Craneware's New Product Reduces Supply Chain Revenue Leakage

Solution enables hospitals to proactively identify operational breakdowns that prevent reimbursement for chargeable supplies

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Craneware

Jan 19, 2010, 11:11 ET

ATLANTA, Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Craneware (AIM: CRW.L), the market leader in automated revenue integrity solutions that improve healthcare providers' financial performance, announced today a new product and its first customer.

Supplies ChargeLink™ is a software solution that helps hospitals better manage and optimize reimbursement for chargeable supplies. It does this by establishing and maintaining dynamic links between the item master and supply items in the chargemaster. By establishing this linkage, Supplies ChargeLink creates unsurpassed visibility into supply costs and charges, identifying supply item inconsistencies in the chargemaster. This empowers hospitals to manage large amounts of data by exception and in accordance with industry best practices.

First to purchase the new software, made generally available on December 31, 2009, is Washington County Regional Medical Center, a 116-bed, non-profit organization serving east Central Georgia since 1960.

A recent survey completed by Porter Research found 75 percent of hospitals currently do not use any automation tools to compare their supply purchase histories with actual billing for supplies. Supplies ChargeLink automates the manual processes that most hospitals use to align their supply chain, charge capture and billing procedures.

"Today, most hospitals rely on spreadsheets, logbooks and other manual methods to coordinate their supply chain's charge capture and billing processes," said Keith Neilson, CEO of Craneware. "These inefficient measures don't provide hospitals with the necessary visibility into the enormous amounts of reimbursable supply charges that their facilities could be capturing."

"Craneware's innovation is focused toward helping customers transform business processes for improved operational efficiency and financial performance," continued Neilson. "Our industry-wide expertise enables us to pinpoint where we can significantly help customers through effectively automating their business processes. Supplies ChargeLink answers hospitals' need for an efficient, sustainable solution, which integrates supply chain and revenue cycle in support of revenue integrity."

According to a recent Healthcare Financial Management Association InstaPoll of members, currently more than 50 percent of hospitals believe they are reimbursed for less than half of their chargeable supplies. Supplies ChargeLink provides unsurpassed visibility into the supply chain and the supply item revenue stream, which enables hospitals to better manage costs, monitor internal pricing policies, more accurately code chargeable supplies and capture revenue to which they are entitled. This helps hospitals achieve sustainable financial performance improvement.

"As healthcare facilities continue to face demanding financial pressures, the need for increased visibility into revenue leakage has never been greater," said Neilson. "Craneware provides hospitals with a streamlined process to recover the revenues to which they are entitled and, at the same time, comply with important regulations."

Craneware's Supplies ChargeLink provides hospitals with an effective way to streamline the time-consuming process of building and updating supply items in the chargemaster. Supplies ChargeLink identifies coding, billing or pricing errors in the chargemaster, as well as inconsistencies in the item master. Correcting these errors, while identifying supply items subject to CMS, RAC or OIG guidelines, helps hospitals minimize compliance risk while providing an auditable communication trail between materials management, finance and appropriate compliance specialists.

As supply costs fluctuate, Supplies ChargeLink helps hospitals keep adjusted charges compliant with their existing pricing policies. This supports hospitals in creating and maintaining defensible pricing policies, particularly when the supply charge is based on acquisition cost. Checking margins for supplies against fee schedules, as well as benchmarked costs or charges, is essential to ensuring appropriate spending and pricing.

Craneware's Business Solutions Group provides a Supplies ChargeLink implementation service, which helps hospitals ensure that best practices and processes are in place to efficiently achieve an optimal return on investment and sustainable benefits from using the software.

Supplies ChargeLink, like all of Craneware's revenue integrity solutions, works at any hospital – regardless of GPO affiliation or size. In addition, clients benefit from the industry expertise, service and support that have made Craneware's flagship product, Chargemaster Toolkit®, the number one chargemaster management product in KLAS rankings for the last four years.

View the social media release at http://pitch.pe/41998.

About Craneware

Craneware partners with healthcare organizations to improve returns, increase productivity and manage risk, driving better financial and operational performance using market-driven revenue management solutions. By enhancing revenue capture processes, Craneware solutions enable healthcare organizations to optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency, and support compliance. Visit craneware.com.

About Washington County Regional Medical Center

Washington County Regional Medical Center (WCRMC) is a 116-bed, non-profit, healthcare organization accredited by The Joint Commission. Serving east central Georgia since 1960 by providing comprehensive inpatient and outpatient surgery, WCRMC strives to be a model for integrated rural healthcare in meeting needs across the continuum of care.

SOURCE Craneware