cost.

"We are seeing more and more demand for our revenue integrity solutions from healthcare organizations that are working toward an ACO model. Under these emerging models, organizations are more focused than ever on understanding and optimizing their revenue performance with accurate, transparent and efficient pricing, charging and coding," said Craneware CEO, Keith Neilson. "We are pleased that Steward shares our vision for ensuring revenue integrity across its multiple facilities as they pioneer this next generation model of care."

Craneware Revenue Integrity Solutions^® span four product families: Audit & Revenue Recovery, Revenue Cycle, Supply Management, and Access Management & Strategic Pricing. Craneware developed the industry's first chargemaster management solution, Craneware's Chargemaster Toolkit^® has ranked number one in the KLAS Revenue Cycle – Chargemaster Management market category for the past six years. In 2011 Craneware's Bill Analyzer achieved number one ranking in the KLAS Revenue Cycle – Other market category.

About Steward Health Care

Steward Health Care is the largest fully integrated community care organization in New England.  Headquartered in Boston, Steward is the third largest employer in Massachusetts with more than 17,000 employees serving more than one million patients annually in 85 communities.  Hospitals in the system include Saint Anne's in Fall River, Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton, Norwood Hospital, Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, Merrimack Valley Hospital in Haverhill, Morton Hospital and Medical Center in Taunton and Quincy Medical Center.  Other Steward Health Care entities include Steward Medical Group, Steward Hospice and Home Care, Laboure College, and Por Cristo. Further information is available at www.steward.org.

About Craneware

Craneware^® (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.