Dream Factory by TruBridge Ideas Portal
When a patient comes in to have a procedure done (Xray) and the tech sees that there are also future order for another procedure (US) ordered by a different provider, they need to be able to release both the Xray and US future orders so that the patient can have both done on same day. This increases patient satisfaction as they don't have to make a 2nd trip to have the 2nd procedure. The orders, whether they are from the same provider or not can be done on the same encounter. The billing department is happy because the encounter has the procedures and the ordering provider.
This process also causes our HIM dept to transfer charges between encounters adding additional time consuming work to an already busy department. We currently use RCM for billing so we do not have the extra manpower in our facility for this extra workflow. With our previous EMR, we set up rules in the system that would combine claims for us on the backend automatically and no one had to touch them. We had one encounter per Sub Type per day regardless of the number of providers or if multiple encounters were created it combined them all automatically on the billing side.
This also worked with RHC ancillary charges. We had rules that we would set up that if the system created a separate encounter (851 claim) for any labs, radiology, or EKG done in the clinic and there was another OP encounter for the same day (851 claim) for labs that are collected at our clinics and sent to the lab for additional testing, it would combine these encounters for us and be ready for coding. There is a daily list for us to go through because both of these situations happen frequently.
Sorry this kind of takes this idea in a whole another direction but has the same final patient and facility satisfaction outcome.
Having a patient have multiple encounters in order to do labs that are entered under future orders for one provider and radiology under another provider is not optimal. Most insurance companies will only allow 1 encounter billed per day, whether there are multiple procedures under multiple providers. But the process of merging becomes problematic with PACS systems as well. If the encounter that it the accounts are merged into isn't the one the radiology PACs used then the signed authenticated reports are not on that encounter.
This would be solved if when entering any lab order in order entry there was the ability to make it recurring and not a future order. Future orders need to be able to be released without regard as to who ordered the test of any kind on any given day.